Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. There is no regular newsletter this week, as I am on vacation (ish) with my toddler. But oh…there are links.
Blake Lively is inching back into the public eye to promote Another Simple Favor (fka A Simple Favor 2), which is out on Amazon Prime May 1. This week, I wrote a story for the Wall Street Journal about the tightrope she is walking trying to promote this movie while locked in litigation that prominently involves the press tour for her last movie. You can read the full piece here, but I’ll quote from legal analyst Dina Doll about the risks Lively faces over the next week.
Justin Baldoni’s legal team “will be combing through every single action, interaction and comment regarding the press around this movie, because the press around It Ends With Us is a very key part of that initial litigation,” Doll told me. “If they see any interactions between the co-stars that they see as maybe not friendly, it’s possible that they may try to subpoena them and bring them into the civil trial to show some sort of a pattern of her behavior on set.”
Eep! Baldoni’s team is already suggesting (through anonymous sources) that they may try to subpoena Taylor Swift and Hugh Jackman, so this could end up being a very starry trial (should this whole thing go that far).
But Lively seems determined to get out there, anyway: She showed up to the Time 100 gala last night with Ryan Reynolds and her mom, Elaine Lively. What did you think of her speech?
Also this week: I sent out a new installment of Dating History featuring the one and only Justin Timberlake. We’re talking a technically illegal fling with Fergie, that weekend with Olivia Munn, matching basketball jerseys with Cameron Diaz, and of course, Britney. Don’t miss it:
Dating History: Justin Timberlake
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. Today we have a brand new installment of our monthly-ish column just for paid subscribers called Dating History. In Dating History, we explore the romantic pasts of some of the most interesting characters in the Gossip Time universe. Today’s honored subject: Justin Timberlake.
Thanks so much for your continued support of Gossip Time! I’ll be back next week with your regularly scheduled programming.
I loved her speech!!! I truly didn’t know that about her mother. I’m sure people will say “well why didn’t she share this information during the Press tour for her last movie?” and I just can’t imagine that her mother wanted that story used to sell a movie, even one her daughter had a financial stake in. Using it to validate her own experience now while she’s going through something so harrowing and so public feel so much more appropriate and gives that period of her mother’s life, the respect and weight that it deserves.
I am the opposite of a Blake Stan , I advocate for survivors of SA and IPV. So I have an idea how hard it had to be for her to get up and say what she said in the middle of everything going on, and even though age of Adaline was steaming pile of crap, and I wish you had taken those bracelets off and maybe removed a ring or two –I am incredibly impressed by that speech
What I've learned from briefly looking into this drama (ie: reading a lot of texts and circumstantial evidence from Baldoni's team) is that there should never have been a lawsuit or any of this public drama...at all.
American audiences at-large had no clue who Justin Baldoni was before any of this happened.
Long after this is all done, Reynolds + Blake will return to being the socially detached, 'power couple' they always were and I assume Baldoni will go back to making the movies he wants to make.
I have other 'against the grain' opinions on all this (mostly stemming from Blake's anxiety / insecurity issues during filming) but I'll refrain from being a drag.