Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - Major Blow to Blake Lively and NYT

00:00:00.000 So, the judge is basically saying here that this smear campaign wasn't working.

00:00:08.660 Hi and welcome to Blossom Talk, I'm Tash Tiflor, journalist, Hollywood truth teller,

00:00:13.320 and your voice of reason in a town built on delusion.

00:00:17.860 Okay, so this is pretty bad for Blake Lively, the New York Times, and the underground untraceable smear machine.

00:00:26.300 Rebel Wilson just won her defamation case against the producer that accused her of creating a smear website against her with the help of Melissa Nathan, who also worked for Justin Baldoni.

00:00:43.400 Blake Lively and the New York Times has been using this case as an example of the untraceable

00:00:49.640 smear machine. And guess what? The judge in Australia just gave the producer of the movie

00:00:56.040 $10 saying that she wasn't harmed by this. And here is the interesting twist. The judge also

00:01:03.640 found that this producer had stolen $900,000 from the production. And therefore, Amanda Ghost has

00:01:12.840 to pay Rebel Wilson back those $900,000 plus her legal fees, meaning that she owes her $369,000. 1.00

00:01:23.700 This woman was the number one victim in that New York Times article a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:29.840 Also, talking about New York Times, remember that article that they did, the hit piece

00:01:34.740 on Justin Baldoni that resulted in, amongst other things, that he was fired from WME, his agency?

00:01:41.540 Well, now the agency that fired him because Ryan Reynolds told them to is going after

00:01:48.500 Justin for money, saying that he owes them commission from what he made on It Ends With

00:01:55.620 Us.

00:01:56.160 And that is coming from the agency who still reps Jared Leto, by the way. 0.92

00:02:00.920 This is just beyond disgusting.

00:02:03.280 Talking about lies, I confronted the filmmaker of this documentary that I spoke about a couple

00:02:09.740 of days ago that's airing in Belgium and France right now, where they're trying to paint a bigger

00:02:15.280 picture of the smear machine in Hollywood. And while doing that, they printed lies about me

00:02:21.160 on their website saying that I was encouraged by Melissa Nathan to post my interview with Blake

00:02:28.180 Lively. Melissa Nathan is, again, the crisis manager that Justin Baldoni hired. And when I

00:02:33.860 confronted them about this lie, you won't believe the way they responded to me. Let's get into it.

00:02:40.520 Okay, let's start with this Rebel Wilson case, because I find this to be very interesting. If

00:02:45.020 you follow the Blake Lively lawsuit lately, you know that her team, her lawyers, and also the

00:02:51.380 media supporting her narrative have all been trying to compare Blake Lively's smear machine

00:02:57.100 to the smear machine that Rebel Wilson is accused of, because some of the same people are involved.

00:03:03.600 The same crisis management team that Justin Baldoni hired was also hired by Rebel Wilson.

00:03:10.540 And this new finding from the judge just makes Blake's narrative completely collapse.

00:03:18.680 So this happened in Australia today.

00:03:22.160 They're a few hours ahead over there.

00:03:23.880 I'm in Europe, as you know.

00:03:25.400 So this news just broke.

00:03:27.260 And a big thank you to Julia, who actually made me aware of this. 0.75

00:03:30.360 So this is the second win for Rebel Wilson in this whole legal drama that she's involved in.

00:03:38.320 There is still a pending case in the US, but now Rebel has won both cases in Australia.

00:03:46.600 First, she won the defamation case against the actors of this movie.

00:03:49.920 I'm not going to go into all those details because it is a bit complicated.

00:03:53.280 And now she just won the defamation case that was filed by Amanda Ghost, who owned the production company that was producing this movie.

00:04:05.840 So Amanda Ghost was one of the main people in the New York Times article that I spoke about a couple of weeks ago.

00:04:12.460 She said that she'd been a victim of a smear campaign organized by the same people that Justin Baldoni hired.

00:04:19.960 That whole hit piece in the New York Times was designed to remind everyone that Justin Baldoni is the bad guy and that the New York Times did everything right the first time when they wrote that hit piece about him with the help from Blake Lively and her team.

00:04:37.640 And here's the interesting thing. The judge in Australia said there was a smear website

00:04:43.940 that Rebel Wilson had ordered. She was pointing to the recordings that I also played here on my

00:04:50.780 channel where Jed Wallace was talking about a smear website that Rebel Wilson wanted. There

00:04:57.820 were some text exchanges about this website. And the judge said, yes, I do believe that there was

00:05:03.380 the smear website created about Amanda Ghost, but it did not harm her. Although the things that

00:05:10.460 Rebel Wilson claimed about Amanda Ghost on that website were lies, were fabricated things,

00:05:17.620 the judge said that it did not harm Amanda Ghost. So she said, the judge is a woman, she said, 0.51

00:05:24.120 here is $10, Amanda Ghost. That's what you get. And she also found that the producers, 0.92

00:05:31.080 Amanda Ghost was guilty of embassling $900,000 from the film and she has to pay that back to

00:05:41.580 Rebel Wilson. So she basically stole from the movie and she's also and now she also has to pay 0.99

00:05:49.540 Rebel Wilson's legal fees. Yes so the judge is basically saying here that this smear campaign 0.95

00:05:56.140 wasn't working. Although she's saying that there was a smear campaign, there was a smear website,

00:06:02.780 but it wasn't working. So I'm guessing that Melissa Nathan and Jed Wallace, who are accused

00:06:10.300 of running this campaign, didn't really have that many bots available at the time to spread this

00:06:17.080 information so much that it actually changed the public opinion about this production company and 0.97

00:06:24.380 about Amanda Ghost. So could that open up the discussion if maybe this mail campaign against

00:06:30.860 Blake Lively wasn't effective? If there was one, there's no proof that there was one, by the way.

00:06:37.140 But according to the New York Times and their latest hit piece, there definitely was one.

00:06:41.880 And now that we know the victim of the Rebel Wilson story took part in basically stealing

00:06:47.400 $900,000 from the movie. I wonder if the New York Times is going to write about this.

00:06:54.000 And something that I've been saying the entire time about this smear campaigns or smear website

00:06:59.460 is that when you're a public person, Amanda Ghost wasn't even a public person.

00:07:03.940 So it should be even easier for her and this production company to win a defamation case. 0.76

00:07:09.740 If you are a public person, the bar is much higher.

00:07:14.300 So because if you are a public person, you have to get used to the idea that people have

00:07:19.120 opinions about you.

00:07:20.240 when you're a celebrity a lot of people will hate you that's just the fact every celebrity out there

00:07:27.820 has people hating on them they get negative comments online it's a part of being a celebrity

00:07:34.000 and the fact that we now know that these smear machines even if they did occur are not even

00:07:40.600 successful does that mean that maybe the backlash against Blake Lively was organic and came from

00:07:47.660 real public opinion, that's an idea that none of these outlets are willing to play with. Yeah,

00:07:54.700 how much influence do these smear campaigns have before the media picks it up and calls it

00:08:02.120 a damaging smear machine? As I said in the beginning here, I don't think anyone should

00:08:07.220 create hate websites to spread lies about other people. But does that make it an effective smear

00:08:14.140 machine. I just showed how the public TV station in Belgium printed a lie about me that Melissa

00:08:22.280 Nathan was a person who encouraged me to publish my interview about Blake Wively. That was a lie

00:08:29.800 and they knew it if they actually had done the research that they're claiming that they did to

00:08:35.600 make that documentary. Does that mean that that's part of a smear machine against me? Should I sue

00:08:43.240 someone for spreading lies about me like that? I mean I could and then I could claim that I'm a

00:08:50.280 victim of this smear machine orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team. By spreading lies about me

00:08:57.960 they're trying to harm my reputation as a journalist and my integrity as a journalist

00:09:03.880 and in their own definition that is smearing someone. Anyways I'll get into the reaction I got

00:09:11.740 when i called out this documentary for lying about me you won't believe what they said but first i

00:09:17.740 want to talk about this horrible horrible story on page six about how wme justin baldoni's agency

00:09:25.920 is now asking him to pay them because he made money on it ends with us you won't believe this

00:09:33.380 so page six reported on this saying it ends with us drama still not over as agency who brutally

00:09:40.100 fired Justin Baldoni, seeks huge payouts. As I said in the beginning of this episode,

00:09:46.840 keep in mind that WME is still representing Jared Leto. So it says here, it ends with us,

00:09:54.780 but about that commission dot dot dot. Right before the Christmas break in 2024, WME dropped

00:10:01.980 Justin Baldoni as a client after Blake Lively accused him of SH in a complaint with the

00:10:07.360 California Civil Rights Department. I think they fired him because Ryan Reynolds told them to,

00:10:12.900 because we've seen enough evidence of text messages of Ryan Reynolds putting pressure on WME.

00:10:18.420 And as you know, WME's big guy, Ari Emanuel, publicly came out and said that he's

00:10:24.880 ride or die for Blake and Ryan. And he couldn't even remember Justin Baldoni,

00:10:31.460 Baloney, whatever that guy's name is. So it was obvious that he took sides here.

00:10:36.060 anyways they continue to say nearly two years later the agency is quietly they tried it quietly

00:10:42.080 but now we're talking about it kudos to the person who leaked this to page six by the way

00:10:46.860 the agency is quietly trying to extract a commission on Baldoni's backed earnings tied

00:10:53.300 to the hit movie it ends with us sources say WME is trying to collect a sum in the mid to high six

00:11:01.020 figure range with courtney brown the agency general counsel spearheading the effort courtney

00:11:09.080 brown wow i wonder how you sleep at night anyways it says her wme said in a statement

00:11:15.000 as a matter of policy it's just a policy we pursue all unpaid commission from current and

00:11:22.800 former clients additionally we do not discuss details of these private matters a rep for

00:11:30.140 Baldoni didn't respond for a comment. Can you believe this? The audacity, the cruelty. And they

00:11:38.080 say here, the move has raised eyebrows around town, even among industry figures sympathetic to

00:11:44.100 Lively, whose SH claims were dismissed by a federal judge in April. I love that they actually

00:11:51.600 do report on the facts here, which some outlets keep forgetting. And they continue saying that

00:11:57.500 that paved the way for an anticlimactic legal settlement between Baldoni and Lively one month

00:12:02.640 later with no money changing hands. It's common for agencies to seek unpaid commission for past

00:12:09.020 clients but sources say the sensational Baldoni case was different with WME publicly backing

00:12:15.340 another client Lively. Can you believe that WME who was supposed to represent and protect their

00:12:23.160 client, Justin Baldoni, chose to back another client against him. As you probably know, Blake

00:12:29.700 Lively was, maybe still is, who knows, also repped by WME. And a source here is saying WME not only

00:12:37.900 fired him, they picked a side before anything was decided in court. Yes, thank you to the source

00:12:45.880 saying that. How do you fire a client publicly, then make fun of him publicly, and then try to

00:12:52.020 collect commission from him after you effed him over like that. And the insider hears that the

00:12:57.920 action seemed like a breach of fiduciary duty. WME Group Executive Chairman Ari Emanuel, he's out

00:13:05.780 with a book now, by the way, that he's trying to promote everywhere, certainly appeared to be

00:13:10.760 mocking Baldoni when he said at Afrikanomics Radio live events, there was a live event when

00:13:17.320 aria manuel was asked why he had fired justin boldoni and this was a live big event in front

00:13:25.000 of an audience and it was supposed to be aired on their podcast platform but then guess what

00:13:32.420 this is their official explanation for why it wasn't someone forgot to push wreck

00:13:38.300 so obviously they were like maybe this shouldn't become public what aria manuel just said here but

00:13:47.660 guess what someone amongst the audience recorded it anyway and this is what aria manuel said at

00:13:53.220 that time he said it's an f'd up bad situation with that bologna boldoni whatever his name is

00:14:00.080 is doing claiming that justin was actually doing something without obviously having done any

00:14:07.160 research after judge tossed lively's sh claims in april presumably the reason wme dropped the

00:14:14.600 actor director in the first place the agency released a statement that appeared to be taking

00:14:20.560 another shot at boldoni they said then even as others have tried to turn this case into a

00:14:26.600 spectacle lively has kept the focus where it belongs on facts accountability and the right

00:14:34.740 to speak up without fear of retaliation it's astonishing i mean if you ever had any doubts

00:14:42.720 about hollywood and how people really are this is how rotten hollywood is they also mention here

00:14:49.440 that ari didn't back his own client macklemore during that whole controversy with ed sharon

00:14:55.900 just a month ago and they're also showing that he was a guest at megan kelly's show what a good fit

00:15:02.420 the two of them together and Megan actually asked Ari about his favorite clients he never mentioned

00:15:08.200 Ryan Reynolds he also she also asked him about the most powerful clients and he never mentioned

00:15:14.160 Ryan Reynolds then either so I guess it's not ride or die for them anymore I don't know anyways let's

00:15:20.460 get to this documentary that I spoke about a couple of days ago that reached out to me to have me as

00:15:26.400 part of this documentary that was supposed to be a new deep dive into what really happened

00:15:34.240 in the Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni, the wafer parties, the internet, and the rest of the

00:15:40.580 world lawsuit. So I'm not going to go through everything again that I said in my video a couple

00:15:45.380 of days ago when I read from the website all the misinformation and cherry-picked facts that

00:15:51.340 they're presenting there but I did reach out to the filmmaker I sent her an email she's the one

00:15:57.080 who reached out to me to begin with her name is Lisa Monin and she asked me if I could be a part

00:16:04.700 of this documentary and she said in the email to me she said I know you're already participating

00:16:10.100 in documentaries on this subject but my ambition is to go a little further than this case and see

00:16:16.300 what it says about the Hollywood system that you know very well. I would like to add a decoding

00:16:22.020 dimension. In our case, we'd like to broaden the scope of this story to talk about Hollywood

00:16:27.520 more generally. The role of PR and what particularly interests me about you isn't

00:16:34.200 just the video you posted, but also your entire experience as a journalist in Hollywood. The

00:16:39.660 junkets, how things work. And she said, how do you navigate the world as a journalist? And I'd

00:16:44.940 like to talk about the transition to social media, the freedom it gives you, your opinion would be

00:16:50.600 invaluable. Well, now I'm very glad that I didn't give any of these people behind this documentary

00:16:55.480 any of my time. So in the article that's teasing this documentary that I mentioned the other day,

00:17:01.540 they have a sentence saying that it was Melissa Nathan who encouraged journalist

00:17:08.140 to unearth this 2016 interview. As you all know, that's a lie. So I emailed Lisa and asked her

00:17:18.680 where they got this information from, how they did this research, how they came up with this

00:17:24.920 fact that they published on their website, and why they didn't consider to contact me,

00:17:32.580 because she already had my email address and ask me if this was actually correct. So I wanted to

00:17:39.560 know where they got verified this information so that they printed it. I haven't watched the

00:17:46.360 documentary yet so I'm not sure exactly what's in there but I did get some little clips from

00:17:52.720 someone who's watching this channel. Anyways I emailed Lisa and I asked this question. Guess

00:17:58.900 what she didn't respond but what they did do was just remove that sentence from the article so now

00:18:09.660 it doesn't say this anymore that melissa nathan was the one who encouraged me they just pretended

00:18:15.920 it was never there isn't it just ironic that they're calling the documentary the factory of

00:18:22.920 lies. And when I catch them in lying about me, they just pretend like nothing and take no

00:18:31.580 accountability for it. They don't mention it on the website that this information has been removed

00:18:38.380 because it was a lie. They're just saying it was updated on October 20th, which was basically the

00:18:46.340 day that I emailed them about this. The tagline for this documentary, by the way, is the empire

00:18:51.880 of silence so that's also quite funny thinking that they're just being totally silent about this

00:18:58.520 like okay we're just pretending that we didn't make up this fact about this journalist because

00:19:04.720 we had already decided before we made this documentary the angle that we wanted and that

00:19:11.220 really fit into the angle that we had already pre-decided on because I spoke to a person who

00:19:17.820 watched the documentary and that person said it is completely biased towards Blake Lively's

00:19:25.340 narrative. They're just repeating everything that the New York Times said in that original

00:19:29.540 reporting that they did in 2024. So here's a little clip of what they say about me

00:19:34.940 in this documentary.

00:19:47.820 So that was Kat Tenbarge, who is American, who was talking about me, and I got a friend

00:20:12.660 And I'm going to translate this from French.

00:20:15.240 And she said basically that she, meaning me,

00:20:19.060 went from interviewing celebrities to becoming a hate-spewing machine,

00:20:22.940 targeting Blake Lively.

00:20:24.560 And it made her far more popular than she ever was

00:20:27.800 when she was doing back-to-back promotional interviews.

00:20:30.660 Then there's a voiceover saying,

00:20:32.280 Over the past two years,

00:20:34.540 Siasse Deflo has posted more than 400 videos mentioning Blake Lively.

00:20:39.100 According to Viewsflat, which is probably some kind of machine that they used, she reportedly made more than $200,000 by capitalizing on the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni controversy.

00:20:51.900 So they're basically accusing me of making money for making content.

00:20:57.820 It's interesting how a journalist working for traditional media is never accused of making money of their reporting.

00:21:05.060 but as soon as you're independent and you're making money on something it's like oh you're

00:21:09.940 such a bad person it's also interesting that the people who are probably lively or her narrative

00:21:18.040 are never accused of wanting to make money because they never become maybe that popular

00:21:23.680 because people don't agree with their opinions and those are the people who go after the ones

00:21:28.820 who have been seeking the truth people like me and other content creators out there that's been

00:21:35.260 going through all the documents over 1400 entries with attachments means it's thousands of thousands

00:21:42.200 of documents they're saying that because we're seeking the truth we must automatically be

00:21:48.580 hating on blake lively honestly i don't like blake lively obviously for so many reasons

00:21:55.120 but to call my channel i hate spewing machine because you don't agree with what i'm saying

00:22:00.040 it's just very uneducated they should talk about what i'm actually talking about here on my channel

00:22:05.880 how i go through all the facts how i actually spend time doing my job as a journalist investigating

00:22:12.700 things something that they're definitely not able to do anyways so ket tenbarge who said these things

00:22:19.900 about me she's the one who did that article in the new york times the misogyny slop ecosystem 0.97

00:22:28.340 where she interviewed ofidoki which now turns out to be her friend isn't that convenient she just

00:22:37.340 posted a video talking about kat ten barge as her friend i think it proves the point about how

00:22:45.100 not poorly the content that I've made around It Ends With Us tends to age. I have gone ahead and

00:22:49.940 assembled a video for you today that is in part a conversation I had two weeks ago with my good

00:22:54.380 friend Kat Tenbarge. As it stands right now they probably will have to pay Blake Lively an enormous

00:22:59.640 sum of money and that's because this legal process was so stretched out. Yeah that was not disclosed

00:23:06.520 in that New York Times article where she interviewed her and the funny fact about Ofidoki this person

00:23:13.840 that said that I was part of the misogyny slop ecosystem she actually live streamed five hours

00:23:22.760 of my content from all my celebrity interviews that I'd done throughout my entire career 0.99

00:23:28.940 and she monetized it on her channel trying to make money from my content and when I called her out

00:23:37.980 and I filed a copyright claim on that content because it belongs to me,

00:23:43.560 she sent me an email saying that because she's disabled, 0.99

00:23:47.640 I should not do that because that's mean. 1.00

00:23:50.000 Anyway, so here you've got an idea of the kind of people

00:23:52.900 that this documentary has interviewed for their deep dive into this lawsuit.

00:24:00.060 It's the exact same cottage industry that was built around Dep v. Heard.

00:24:03.980 And they were so excited for this to go to trial

00:24:07.080 because no matter what happened they were going to spin it in Baldoni's favor and they were going

00:24:11.620 to use it as a reason to continue to harass and smear Blake Lively. Yeah I mean I find it so funny

00:24:17.600 actually that they're calling this documentary the factory of lies the empire of silence and then

00:24:24.600 they're caught lying about someone and then they pretend that it never happened. I mean you can't

00:24:30.420 make this stuff up even if you try. Anyways that's it for me today you guys. Just a quick note before

00:24:36.940 i go i wanted to send a greeting and say thank you to david from the restaurant spot in palma

00:24:43.440 here in mallorca he recognized me yesterday he's a fan of flawsome talk how amazing is that and he

00:24:49.600 was such a sweetheart and gave the best service ever so thank you so much for doing that anyways

00:24:56.020 please keep sending me tips right oscar at tips at flawsome talk.com and also oscar wanted to say

00:25:04.000 that his story hasn't been around that much lately he's been super busy going for walks and being on

00:25:10.680 the paddle court right oscar you love playing paddle and he also wanted to remind everyone to

00:25:15.120 subscribe hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode of flawsome talk was it that

00:25:21.840 boring okay sorry about that and we'll see you soon bye

00:25:34.000 Thank you.

Flaawsome Talk with Kjersti Flaa - October 24, 2026

Major Blow to Blake Lively and NYT

Episode Stats

Transcript