The Megyn Kelly Show - Secrets of Disgusting Media, and Explosive New Details About Blake Lively, with Billy Bush and Bryan Freedman ｜ Ep. 977

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.320 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have two first-time guests

00:00:17.740 joining me today, but they happen to be two guys I know very well in my personal life and

00:00:23.640 sort of professional life. Later today for the first time, Brian Friedman,

00:00:27.800 my friend and longtime attorney, killer attorney, who got me through that NBC nightmare,

00:00:35.780 will be here to talk about the bombshell lawsuits that everyone on social media and in the entertainment

00:00:40.580 industry is talking about. This is the first time he will have sat down for a real interview

00:00:45.980 going in-depth on the matter that he is handling now for actor and director Justin Baldoni,

00:00:53.540 who is suing the New York Times and who is being sued by his co-star, Blake Lively.

00:01:01.240 They were together in a big hit movie about domestic violence this year. It's a fascinating

00:01:06.660 story about Hollywood and the media, and I'm looking forward to having Brian on. You'll love

00:01:12.060 him and you will get a preview of who you will be messing with if you decide to mess with me. 1.00

00:01:16.740 I love him. Okay. But we begin with somebody else who I just absolutely adore. Everyone knows the

00:01:25.780 name Billy Bush, right? And you probably know him from Access Hollywood, you know, Extra, one of these

00:01:31.740 entertainment shows where he's been beaming into your living room for over a decade now. He hosts

00:01:38.520 Extra these days, but he had a stint, long stint with NBC and a short stint with the Today Show

00:01:44.840 Before they were trying to ruin the likes of me, they were trying to ruin a genuinely good guy,

00:01:52.520 Billy Bush. Why didn't I pay attention and learn? Billy had his own very public exit from NBC,

00:02:00.700 and he is speaking out now as he is set to launch a new show, his own, on YouTube and TuneIn called

00:02:08.620 Hot Mics with Billy Bush. The perfect name. I love that. It launches this Monday,

00:02:14.240 and guess who's going to be his first guest? Yours truly. But for now, with the preview of

00:02:19.260 that and much more, Billy is here with me. Are you overwhelmed with back taxes or unfiled

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00:03:12.500 complimentary consultation, call 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Megan. Don't let the IRS's

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00:03:28.020 your financial future. Visit tnusa.com slash Megan today. Billy, great to see you. How are you?

00:03:35.480 Oh, Megan. Well, you said so much there that got me just like, he got all the juices flowing right

00:03:42.780 there. First, Brian Friedman, that brilliant man. The guy that represented me when NBC was hacking my

00:03:50.080 head off was his mentor, a lawyer by the name of Marshall Grossman, I think trained Brian Friedman,

00:03:56.960 but I would say the mentee certainly outshine. All is well here, Megan. I'm so happy to see you.

00:04:03.940 I adore Brian. And I'll tell you something funny. I played pickleball several times out here. He's

00:04:09.020 not bad. I have to say. Is that right? Yes. This is one of his favorite things to do. So this is a

00:04:13.080 funny story about Brian. Um, I met him because he took my deposition in a lawsuit, a dispute that I got

00:04:24.340 into with my former agent. Okay. So I got into a dispute with my former agent, the details of which

00:04:30.960 I'm not at Liberty to disclose whatever it ended fine after all was said and done. But Brian took my

00:04:37.100 deposition and he was such a bastard in this litigation. I was like, he's such an asshole. 1.00

00:04:42.960 I hate this guy. He was opposing counsel, right? That's great. And then I had to sit for eight hours 1.00

00:04:48.240 across from him. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm, I'm in love. I love him. He was, once he actually got

00:04:54.500 across from me, his questions were great. His inquiries were totally reasonable. We wound up

00:04:59.340 really bonding in this deposition. And then when the shit hit the fan with NBC, he was brought into 0.99

00:05:06.920 my life as an option. And when everybody else abandoned me, Brian, well, I literally, everybody 0.99

00:05:13.320 had abandoned me and Brian was on the phone and he said, just so you know, I don't give an F what

00:05:18.780 anyone says about me. I've got you. And off we went to war. You had an angel looking out for you.

00:05:25.100 I'll say that, uh, cause there's nobody better than him. He is superb, terrible pickleball player,

00:05:31.580 but, but superb. So you're living the life now. Are you in LA right now? I wouldn't say, uh, I'm Los

00:05:39.520 Angeles now. Um, okay. Cause so you, where were you raised? You're, I mean, let's just start with a

00:05:44.940 little bit about you so that the audience has, cause you're a Bush most, most famously you're

00:05:49.040 a Bush and it is that Bush family. So explain. We're not all from Texas, Megan. Um, I'm from

00:05:56.480 Manhattan, upper East side, New York, uh, grew up born in, you know, uh, born at New York hospital,

00:06:02.800 upper East side, 86, uh, between York and East end and, uh, went to school in New York,

00:06:08.840 uh, then went off to boarding school, uh, with Tucker Carlson, who was, uh, several years ahead

00:06:15.080 of me and what an animal he was. Uh, he's down in a huge way. Uh, we all had a lot of fun. Then I

00:06:23.220 went off to Colby college in Maine, Waterville, Maine, and then took a first job out of college in,

00:06:29.300 uh, in, in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire on the radio. Were you, you knew like while in school

00:06:37.660 that you wanted to go into media? Uh, as my dad said, uh, Billy was on the Dean's other list. Uh,

00:06:43.960 so the grades weren't exactly fantastic. So I, uh, I knew that there was something I could do with

00:06:51.740 the chutzpah and, uh, and, uh, and the energy I had, I just thought, boy, it's probably not a lawyer,

00:06:59.040 doctor or financier or one of these things. And I found the college radio station and had a ball on

00:07:04.600 that and said, I think this is it. And so I went that way. Yeah. You were smart. It was a smart

00:07:09.560 move because you're smart. You're a very smart guy. Uh, but you recognize that you had a ton of

00:07:13.720 personality and there was a, there was a way to exploit that God given gift to do something really

00:07:18.720 fun with your life. Yeah. I appreciate my parents who grew up in a different era realizing that too,

00:07:24.300 and not shoving me into, you know, the finance world. My dad was a private asset manager and, you know,

00:07:29.840 something safe. I said, you know, they, they, they were great and said, no, no, no, this is you go,

00:07:35.500 go, go, which was great. All right. So explain where you fall in the Bush family legacy.

00:07:41.760 So the 41st president, uh, George H W Bush is my uncle. My dad is his young, was his younger brother

00:07:50.760 by seven years. And so W 43 would be my first cousin of which there are like 16 of us. Uh,

00:07:59.820 he's the oldest and I'm the youngest. So most people assume he's my uncle because he's 25 years

00:08:05.220 older, but we are first cousins. Oh, wait, I just saw a great picture in here. Look at this great

00:08:12.460 picture. This is, you'll love this. There I am in the middle of them in a sandwich.

00:08:18.420 Oh yeah. There they are. H W and W with Billy Bush in the middle. Yeah.

00:08:24.040 So did you spend a lot of time when you were growing up in your formative years at the white 0.62

00:08:27.720 house? Uh, no, but I did get a one weekend, one time, uh, mom and dad were invited to camp David

00:08:36.320 by a senior. And, and so my brother and I went along and afterwards I had a lacrosse trip for my high

00:08:45.060 school lacrosse team starting in Baltimore, like a three days later. And I was like, mom,

00:08:51.740 you think I could just stay down there? And, and when H W heard that, he said, well, you stay with

00:08:58.300 me. And then you, if you're down there, you got to stay there. My brother was like, you're not staying

00:09:02.420 there without me. So he, uh, so he jumped on, we jumped on Marine one right out of camp. David

00:09:09.640 landing on the white house lawn. Uh, I'm 18. My brother's 21. We go up to the top floor of the

00:09:16.100 white house. H W put a case of beer in the fridge. There was a pool table up there on the third floor.

00:09:22.120 Beautiful views. We were drinking brews, playing pool and having a blast.

00:09:27.640 Wow. Little did you know how tame that was compared to how the future presidential son would be living

00:09:34.500 while in the white house and around it. Hunter Biden, your little case of beer seems so innocent.

00:09:40.340 And then I returned as a young father with my three little daughters. When W was president,

00:09:45.100 we spent the night and went to the Easter egg roll. Uh, and I gave white house bath robes to all 0.89

00:09:51.000 the Jonas brothers who were performing. Uh, I hope they didn't forget that. So random. So it's fun. I mean,

00:09:58.700 that must've been a fun upbringing to be connected to that kind of a power of power, but not responsible for

00:10:04.420 it yourself. Because when you're the kid of the president, it's a very different story.

00:10:08.980 Yeah. You gotta be really careful in, in, it's actually not the greatest when you get into the

00:10:13.520 Hollywood, you know, world other than Jerry Wong, Weintraub, who was HW is great friend. You know, um,

00:10:22.020 it's not maybe the greatest asset. I remember like Rosie O'Donnell, like, you know, going after me and

00:10:28.480 all the certain, you know, liberal people, uh, I had to be myself. So my first contract with NBC,

00:10:35.880 when I first arrived, I made it up. You could not mention that connection because I had to

00:10:41.940 establish myself. So I made it so that they could never bring that up. Wow. Then you went a different

00:10:48.400 way from what Chelsea did when she, when she got to the today's show. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean,

00:10:57.880 not to mention Jenna, you're too nice to rip on her, but obviously she was interviewing her dad 0.80

00:11:03.200 a lot, a lot. And there's, there's, there's a track record there. Well, I said to her,

00:11:09.220 she came to me early in the, in, in when she was like, how do I get out of this thing? I said,

00:11:13.060 well, listen, here's what you do. Uh, I told her about my first contract. I said, you know,

00:11:18.460 they're going to want to keep milking that relationship. And you have a lot of talent.

00:11:23.060 You have a wonderful personality. You can do this. You just say, no. And I just tell them,

00:11:28.240 no, I've done it enough. That's it. And start doing other things, bring other ideas to the table

00:11:33.620 of things you can do. And she's done fabulously. So you, um, I heard you on Tucker, by the way,

00:11:40.040 and it was great. I really enjoyed that discussion, um, cause you're out promoting this new show that

00:11:44.600 you're about to launch. And what, what I gleaned from it, Billy, is that for the first time since

00:11:48.220 the whole cancellation and the viewers may remember that you got infamously canceled and just absolutely

00:11:54.420 mistreated by NBC in the wake of that access Hollywood tape with Trump breaking the October

00:12:00.320 surprise in 2016. And you were kind of an innocent victim in all of that. But since then, my impression

00:12:07.000 has been, you, you haven't really wanted to go there. You haven't really talked that much about

00:12:11.560 it. You wrote like an op-ed. You issued one of those, you know, apologies that we all have to

00:12:16.480 issue when we get pulled into these things, but you haven't been out there talking a lot about it.

00:12:21.620 So why is that? Um, well, I think it just, everything is, is timing and it's amazing that it's

00:12:30.220 eight years. I never would. Cause I remember after being fired in October of 2016, I mean,

00:12:38.620 for two straight years, maybe two and a half, I was pulling my hair out. Why can't they,

00:12:45.200 I've been, let me back in. You've thrown little Dino out of the cave. Let me back in. I'm really,

00:12:51.920 I'm crying. I'm like a mess. I can't understand it. How could the network that raised me,

00:12:57.420 how could they do this to me? This is so wrong. Uh, and I just was, it was unbearable, but then

00:13:03.940 time goes on and there's a, I, I, I'm a consumer of stoic philosophy. There's a great, um, book that

00:13:11.780 my friend Ryan holiday with whom I came during this process, but holiday wrote this book called

00:13:17.720 the obstacle is the way. And this obstacle, this terrible thing in your life that you're trying to

00:13:23.340 avoid and run away from, well, maybe it's the thing you need to go right through the middle.

00:13:30.860 So I said, look, this hot mic thing. No, my mics at the new show I'm launching is called hot mics with

00:13:36.620 Billy Bush. And there's a, a wink in there, but it's also look, the hot mic silenced me eight years

00:13:43.020 ago. Now the hot mics are right in front of me and giving me the opportunity to, uh, present my true

00:13:49.200 an authentic voice. So here we go. Well, it sounds like for the first time, you're really

00:13:54.320 going to talk about everything that you've been through. And I think it's very cathartic to do it.

00:13:59.260 You know, I mean, I've been out there now talking to the extent I can, because, you know, I'm not

00:14:04.840 saying anything about my own particular situation, but many, many people who are forced out of NBC

00:14:09.060 must sign non-disclosure agreements to get the money to which they are contractually entitled.

00:14:15.180 It's absolutely outrageous, frankly, but you know, when you're talking about big dollars,

00:14:20.640 you'll do it to protect your family. So many people are not at liberty to get fully into how

00:14:26.820 NBC treated them like absolute shit, but you seem to be able to do it. So how is that? 0.87

00:14:32.900 I'd rather be you Megan than me, because yes, I didn't get the full control. I'm ground zero.

00:14:38.940 Okay. People, people studied me, learned from me, and then they, Brian Friedman and honed their

00:14:45.300 skills. So, um, I think I would have rather been paid out and sit here silently, but instead,

00:14:51.400 uh, it is what it is. Who cares? Um, get a wonderful opportunity in front of me. All is good.

00:14:57.320 I've forgiven everybody, but one person. And, um, you know, look, it's, it is me. It's part of my

00:15:07.760 story. And what's interesting is it's never been told, you know, when a proprietary piece of

00:15:13.620 property leaks out of a major news organization and something so powerful to affect a presidential

00:15:21.360 election, some of their own IP is weaponized to take out a presidential candidate, uh, that requires

00:15:31.720 or calls for at least an internal investigation. Forget the external. Should we take a look at

00:15:37.480 how this might've happened? Well, it would have ended in five seconds. So of course it was never

00:15:42.240 launched. They knew they did it. No, because just as a refresher, this is the tape, uh, with Trump

00:15:48.040 and Billy on the access Hollywood bus, uh, bus where Trump is saying you can grab him. He's talking

00:15:53.300 about Nancy O'Dell, uh, a host a long time at NBC saying how he wanted to wine and diner. And he once

00:15:59.260 took her out furniture shopping and he really wanted to sleep with her, but it didn't work out

00:16:02.780 that way. But there is also a reference on there too. When you're a celebrity, you can grab women by

00:16:07.240 the P word. And when you're a celebrity, they let you do it, which Trump would later be asked about

00:16:11.620 in his deposition in the case against E Jean Carroll in really what is, I, it might be my favorite clip of

00:16:17.280 all time, which is really saying something, any excuse to play this clip I will take. And here we are

00:16:22.820 with the excuse right in front of us. So I will show again, E Jean Carroll's lawyer, Roberta asking

00:16:29.840 Trump about that access Hollywood tape. I just started kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just

00:16:36.640 kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything, grab them

00:16:43.140 by the pussy. You can do anything. That's what you said, correct? Well, historically that's true with 1.00

00:16:47.320 stars. It's true with stars that they can grab women by the pussy. Well, that's what it's. If 1.00

00:16:52.980 you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely

00:16:58.120 true. Unfortunately or fortunately. Well, look, or fortunately, it depends. Yeah. I, I, when I heard

00:17:10.100 here, the crazy thing is, is I obviously heard it then. And the tape was 2005, 11 years before the

00:17:18.600 election. And he was the biggest star on NBC and I was with him all the time, but I have no recollection

00:17:26.220 of him saying that it's always been him talking about Nancy Odell. Cause she was my friend and my

00:17:32.880 co-host. And that was like, I'm super uncomfortable. And I'm like, Oh God, it's Nancy. Yikes,

00:17:36.400 yikes. And I, I had to find my way out of that. I don't recall the grab thing at all. And the first

00:17:42.000 time I ever, like it resonated with me. Oh, wow. He said that was sitting in the president and general

00:17:48.840 manager, uh, his office at the today show, uh, about four weeks, four days before I got fired,

00:17:54.840 uh, that Monday, Noah Oppenheim. Yeah. I was in Noah Oppenheim's office. It may have been Tuesday and I got,

00:18:01.000 I got canned, uh, at the end of the week, but he played it for me. I said, listen, I've never

00:18:07.940 actually watched or heard this tape. I just knew it was there. Cause I reported it on the day it

00:18:13.420 happened 11 years ago, but let me hear it. And when the most amazing thing is when that line came out,

00:18:20.120 I was like, Ooh, and Noah Oppenheim laughed. The general manager of the president laughed. I would

00:18:27.700 later be fired, I guess for laughing or not intervening or I don't know what, but, uh, he

00:18:35.960 did because it's one of those things where you don't know what to do in a moment like that, but laugh. 0.93

00:18:40.060 Well, the reason he laughed is because he's a sniveling little wiener who really has no fortitude

00:18:45.620 I've forgiven him. Strong character. I, I, I haven't forgiven him. Well, in my circumstance, 0.80

00:18:51.540 I haven't even as Abigail fine and she's outside. Yeah, go ahead. I'm going to tell you why this is

00:18:56.120 why I forgive him because I was his only hire. He was new on the job as the GM and president and they,

00:19:02.520 he brought me in to, to sort of change the nine o'clock hour later. You were brought in to change

00:19:08.480 the nine o'clock hour, but the first was me and he sold it to lack Andy lack, the chairman of

00:19:15.420 NBC news at the time and Noah's boss. And he sold this idea to him. They hired me. Noah didn't

00:19:22.280 want his only hire to get whacked, but he was new. And Andy was telling him, we whack them. 0.94

00:19:29.060 We leak it. We do it. And he's looking at me going, he gave me an, in retrospect, a couple of 0.85

00:19:33.860 clues where he was like, um, Hey, you know, these things, I remember Noah saying these things have a

00:19:40.780 way of like maybe coming to light when they're that, do you want to do something maybe about it?

00:19:46.280 And I was just naive. I'm like, no, there's nothing you can do about that. It's a tape.

00:19:50.540 He didn't know he was on this. No one will interview with me. No one will want to sit down

00:19:55.800 with Billy Bush because he takes the preamble before the interview and, and, and weaponizes it.

00:20:01.420 You can't do that to Donald Trump, to anyone, or else I'm a ruined guy as a journalist. So, uh,

00:20:09.580 they told him to do it. He did it. Most people would have done sadly to save their own hide what

00:20:16.260 Noah did. Hmm. Well, he has no such excuses in my case. And I look, I know you're supposed to forgive

00:20:25.080 just for the sake of forgiving, but I have seen zero evidence that they seek forgiveness. And,

00:20:31.800 you know, like with Steve Bannon and Trump, for that matter, over time, I was able to really

00:20:36.120 contextualize their behavior and see it very differently. Those two, I mean, especially lack,

00:20:42.300 especially like, but I just, these little tiny little men. Yeah. No, I don't forgive Andy. Like I

00:20:50.420 said, here's another great Noah's Noah's Noah's big of me, but what's huge of me is the original

00:20:57.920 boss that I worked for for 15 years as my executive producer at access Hollywood, who ultimately sent

00:21:03.300 the tape to NBC news in order to get permission to use it, to get, get it legally reviewed. And of

00:21:11.340 course they just took it out of his hands at that point. Cause they felt they had a weapon,

00:21:14.300 uh, that producer 15 years together. I didn't speak to for two years. He is now the producer

00:21:22.160 of hot mics with Billy Bush launching on Monday. I love that. So honestly, like I, we kicked it off

00:21:29.420 with Brian Friedman, you know, who was opposing counsel to me. Like he took my deposition. We were

00:21:33.420 in an adversarial position. I can definitely get past negative encounters with somebody. I can get

00:21:38.600 past adversarial experiences with somebody, but I just felt like what they did at NBC was so

00:21:45.900 disgusting and so ruthless that I don't forgive them. And by the way, I listened to your interview

00:21:52.240 with Tucker. F Craig Melvin and F Al Roker. You're wrong. Craig Melvin's not a good guy.

00:21:59.100 Screw him. You, you may have liked him. I can't stand that guy. He begged me to come on my show. I put

00:22:07.060 him on my show, begged me to help him on his loser MSNBC show, which I did. And then the first chance

00:22:13.180 he had to stick the knife in and turn it, he ran to it like, yes, a chance to dump on the new white 0.99

00:22:21.240 woman. Who's at 9am on the issue of race. Cause Craig Melvin is a black man and piled on because 0.89

00:22:27.260 suggesting I had behaved racially. You know what? I'm going to review my forgiveness, uh, because I 0.97

00:22:33.060 love you so much. Uh, and if I'm you, absolutely. I understand. I get it. Uh, I'm just in the same

00:22:40.560 vein of Noah in network news. There's a lot of sheep, right? And it's like, you know, he do it

00:22:49.340 or fall out of my graces and don't rise up in the ranks. It's all stuff that goes into scripts for the

00:22:55.060 morning show on Apple TV. Plus it's all true. It's so competitive and scary and backstabby and

00:23:02.820 unsupportive. And you know, when I got to the today show, all I wanted was Matt Lauer to put his arm

00:23:08.560 around me and say, welcome kid. I've known you so long. I'm so glad you're here. Let's go have lunch.

00:23:13.940 Be the big guy. I've done that with every new reporter that came in to access Hollywood. I wasn't

00:23:19.260 afraid that they were going to replace me or anything like that. I'm not saying he was afraid,

00:23:23.460 but he definitely, as soon as I got there, he changed and he did not clear. He did not want me

00:23:30.440 there. And neither did Al Roker, who is a slithering snake of a man. Well, they told Al the nine o'clock 0.54

00:23:37.900 hour is going to be led by Billy. He's going to welcome everybody in. He's going to do the thing.

00:23:42.960 And truth be told, Noah told me, just make it to March. And then we're going to find you,

00:23:47.940 your partner. You have to survive till March with Al and, uh, maybe Al got wind of it. And

00:23:55.360 I didn't survive another week. Whack. What, what a shock. Yeah, no, they, they saw you exposed and

00:24:03.620 they plunged the knife in ruthlessly. It was a pattern that they would repeat these, you know,

00:24:09.000 so-called morning show hosts who are out there. So cheery and so sweet to start your day with

00:24:14.740 and behind the scenes, it is anything but what they care about is their money and their fame.

00:24:20.460 Go ahead, Billy. But it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. Boy, they fork out a lot of money.

00:24:26.540 Somehow they still have a lot of money. I don't know how long I, um, I, I made it two months,

00:24:32.300 so I never got to sniff the money, but, uh, you know, Lauer went to, you know, he was a $25 million

00:24:39.840 a year guy, you know, doing morning television. It's, uh, I can see.

00:24:43.980 People always point out the money that I got at NBC pursuant to a contract that I negotiated.

00:24:48.320 But let me tell you something. I was, I was offered more at Fox. Like I, I, I wasn't so grateful to NBC.

00:24:54.860 NBC did shit for me. They didn't raise me. I raised myself over at Fox and I could have gone to any 0.99

00:25:00.480 single one of the networks. I didn't have to go to NBC. So I wasn't, I wasn't beholden to them for

00:25:05.780 some big deal. I had big deals being offered to me by all the networks. It was just, I made the

00:25:10.880 colossal mistake of trusting the wrong group. And you know, when my show, which was a misfit,

00:25:16.700 admittedly was struggling, they never got behind me. I mean, I will say Kathy Lee, who was the best

00:25:22.060 thing at NBC, as far as I'm concerned, she pulled me aside. She goes, you know how long it took for our

00:25:25.860 show to hit Kathy Lee and Hoda five years. She goes, go back and look at the rating.

00:25:30.480 In year one and two and three, absolutely dreadful, terrible. And she said it takes about

00:25:37.140 five years for these shows to resonate. And sure enough, you know, I was like, I was one year into

00:25:40.900 it and they, I think they're, well, we'll just let the audience speculate about what the real

00:25:45.740 reasons were for them tanking me. The great, the great Larry King said to me, leave it on,

00:25:50.840 they'll find it. I'll never forget that with a good show, leave it on and they'll find it.

00:25:56.240 But, you know, the reason why you can leave on Hoda and Kathy Lee is because it doesn't cost

00:26:03.160 anything. Everybody's there. The crew is hired, you know, they're, they're, they're slotted to be

00:26:08.320 there for five hours. So they've got the hour, all the existing stuff is there. When you do something

00:26:13.620 bold and you know, your own studio, your own people, your own big budget, then they just get

00:26:19.240 squeamish. But somehow they have a lot of money to buy out of things. I don't know. There's a ton of money. 0.52

00:26:25.640 Not for long, not for long. I mean, you know, the today show has got, it's got half the ratings

00:26:30.520 that it used to. Congratulations to you and your YouTube is bigger than NBC news. I watched that.

00:26:37.880 You one woman alone, bigger than an entire news organization on YouTube. And for that,

00:26:44.440 I applaud. That is amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much.

00:26:48.380 On the subject of Andy Lack, why don't you forgive him?

00:26:52.980 Well, he never apologized to me. I called him once and I was like, just apologize to me, you lethal

00:26:58.240 little snake. Noah did. Six months after I got fired, Noah Oppenheim was talking on the phone and he 0.92

00:27:04.440 said, if you never forgive me, I understand. I'm so sorry. It wasn't supposed to go down like that.

00:27:09.520 Okay. I forgive you. We're imperfect people. We're, you know, good people are capable of doing

00:27:16.980 bad things everywhere. I'm capable of doing bad things. You too. We're all, I mean, but if you own

00:27:22.380 up, you apologize, you know, you're good by me because I'm the most imperfect. Andy Lack,

00:27:30.800 so dismissive. He talked to me for like seven seconds on the phone. Yeah. Sorry. I can't help. Yeah.

00:27:36.600 I don't care. And literally, you know, I was speaking to the former president of MSNBC back in

00:27:43.860 June and told me during that time, he said, Hey, what are you going to do about Billy Bush? We got

00:27:49.640 to, you got to save Billy. He said, he's a good guy. He's not, he's not, he didn't do anything here.

00:27:54.920 This isn't him. And he said, fuck Billy Bush. And that was relayed to me by this, by the former 1.00

00:28:00.800 president of MSNBC. Like I didn't matter. And you know, this is a man who saved

00:28:06.060 Brian Williams, brought him back, gave him the 11th hour, whatever you call it.

00:28:10.540 Did his best to save Matt till he couldn't. But F Billy Bush. Like, okay, well, F you too, buddy.

00:28:20.240 Yeah, exactly right. So he wound up getting fired from NBC too. Is it true? He's at PBS now?

00:28:26.440 That's what I heard. He's an executive producer at PBS and good for them. They've got one of the true

00:28:33.140 derelicts of our, of our time, a really bad, bad, bad. Totally agree. I think, uh, I like to say

00:28:42.040 that I'm a nice person. I'm a nice person. I like people. I accept faults and all that,

00:28:46.880 but he's a, he's a bad guy, like a really bad guy. Yeah, I agree. And it's like, where's the

00:28:53.160 responsibility that these executives get for taking top talent like you and absolutely not just like

00:29:00.520 firing them, but absolutely trying to ruin them, absolutely trying to devastate them to the point

00:29:06.180 where I heard you say to Tucker, you actually had suicidal idea ideations. Like you, it's serious

00:29:12.800 what they do. It's serious. One, one moment. I mean, there was lots of emotional instability.

00:29:21.520 I will say that it led me to this place called the Hoffman process, which I did nine days,

00:29:27.440 you know, no electronics in a cabin with, you know, people and can, it's, it's like a trauma place,

00:29:36.320 but it's the mental, emotional, psychological trauma of all of a sudden, because it happens

00:29:42.200 thanks to the internet like this. I literally Friday morning, October 7, 2016, I did a double

00:29:52.160 because Hoda Kotb loved working with me so much. She was like, I don't want any more guest hosts on

00:29:57.560 Friday when Kathy's not here. I only want Billy. Just let him do two hours in a row. And they put

00:30:03.880 me in man spanks and I'm dancing in man spanks and we're having laughs and it's wonderful. Ha ha ha

00:30:09.780 network, funny, whatever. And, uh, I kind of thought the whole thing was behind us. I had dealt with Andy.

00:30:16.200 I told him this is illegal. It's the wrong thing to do. I felt like, okay. And, uh, and off we go.

00:30:23.380 It was like this, uh, you know, this beautiful moment. And then I'm on the plane flying home

00:30:29.340 and they're, Mr. Bush, please put your phone away. I'm like, I'm sorry. You know, we're all addicted.

00:30:34.040 I'm like, I just want more text. And I hit one more text and then Mr. Bush. Okay. And as I put it

00:30:40.220 down, I see Washington post access, Hollywood bus tape. And I went, Oh my God, they did it.

00:30:53.000 They did it. They didn't do it on their own air. They didn't do it in their own organization.

00:30:58.840 They did it through the Washington post because the debate with Hillary is two days later. And

00:31:04.880 by hooker by crook, this is going to be the first topic on that stage. And we got to get it to someone

00:31:11.000 because now forget about owning the property, forget about getting all the clicks and having

00:31:16.640 the big story in our organization, winning the big story in the October surprise. It's more important

00:31:22.960 that he loses the election. So let's get it to the Washington. Yeah. So can you, cause Doug and I

00:31:29.480 talked about this many times, but, and now obviously I'm, I'm, I'm great and I have nothing

00:31:35.740 to complain about, but I do remember very acutely many nights lying in bed right after this happened

00:31:44.220 with NBC and feeling so incredibly sad that my whole career was gone. It was evaporated in,

00:31:55.340 in a day by those fuckers who, you know, took this internet, whatever would have been a one day 1.00

00:32:01.680 Twitter story and, you know, rammed it up over and over. And even after it had died down, 1.00

00:32:08.300 made a point of bringing it back up again. And I just remember being like, I can't believe this

00:32:14.780 thing that was so important to me that I worked for so long to build is absolutely gone.

00:32:21.540 Yeah. You're that expendable. You, you realize I will say, Oh my God, when I was just starting as a

00:32:31.960 little bushy tailed, you know, um, you know, celebrity kiss ass on red carpets in, uh, New York 0.87

00:32:39.040 as the East coast correspondent, I was Matt Lauer. I reached out to Matt to get some advice, you know, 0.96

00:32:45.440 and like kisses asked to, and, uh, went down to his office and he said to me, let me tell you

00:32:52.400 something about this business. This is so prophetic. I can't believe I'm remembering. He said,

00:32:56.880 everybody is replaceable. You have to remember everybody is replaceable. He said, someday you

00:33:05.800 could replace me easily. And I said, ah, and he's like, so just know that. And I was like, okay,

00:33:12.740 think that way. In other words, prepare for these kinds of things. And I realized the man,

00:33:17.300 the reason the man hung on for 20 years, he knew it. He knew it. Well, but that, but don't you think

00:33:23.580 it's one thing to say that and, and to know that, and it's quite another to say, okay, so they may

00:33:29.380 replace me. I may not work out here, whatever. It may not be a good fit, but it's a different thing

00:33:35.180 altogether to say they will ruin me. They will do everything in their power. These people who I trusted

00:33:41.740 to absolutely ruin me so that I can't make another dollar in this industry.

00:33:47.300 And then after the fact, planting stories everywhere in every paper that reinforced the

00:33:53.920 idea that you're a bad guy. And so they look good for having gotten rid of a bad apple.

00:33:59.960 That's the thing that even heard afterwards. I'm like, what they track. I'm seeing the New York

00:34:04.260 post track down like a girl. I allegedly bullied in eighth grade or said something into, I'm not

00:34:11.280 kidding. And they're like, Billy Bush is just bad to women. He's just a bad guy to women.

00:34:15.840 And I'm like, what? I am. Every woman at the Today Show, I had a terrific relationship with.

00:34:24.540 There's two separate worlds, as you know, seven to nine and nine to 11. And the nine to 11 world,

00:34:30.840 everything was wonderful, peachy, lovely. Seven to nine, get him out of here. He's not one of us.

00:34:39.120 So that's the you know, that that was the that was the target for me. I was. Yeah. I mean,

00:34:46.520 I can relate fully to all of that, too. I've never had more awkward moments where I felt less

00:34:53.160 welcome than when they'd have me go over on the on the Today Show set and go outside without without

00:34:59.580 exception. The only person who showed any kindness, as I said, was Kathy Lee. And without exception,

00:35:04.620 everybody else was just and Hoda could freeze ice on their ass. Yeah. By the way, anyone who's a 1.00

00:35:09.960 female at the I think it's really the men that were really brutal. You may have a different experience

00:35:14.640 as a female, but I found the women to be wonderful. Well, I'll say this. There is one female

00:35:24.300 associated with the show who pretended to be a friend of mine. And when the shit hit the fan, 0.99

00:35:31.580 Doug actually reached out to this person's spouse because we knew them socially a bit and said, 0.99

00:35:38.800 gee, it would be really nice if the woman could send out a tweet or something in support of Meg.

00:35:46.600 And he said, oh, gee, you know, I don't think she's going to do that. She doesn't want to go. Okay,

00:35:50.240 fine. That was just Doug being protect protective. And we later were told, I can't say it's a matter of

00:35:56.320 fact, but we were told by a very well connected PR person that this spouse to whom Doug had reached

00:36:03.680 out was busy pushing the story everywhere. Oh, no. So to Doug, oh, it's so sad. This is such

00:36:12.100 bullshit. You know, she she's not going to tweet, but this is total bullshit. And meanwhile, this person 1.00

00:36:16.980 was doing his level best to push the story everywhere that I was allegedly this horrible 0.80

00:36:23.020 racist person. I mean, this this industry is disgusting and there are no more disgusting 0.98

00:36:28.600 people than the hosts of those morning shows. They are exact. And the hypocrisy is what's so 0.98

00:36:35.480 gross about it, Billy. I can't say it's not everyone. You find out O'Reilly is irascible behind the 0.81

00:36:41.020 scenes. You're like, yeah, it makes sense. Right. Right. These people is like they want you to think

00:36:47.860 they're just so sweet and peachy. Well, it's a very competitive atmosphere. And I will I maintain

00:36:53.280 that in my experience, there are some there are some very good people in it. But everyone knows,

00:36:58.700 you know, and that's mostly women. And but they know that, you know, it's super it's a super 1.00

00:37:04.820 competitive environment. You know, sit down with Ash Banfield sometime and ask her about her

00:37:11.060 experiences. But in the end, if you can survive it long enough and you know, see what things I'm not

00:37:16.520 wired to play this game, I'm not wired to, you know, have a team of people who are angling to help me

00:37:23.660 get someone else out of the way. You know, I don't think like that. I think like, hey, I'm so happy to

00:37:28.980 be here. We're all a team. I just and I guess in order to dominate and survive, you got to think like

00:37:34.780 that, which I'm so glad I'm not there. I'm actually everything works out for the right reasons,

00:37:39.020 because I just I can't work like that. I feel sick. So who who stuck by you, Billy?

00:37:47.160 Like what during all my friends, you find out who your friends are. And boy, did I have some

00:37:51.780 wonderful friends, you know, publicly, you know, people, you know, on the show there, you

00:37:56.680 they do one man, you know, didn't get a lot of public support. And that's just the fact.

00:38:03.440 And I was so mad and hurt over that. Because it's just a terrifying environment, especially

00:38:12.280 that not I think now it's changing a bit. But I understand now that the public support wasn't so

00:38:20.120 why. But your friends, oh, my God, your friends and so many people in the industry. Suzanne Summers

00:38:27.760 wrote me a wonderful letter. Julie Bowen wrote me, you know, Kate Walsh.

00:38:33.440 Julie Bowen, Cindy Crawford wrote me the loveliest letter. Dennis Quaid. He was so mad with his

00:38:40.020 pen. I mean, he was like smudge all over the paper. It was great. But all you know, in the

00:38:44.540 business, we know who you are. You are, you know, we love you. You're, you're so fun. This,

00:38:49.680 that, that. Don't worry, you know. And but in your personal life, oh, my God, my friends were just

00:38:57.700 amazing. Kept me, kept me going. And family.

00:39:01.440 So did that retreat that you mentioned, the nine day thing without the social media,

00:39:05.000 without the phone, did that help? Did that, was that a game changer for you?

00:39:08.020 Yeah, it just got me going. You know, I was like, I was a danger to myself. I was just so,

00:39:13.420 I was just, I will say this. It's, I hope I'm not being irresponsible here. But the booze,

00:39:19.920 you know, it served its purpose. I'm going to thank booze for a second. You know, I'm glad we,

00:39:26.040 I'm glad we looked each other in the eye and said, we're spending a little too much time together. But

00:39:30.620 in the beginning, thank you, booze. Thank you, my phone. Another terrible dopamine addiction. Thank

00:39:37.880 you, phone, for being like, I need something to distract me. Go, what is Megyn Kelly doing on Twitter? 0.99

00:39:42.900 Sure. You know, and then the inside was hurting too much. So I went to this place. And oddly enough,

00:39:52.440 it was the day that I checked in was, was the first day Trump walked into the Oval Office.

00:39:57.780 And I was like, oh, this is powerful irony. Here we go. So it just was a massive, unbelievable shit

00:40:04.640 show. But I'm going to tell this to every one of your listeners and viewers. We are all going through 1.00

00:40:11.760 something terrible. Nobody goes unscathed. You don't escape it. Um, it wasn't a child of mine

00:40:18.340 with a terrible illness. It wasn't something else. Mine has unique circumstances, but I'm

00:40:24.540 certainly not extraordinary in the fact that life is a shit sandwich, eat it or starve. 0.99

00:40:31.820 That's what my stepfather used to say. Life is a shit sandwich. And every once in a while, 1.00

00:40:36.000 they serve it up to you and you have to take a big old piece and eat it.

00:40:39.400 That was just an unfortunate image, but not wrong.

00:40:43.440 Not a great image.

00:40:43.920 But you know, I know that you feel as I do, which is in the moment, as awful as it is,

00:40:50.440 like, would I, would I change it? Would I go back and undo it if I could? I wouldn't,

00:40:54.800 I would not.

00:40:56.760 That's interesting. Um,

00:40:58.640 yes. I mean, I appreciate the wake up call. I don't know if it's God, if it's the plan. I'm,

00:41:08.040 I believe it maybe is God saying, okay, uh, Billy, you, uh, probably you haven't experienced much,

00:41:15.800 um, adversity in your life, right? I mean, I'd become this little guy on TV interviewing celebrities

00:41:22.460 and hop into place to place and contract to contract and they move you to LA and they pay

00:41:26.800 for everything. And now you're on the today show, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like,

00:41:30.460 before it's too late, before you become an old man and you're don't have a chance to

00:41:35.900 become better, but boom, I'm going to hand you a massive explosion and you're going to somehow

00:41:42.160 recover from it and you're going to get going and you're going to, and it's going to be something

00:41:45.700 that you will be grateful for because of who you've become. I believe in that. I do. I believe

00:41:51.860 that that has happened, but I do not appreciate, uh, the messenger, uh, Andy lack do not appreciate

00:41:57.760 him. Yeah. You can be grateful for the net net of the experience and not actually think the

00:42:04.360 experience was enjoyable or, or feel good about the people who put you through it. But I, I definitely

00:42:08.680 think that, you know, for me, I don't know. I think I rose to whatever news fame, which isn't the real

00:42:17.060 as the real same thing as real fame quickly at Fox. And I think maybe I was drunk on my own wine

00:42:24.340 and I think I was getting too big for my own bridges. I think, you know, when I got to NBC,

00:42:29.700 we did, I look back now, we did all this me too coverage, not all of which was bad. Some of which

00:42:35.320 were legit. I mean, Harvey Weinstein was a shit. Um, but there were, you know, like, I just think 1.00

00:42:40.660 there was overreach and I think I was too full of hubris and I think I needed to be checked. I,

00:42:46.960 I definitely think I'm much more humble and cognizant of my own failings and, you know,

00:42:53.880 biases now than I was prior to all this. And so better as a person and better as a journalist

00:42:59.240 post that nonsense. Well, you had to figure out what tools do you have

00:43:04.140 to get to a better place to get out of this. You were handed a terrible situation. I mean,

00:43:10.860 you know, Andy Lack made a move on you and tried to brand you a racist for asking the most simple

00:43:17.420 question. And that is when did this become punishable by death? Because all the late night

00:43:25.840 comics that we watch today, they used to perform in blackface on Regis. I mean, I remember one of 0.80

00:43:31.980 them used to go over to Regis Philbin and do it on his show, the lovely Regis, the sweet Regis of all

00:43:37.380 people, you know, and, and, and Kimmel and, you know, the man show and all these things. And so the

00:43:43.620 question you were asking was, when was the date that this, you know, you weren't complimenting Diana

00:43:48.600 Ross, you were denigrating her. When did that happen? And that was enough for an evil man with a

00:43:55.900 lot of power to try and kill you. And, uh, I remember the thing, this is just an outrage, 0.98

00:44:03.940 brought up a little PTSD for me. Cause I know all the players, but knowing you said, Oh man,

00:44:09.300 this is terrible, terrible, terrible. But so you survived. So now, well, you made it back on TV.

00:44:19.440 You did make it back into the cabal, right? Which is what you said you wanted. Um, well on extra

00:44:25.820 cover. I got to get back in there. Yeah. Well, so why isn't that? That's, that's that. That's what

00:44:33.080 you do. And that's the end of that. Why do you feel the need to launch this podcast and, or this

00:44:38.200 YouTube show and, you know, talk about these issues now in a more full throated way.

00:44:45.640 Uh, extras. It's part of the American fabric. It's fun. It's, it's, it's a, it's a great,

00:44:53.820 you know, show that people still watch in droves in their living room and it's wonderful. Um, I just

00:44:59.580 have a lot to say and I have, I have a lot of deeper things I want to talk about. I'm an international

00:45:04.640 studies and government, you know, major from, uh, in college and spent, you know, uh, a year studying

00:45:11.100 abroad. And, you know, my interest every morning, I read puck in the wall street journal and the free

00:45:16.340 press, uh, Barry Weiss, you shout out to Barry, uh, and especially Nellie Bowles, who is hysterical

00:45:22.000 on Friday mornings. Um, but I'm fascinated in our politics and in our world, there are called our

00:45:28.860 culture sports. The giants are a disaster all the way up to the owner. I mean, I got everything is

00:45:36.760 bubbling in me and I want to be able to talk about it without like hitting my mark after 22 minutes.

00:45:45.240 That's where you do that, but still have fun for 22 minutes doing, uh, hello, Julia, you look

00:45:51.700 unbelievable and gorgeous and that. Well, that's, that's a, that's a lane in which you are really

00:45:58.680 exceptional. It is. I mean, look, it was only a year at NBC, but I can definitely attest to the

00:46:04.260 fact that those celebrity interviews are so much harder than people think. And your ability to make

00:46:11.220 it look easy is in itself like truly extraordinary. That's a, that's a genuine gift you have, but you

00:46:19.040 have all these other gifts that you aren't really allowed to show on a show like that. Cause it's so

00:46:23.440 tight and so controlled and scripted. So I think this is a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely.

00:46:28.740 And I thought, boy, I should have done this earlier, but no, I think everything's sort of

00:46:33.220 worked. I'm like eight years later, we're launching hot mics after the hot mic thing that,

00:46:38.880 Oh my, are we crazy? Yeah. We're a little crazy. We're a little crazy. I haven't thought the whole

00:46:43.400 thing out yet, but here's the thing. Uh, I don't know how you fit, but one thing that Mark Zuckerberg

00:46:48.640 said is don't wait for your Eureka moment. Like this moment, like I've got my brilliant idea. Now

00:46:54.680 I'm going to go be this giant success. No, just like if you have some weird ideas, like just get

00:47:00.500 started, get going, figure it out. You had no idea where this thing would lead to, how big it would

00:47:06.340 become, how successful it would become. You just knew that you needed to get going and being, get back

00:47:11.220 to being you and you did. And the rest figured itself out. That's what I'm attempting. So,

00:47:17.480 you know, help me. Well, I think it'll be interesting to watch, to see the difference

00:47:21.340 between the you that launches next Monday and then the you that we see four years after,

00:47:27.800 because I would say in my own case, it took some getting used to, to offer my opinion on so many

00:47:34.060 things, to be so outspoken on so many things, because we're not trained to be like that. We're not

00:47:40.120 trained to do that in straight news journalism, which is what you're coming from. It's entertainment

00:47:43.900 journalism, but it's journalism. And, but then the more you do it, the more comfortable you feel.

00:47:48.440 So is there any risk to you because you still have the foot in the other camp of these left wing

00:47:54.560 celebrities saying, I don't want anything to do with him. He's not woke. He's a Bush. He doesn't hate

00:48:02.880 Trump. It's a no. Bush has never been more popular to these people now because the

00:48:09.920 alternative. So it's actually come full circle. Like we all miss George W. Where's he?

00:48:20.380 Oh, I love it. Oh God. But, um, no, no, I think I've been at this long enough and I think you're

00:48:29.340 not going to see, you know, if we were double boxed like you and I are on YouTube right now,

00:48:35.440 um, the two people would know each other. You know what I mean? There's there, it's not like

00:48:39.820 we're, and people who know me and have been interviewed by me about their movies and about

00:48:45.320 their lives and whatever, they'll see that guy. You know, you're not going to see a totally

00:48:51.360 unrecognizable person just like, Oh, I didn't know he knew anything about the terrible things that are

00:48:58.520 happening in the UK right now. And you know, who our players are in government and, you know,

00:49:05.500 all the things that, that I can bring. Well, look, I want to say that we've gotten to know each other

00:49:12.160 pretty well since our dual traumas. And I have found you to be absolutely delightful. Just such a good,

00:49:19.860 nice guy, but also, as I said, very insightful, very smart, very well-read, very thought out on so

00:49:26.180 many issues that just don't get to shine through given the nature of the way the 22 minutes are

00:49:31.220 structured. So I will be a listener. I will be a participant on episode one and I will be a

00:49:36.280 listener regularly, Billy, and I'm thrilled you've chosen to do it. Thank you so much, Megan. I have

00:49:42.820 to tell you, I'm very, just, you know, this, I love you and I love your husband, Doug. Uh, what great

00:49:47.460 hair, very tall, very handsome man. And I love you both. And you, I'm just so impressed by what you

00:49:54.720 have done. And you're just resilient and tough. And I look up to you for it because you went and

00:50:01.580 did it. And now I'm going to do it just like you, big sis. Way to go. I'll be cheering you on and

00:50:07.860 helping you in any way I can, Billy. All the best to you. Don't forget, it's called Hot Mics with

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00:51:18.300 Next, we turn to the Hollywood legal drama that has the world talking. Stars Blake Lively and Justin

00:51:29.520 Baldoni have filed dueling lawsuits against one another now, well, sort of, following their box

00:51:34.860 office hit movie this past summer. The pair starred in the best-selling book-turned-film It Ends With Us,

00:51:42.020 which is in essence about domestic violence. It premiered in August. Here's just a bit from the trailer.

00:51:48.300 If one day you had a daughter, what would you say to her? She came to me and said the person she loved

00:51:54.400 was hurting her. What would you say to her?

00:52:01.840 None of this is your fault.

00:52:05.560 As hard as this choice is,

00:52:09.320 we break the pattern.

00:52:13.900 Or the pattern breaks us.

00:52:18.300 Following the success of this film, legal filings now pulling back the curtain on what's reported

00:52:24.460 to be, let's just say, a less than friendly atmosphere on set. Blake Lively has filed a lawsuit

00:52:31.240 against her co-star and the director and producer of the film, Justin Baldoni, and the production

00:52:38.120 company, excuse me, behind the film, alleging sexual harassment. And then she claims an alleged 0.98

00:52:44.420 smear campaign to destroy her reputation. She claims that alleged smear campaign was retaliation 1.00

00:52:52.300 against her for raising complaints of sexual harassment in the first place. Well, now, Justin

00:52:57.300 Baldoni has filed his own lawsuit, not against Blake Lively, not yet, but against the New York Times,

00:53:04.540 which broke this story in late December for what he and his legal team says is the Times'

00:53:11.480 totally irresponsible, defamatory reporting on Lively's claims, which the Times is accused of

00:53:18.380 just taking and running with, notwithstanding substantial evidence, says Baldoni's lawyer,

00:53:25.760 that they're full of hot air. Justin Baldoni's attorney is Brian Friedman. He's my own attorney,

00:53:32.000 too, and my friend. And he joins me now to discuss the legal drama and to get to the bottom of what's

00:53:36.340 going on with this real-life Hollywood drama. Brian, great to have you. How are you?

00:53:41.120 I'm great. And it's great to see you. And I'm so happy for all your success.

00:53:46.600 Oh, you're the best. I told the audience the story in the first hour when I had Billy Bush on about

00:53:51.440 how you and I met when you were taking my deposition and how a beautiful friendship was

00:53:56.120 born, which just never happens. Yeah, that was a one-of-a-kind moment, wasn't it?

00:54:03.020 Totally. And it's funny because Brian and I grew very close. We have a beautiful friendship. But

00:54:08.820 the only person in my house that Brian Friedman loves more than me is my husband, Doug, because

00:54:14.900 these two were like thick as thieves for that whole NBC nightmare. True. And also the kind of

00:54:20.740 husband Doug is I strive to be. And he's such a great man. He's such a great writer. He's such a

00:54:26.700 great person. And, um, and I'm so happy that he's yours because, you know, you deserve that kind of

00:54:33.400 love. Truly. You're the best. You are the best. Okay. So that's the sweet side of Brian. It's there.

00:54:39.560 You have to get to know him better, but he also knows how to fight and he uses his powers for good

00:54:46.560 against major media companies that crap all over their talent and think they can get away with it

00:54:51.600 because they're major media companies and the talent doesn't usually have the resources to fight

00:54:56.040 back. So he's helped a bunch of people who have gotten completely screwed over. And Brian doesn't

00:55:00.340 care about party. He doesn't care about, you know, which company it is. He fights for the ostracized 0.85

00:55:07.660 loner who's getting dumped on by these companies, which leads us to the Blake Lively situation.

00:55:14.260 Now she would say in this situation, she's the victim. Baldoni's the bad guy. And just to lay it out

00:55:20.500 for the audience in a little bit more detail, what she's claiming is that even though she was a

00:55:25.060 much bigger star than Justin Baldoni, who I never heard of before this lawsuit, she's the much bigger

00:55:32.140 star and she's married to an even bigger star than she is Ryan Reynolds, that she came in and onto this

00:55:37.720 project and started to get harassed and mistreated by Justin and some others. And that when she then 0.99

00:55:46.220 demanded that all of her concerns be rectified, that he did it, but that he was basically lying

00:55:54.240 in wait for when the film would get released in case she went public with what happened,

00:56:00.860 that he and his PR team determined to bury her, to ruin her. And that this wave of bad press we did see

00:56:10.000 about Blake Lively when the film came out this past summer was not organic. It was totally orchestrated

00:56:15.560 by Justin and his team. And they've gotten their hands on a bunch of texts, especially amongst the

00:56:20.700 PR team, but a couple involving Justin that seemed to suggest they were ready to quote, destroy her

00:56:27.460 and to ruin her reputation. But I'll say one thing, the evidence that then they actually did it

00:56:35.900 is far less fruitful, right? The, the, the text about like, we could, here's what we might do if we need

00:56:44.840 to. Those are everywhere. The text proving they did far less, uh, ubiquitous in this complaint.

00:56:52.160 And what you've said now in your lawsuit against the times is don't even believe the texts that you

00:56:57.960 see in the lively lawsuit because they're seriously misrepresented, omitting major facts that would give

00:57:06.900 them an entirely different meaning, nevermind greater context. And that's where I want to bring you in.

00:57:12.660 So tell us what we don't know about this fight between these two.

00:57:17.920 Well, what you don't know is, is a lot, right? Because Blake Lively's dominated the media.

00:57:25.580 What they did was they worked with the New York times or publicists work directly with the New York

00:57:30.920 times. They shared, um, illegally obtained text messages. They shared those together.

00:57:40.400 They concocted a complaint that they filed with the civil rights division.

00:57:46.000 They omitted, um, texts that would have provided context, texts that were in the exact same string

00:57:53.540 that would have provided context of what was really going on. And in fact, they actually removed emojis

00:58:01.600 from texts that show that there was satire and, and, and there was joking around by the PR crisis

00:58:10.080 agents. I mean, the PR crisis agent, um, was brought in because actually Blake Lively's publicist,

00:58:19.420 Leslie Sloan was planting stories negative to Justin and, and all Justin wanted to do. And it's all

00:58:28.140 through the text messages. If the New York times apparently reviewed a thousand or more pages of

00:58:34.300 text messages, they would have seen it. Justin never wanted to hurt her, never wanted to be negative to

00:58:40.280 her. He wanted to protect the film. He wanted to protect himself and he wanted to protect her from

00:58:46.420 making negative allegations about him that were made up and that, that, that are proven in this case that,

00:58:53.300 that you can see in late July before Melissa Nathan, the crisis PR person was hired. You can see Leslie

00:58:59.780 Sloan planting stories. We have evidence of it. The young kids would call it receipts. We call it

00:59:06.480 evidence. And, um, and it's all over the place. There are text messages that refute every single thing

00:59:13.060 in that camp, in that complaint. Um, and it's just disgusting when you go after someone,

00:59:19.420 you try to destroy their life. And, and actually the evidence shows something different. Blake Lively

00:59:25.860 was no victim here. She was, she was in control. She was in power and she took over this film. 0.97

00:59:34.100 So for those who are not in the Hollywood world, what is wrong with her taking over the film? She's a 1.00

00:59:39.620 big star. Her name is what made it. It's what got eyeballs on it. How unusual is it, as you allege in

00:59:45.920 your lawsuit to have an actress come in and start editing scenes, taking over the final cut, 0.79

00:59:54.180 excluding the director from it, the director and two editors on the film in exchanges that we have

01:00:02.340 now that we'll be posting on megankelly.com are talking openly about how it's about to air. It's

01:00:08.900 about to hit screens and they haven't seen it because she appears to have rested control from

01:00:15.980 them. So how unusual is that? It's, I've never seen it before in my 30 plus year career in Hollywood.

01:00:23.360 And, um, it, an executive producer is below a producer in the film world. Um, an executive

01:00:30.460 producer signed up to be an executive producer and, and, and that's it. And, and an actress,

01:00:36.560 and that's what she was supposed to be as, as the time progressed in this film, she decided that

01:00:44.120 she wanted to be a producer. She, you know, applied to be a producer. She went and got,

01:00:51.720 you know, the dailies. She started to make edits. She wanted to be part of the editing team. There

01:00:58.480 were people hired, like human beings actually hired to do the editing job who had done work as editors.

01:01:04.900 She wanted to be part of that team. The next thing, you know, she took over the editing.

01:01:10.100 She started making threats that she wouldn't promote the movie, that she wanted to be in

01:01:15.420 control of marketing of the movie, that she, she would do nothing in terms of promotion

01:01:20.040 unless she was the actual editor. She came up with her own cut of the film, which is,

01:01:27.340 you know, you have a director who has a cut and she had a competing cut of the film.

01:01:32.920 And, and, and for an executive producer to have a competing cut of a film is,

01:01:38.320 is incredibly bizarre. But when she starts threatening people and saying, I'm not going

01:01:43.520 to promote the film, I'm not going to do anything unless you use my cut. That's when it starts to be

01:01:49.720 awfully, you know, awfully incendiary. And, and, you know, and, and the concern really is that she used 0.82

01:01:57.440 these allegations of sexual harassment and she used these allegations of bullying, um, to try and 0.99

01:02:06.660 leverage her position so she could be the de facto director in the case. And, you know, as you'll hear

01:02:12.660 in the voice note, as you'll see in the evidence, she had Justin sitting in a basement in his own movie

01:02:22.040 with his friends and family during the premiere of the movie, which should have been the biggest

01:02:27.380 night of his career. He was sitting in the basement while she was not allowing him to be part of the

01:02:33.900 premiere. Here is some of that, which we have here exclusively, Justin Baldoni speaking to, um,

01:02:40.620 what he called his dream team, those who had been helping him edit the films and, and get it to,

01:02:44.980 uh, finality lamenting the fact that he was put in the basement on the premiere of his own movie.

01:02:52.100 He says per Blake's demands. Take a listen to that, uh, voice text in part.

01:03:00.120 Think about this on what, you know, could have been one of the most beautiful nights of

01:03:05.420 my life career wise. I literally was sent to the basement with my whole, all my friends and family for

01:03:12.720 over an hour because, uh, I, I wasn't allowed to be seen. She didn't want me anywhere near her or the

01:03:20.460 rest of the cast. So they ushered me off the carpet and they sent us down to the basement.

01:03:26.780 We were down there together, my friends and family, the people that love me the most.

01:03:31.560 And we start laughing because of the ridiculousness of this whole thing.

01:03:37.420 And I realized like on a night that was supposed to be so materialistically joyful, um, I was in the

01:03:49.680 basement with the people that I love the most and we were all joyful and laughing because none of that 0.99

01:03:56.840 shit matters. None of it. That's not why we're in the business. That's not why the three of us are in 0.99

01:04:01.960 this business is to attend a premiere like that and be celebrated. We're in this business because

01:04:07.220 we're artists and we believe in what we do. And because we want to create art that touches people's

01:04:15.240 hearts and souls and can move people. And that's what we did. That's what you both did.

01:04:23.540 And I believe that will follow each of us and that truth will prevail and that light and love will win.

01:04:31.960 So Brian, and by the way, that'll be posted on megankelly.com. Um, but to those who say the

01:04:37.120 reason she wanted him nowhere near her at the premiere is because he'd been sexually harassing 0.56

01:04:42.820 her and then retaliating against her with a smear campaign in the press after, you know, after the 0.99

01:04:48.800 harassment, you know, they say so good. Who could blame her for wanting him in the basement? What say

01:04:53.020 you?

01:04:55.120 Let's break down what the sexual harassment is. I mean, we we've just, you know, been through the

01:04:59.840 Me Too movement. We've heard all sorts of serious allegations of sexual harassment that are really

01:05:06.440 meaningful to, to victims and, and, and, and really important and whatnot. Blake Lively, if she was

01:05:14.300 sexually harassed to, to such a degree in this, um, in this, in this film and in this situation,

01:05:22.600 you know, she, she wouldn't have returned to the film. Um, and, and, and, you know, and they had sat

01:05:30.240 down and they had talked about what her complaints were. Um, the unfortunate thing is she actually

01:05:35.760 didn't read the book and didn't understand what the book was about. And as a result of that, yes. And,

01:05:43.140 and, and, and as a result of that, you know, the complaints are, are things like she, you know,

01:05:48.600 he had gone into her trailer when she was breastfeeding, um, to which there are text messages

01:05:55.600 that address that. There were complaints, um, that Jamie Heath, uh, Justin's partner, um, had shown

01:06:05.000 pornography. If you look at the actual complaint that they filed, it says that that's pornography,

01:06:11.500 but Jamie Heath showed her was a still video of a home birth because they were discussing a scene

01:06:19.740 about birthing and, and, you know, that's not pornography. Um, and if you get down to the

01:06:28.300 specific allegations, I mean, what this film was about was about domestic violence. This film was

01:06:33.680 about sex scenes that involve, you know, rough, um, behavior and, and domestic violence and serious

01:06:42.840 issues like that, that, you know, and at every turn to the extent that, that Justin, you know,

01:06:49.300 anybody felt uncomfortable in any way on the film, Justin took responsibility for it. Um, they,

01:06:56.180 they, they, in fact, they met at Ryan Reynolds house, um, in New York. Um, they went over a 17 point

01:07:04.740 list of things. They had come to an agreement, although Justin and, and Jamie did not agree that

01:07:12.060 these things, you know, that were, you know, spoken about were warranted at all. They said, well,

01:07:18.120 of course we won't come into your trailer when, you know, if you don't want us to, of course we won't

01:07:24.100 do these things. Um, and, and, and they're really simple concepts and simple things. And, and even

01:07:30.960 in their own complaint, they admit that ever since they met in January, that everything ran smoothly

01:07:38.200 for the rest of the set. And then all of a sudden, when Blake lively decides that she's not going to do

01:07:44.900 any type of press with Justin, she's not going to let him at the premiere. She's not going to be seen

01:07:51.780 in a photo with him in any kind of the press. Um, she decides that, that, that, you know, and,

01:07:59.020 and all of a sudden the fans, you know, people aren't stupid out there. They're looking and seeing 0.63

01:08:03.860 that, Oh, hold it. You know, the entire cast has unfollowed Justin and there's no explanation for it.

01:08:12.420 There's not even an email and hold it. They're not together in any of the marketing. Why is that?

01:08:18.220 Is there something going on with the two of them? And then you start to see the stories planted by

01:08:25.380 Leslie Sloan. You start to see them on August 8th. And it's very clear what's being planted.

01:08:32.160 There are evidence for all these points. There are text messages for all these points. And unlike any

01:08:38.640 case that I've handled in my entire career, it's the one case we're going to put every single text

01:08:45.560 message, every single document, everything on a website for everyone in the public to read,

01:08:53.580 come to their own conclusions. And they can determine whether or not there was sexual harassment

01:08:59.340 here. There was a smear campaign or there was retaliation because we have proof and receipts

01:09:05.820 that absolutely and unequivocally show this is not true.

01:09:10.160 All right. Let's go through some of them because what she alleges in her complaint is that there was

01:09:16.660 a twofold plan. This is Blake Lively's allegation that aimed to both a conceal the pattern of harassment

01:09:23.980 and other misconduct by Mr. Baldoni, his partner, Mr. Heath and their company Wayfarer and be retaliate

01:09:31.060 against Ms. Lively by battering her image, harming her businesses and causing her and her family severe

01:09:37.300 emotional harm. To me, as an attorney, I want to, I separate those out because to conceal the alleged

01:09:44.120 pattern of harassment to which he's referring and other misconduct by Baldoni, Heath and Wayfarer to

01:09:48.540 me, Brian, you tell me, but I feel like that's, that's fine. Let's assume he did do the harassment.

01:09:54.340 I know you deny all that, but even if he did do the harassment, what's best for the film is definitely

01:09:59.200 not to have that hitting just as the film hits the big screen. I don't think there's a cause of action

01:10:05.600 for concealing bad news about the star of the film. It's point B that could potentially spell legal

01:10:15.080 trouble, which is that they then allegedly retaliated against Blake Lively by orchestrating

01:10:21.600 a smear campaign against her. And the reason they did it was because she raised sexual harassment 1.00

01:10:27.960 complaints. Let's just focus on number two for, for now. Is it a problem in your mind? Like

01:10:34.880 if, if you've got somebody on the show, on the movie, who's alleged sexual harassment,

01:10:40.940 and then when the movie hits, she directly or through her PR person leaks that starts generating PR to make

01:10:49.140 the movie look bad, to make the co-star look bad. I was a poor victim. He was a cad and leaks all this.

01:10:55.840 Is it necessarily retaliatory for the person being accused to say, A, no, I didn't. And B,

01:11:05.520 this person should not be trusted. This person is not a good person, right? I, I, I just don't

01:11:11.700 understand legally the difference because you're not allowed to retaliate, you know, to punish somebody

01:11:16.200 in essence for report, for accusing in this way. But also if it's false, does a man have the right to

01:11:22.280 come out and say, don't believe her. This is a bad person either directly or through PR people.

01:11:28.560 Well, remember that, that there was actually no allegation of sexual harassment until the lawsuit

01:11:37.060 was filed. I mean, that that's when the allegations of sexual harassment came up. They didn't come up

01:11:43.840 before them. Well, that was in the 17 point memo that you referenced. She was raising some of these

01:11:49.680 issues. Well, that's right. But I mean, in terms of the public, she raised them in the 17 point memo.

01:11:54.720 They had agreed to, to 17 points, um, that they would agree that there were simple points that

01:12:02.700 everybody would go back and she would return to work. There's a signed document saying they work

01:12:07.620 things out in the actual lawsuit itself. It says everything went fine from then on. So, you know,

01:12:15.560 and, and, and the question really is why was crisis PR brought in crisis PR was brought in because

01:12:21.880 there were negative stories about Justin that were being leaked to the media, not about sexual harassment.

01:12:30.260 There were negative stories about adjustment being brought in saying no one likes him. Um,

01:12:36.600 he's been a problem on set, you know, stories like that. And crisis PR was brought in to say,

01:12:42.720 this won't be good for the film. Crisis PR was also brought in because there were negative stories

01:12:48.180 about Blake Lively, not that Justin created, but that existed out there. I mean, you know,

01:12:54.900 fans and media can be brutal. They go back through your history. They go back and look and say,

01:13:01.540 what interviews have you given before? How have you treated people? How, you know,

01:13:05.960 are you promoting the film in a way where you're promoting your hair care products and in a way

01:13:11.740 that's not true and genuine, as far as domestic violence is concerned, they go back and they see

01:13:17.580 those videos. They bring them out organically. That's not Justin doing that. That's not Justin's

01:13:23.580 crisis. We are doing it. In fact, what he wants is a successful movie. He wants to protect the movie.

01:13:29.600 And all through the text messages, you'll see over and over and over again, him saying,

01:13:36.120 I don't want to hurt her. I want to protect her. Let's give her what she wants. Let's help her.

01:13:43.160 That's what he's doing.

01:13:45.380 Well, and I see a lot of Justin saying, we're, we're not planting these stories, right? Like he's

01:13:50.320 going to the PR team, seeing some of the bad PR against her saying, this isn't us. And they're saying,

01:13:55.860 no, this isn't us. There is a, an organic campaign unfolding against her, but there are very

01:14:01.720 troubling texts between this crisis PR person, Melissa Nathan, and the regular PR person about

01:14:11.140 what they'd like to do to Blake. And that's what's taken up most of the headlines. Um, I have

01:14:17.560 absolutely no use for PR people. I really can't stand them. I know they have a job to do, but like, 0.90

01:14:21.560 my own experience has been so negative that it's hard to think this is all defensible,

01:14:28.180 but now that it's gone legal, you have to look at whether this is legal or actionable.

01:14:34.740 Here's one of the, here's the thing I want to start with. All right, I'm going to give you your

01:14:38.040 do, and then we're going to get into what disturbed me about it. They definitely misrepresented some of

01:14:43.240 the texts amongst these two gals. Um, there is one in the Blake Lively lawsuit and it quotes a daily

01:14:51.160 mail headline, uh, from August of 24. And this is Blake's lawsuit in paragraph 23 on August 16th,

01:15:01.000 Ms. Nathan circulated a daily mail article entitled is Blake Lively set to be canceled string of hard

01:15:06.300 to watch, hard to watch videos that have surfaced following tone deaf Q and a to promote it ends with

01:15:11.080 us could tarnish her golden Hollywood image for good to which Ms. Abel, she was the other PR person 1.00

01:15:17.980 responded speaking to Ms. Nathan. Wow. You really outdid yourself with this piece. And Ms. Nathan

01:15:24.060 replied, that's why you hired me, right? I'm the best. Now this was in the New York times. And when

01:15:29.940 I read it, I was like, they've got them dead to rights. They've, there's these two PR hacks and

01:15:34.620 they're saying like, we planted this daily mail piece saying she's going to be canceled. She's a bad 0.73

01:15:39.060 person. And they're celebrating it. And in your lawsuit against the New York times, 0.73

01:15:44.440 you offer up the rest of that text exchange. And it, and I don't just mean what follows like an

01:15:53.520 aligner to right after on the same line as the lines that are quoted in the lawsuit and the complaint.

01:16:01.160 And in the times there is, for example, the sarcasm emoji and more importantly, an explicit denial

01:16:10.620 by Melissa Nathan, as she writes this, that it wasn't her. So what the full text exchange that

01:16:17.940 you've offered now shows is Jen Abel saying to Melissa, wow, you really outdid yourself with

01:16:25.660 this piece with the sarcasm emoji, which is an upside down smiley face. They took out the sarcasm

01:16:32.360 emoji in the New York times. Then Melissa responds. That's why you hired me, right? I'm the best.

01:16:36.840 They remove the next part where she says heading to the airport. And there's a drive through the

01:16:43.200 jungle that there's going to be no reception around for 24 hours, joke, 45 minutes. And

01:16:46.780 there's a response about that joke. And then, um, Nathan says same date, August 16th. Um,

01:16:55.040 damn, this is unfair because it's also not me. Everything now looks like it's me. Maybe not to 0.98

01:17:03.980 you. And Jen Abel responds. No, it totally does look like his side, but they are saying to one

01:17:11.620 another, but it's not us. So, I mean, the full context and text Brian of the full exchange shows

01:17:18.560 these two PR agents saying she's getting hit. You know, I know you think it's me. It's not me.

01:17:25.580 It's actually worse than that because the first text in that gold chain is a reporter who is saying

01:17:35.620 to, to, uh, Melissa Nathan is showing her the article for the first time. You can tell that

01:17:42.880 this is the first time that Melissa Nathan sees the article. She says, what Blake, like lively is it

01:17:48.800 could like lively be canceled. I mean, she's seeing it for the first time and saying, wow, I mean,

01:17:54.380 this looks like it's me, but this is not me. And you can tell that this is the first time Melissa

01:17:59.760 Nathan has learned about this. She forwards that piece with the reporter to Jen Abel. So Jen Abel

01:18:09.140 knows that Melissa Nathan is learning about it for the first time. She knows she's saying, this isn't

01:18:14.780 me. She knows that, that, that, that, that she doesn't want this to be her. And that's not what

01:18:20.380 they're trying to do. And she sends it to Jen Abel and Jen Abel looks at it and makes a joke. And,

01:18:26.020 and, and, you know, with, with an upside down emoji, that's sarcasm. They remove the emoji.

01:18:34.000 They remove the piece about the reporter showing that Melissa saw it for the first time then,

01:18:40.800 and obviously couldn't be a part of it. And they remove the rest of the text messages showing

01:18:45.760 that they're joking around. I mean, it's absolutely appalling what they did. And if the New York Times

01:18:53.160 is correct by their own response, we've done, you know, incredible reporting. We've done

01:18:59.620 complete and accurate reporting. We've reviewed thousands of pages of text messages and documents

01:19:05.700 and other things. And, you know, and we stand by our story. Really? Well, if you really reviewed these,

01:19:12.040 then you would have reviewed those text messages and you would have known or should have known that

01:19:17.720 this was actually all satire and that Melissa Nathan could have never planted that story because 0.84

01:19:24.120 she didn't know about the story. And she learned about it for the first time from the reporter and

01:19:28.800 denied it right away. And there's a plethora of text messages throughout saying, this is not what

01:19:35.300 they want to do. And just in instructing them, we're not planting stories. We're not using bots. None of that.

01:19:44.700 Okay. But I grant you all of that. And it seems very clear that Blake Lively's legal team made some

01:19:51.120 very critical material omissions in their complaint. And so did the Times, which is not okay. But if you look

01:20:00.060 at the complaint and again, this is just, these are just allegations and now you get the chance to

01:20:03.740 deny them or respond to them. It doesn't sound good. The, the PR people talking about, you know,

01:20:13.040 Blake and Justin, you know, Justin looking for assurances. He wants to be, um, calmed down that

01:20:21.080 they have a plan to, to fight back. If, you know, she does come out against him that he didn't,

01:20:27.880 he didn't feel good about the document they sent over. Um, and he wants to feel better.

01:20:34.020 And then I'm just trying to pull up some of them. Uh, there's some like, here's Jen Abel saying, um,

01:20:42.140 to Melissa Nathan, I'm having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible

01:20:46.840 Blake is to work with, uh, just to get ahead of it. She's putting us through hell. Melissa Nathan,

01:20:53.500 same. Am I already off the record? Spoke to the editor of the daily mail because she's my friend.

01:20:59.520 She's ready when we are says Melissa Nathan, um, Jennifer Abel. I think we really need to put the

01:21:06.160 social combat plan then into motion. Melissa Nathan. So do I, um, let's see. That's, that's one

01:21:16.900 representative. I'll get to some others, but they seem pretty explicit in their discussion about how

01:21:21.400 it's time. Let's get her. Sure. And, and, and I think, you know, we, we all need to understand

01:21:30.180 what crisis PR is about, right? So they give options and they provide options of how they can

01:21:37.940 clarify things, how they can, you know, correct things, how they can change things, how they can

01:21:44.220 put things out there that, that are true and positive about someone. It's the difference here

01:21:51.480 is that Justin never authorized anything. And actually there's nothing that was done that was

01:21:58.940 nefarious or in any way was any type of smear campaign. And in fact, it's just the opposite.

01:22:06.080 I mean, you would expect someone who's actually worried about himself, worried about the film,

01:22:12.980 frankly, worried about Blake Lively's rep own reputation and the effect on the film to be

01:22:19.100 prepared to have someone just in case something comes out that is negative about them. It is

01:22:26.540 negative about the film or anything else. It's not like, like it's all a part of Hollywood.

01:22:32.760 Everyone has crisis, a PR team that they can bring in that might help that the question isn't

01:22:40.120 whether, you know, someone came in and said, we have options. The question is, was anything done

01:22:47.160 that was untoward or were articles placed or anything else? And what you see in the complaint,

01:22:53.440 if you carefully look at it, the only article that they even claim that was placed was this

01:23:00.380 one article, is Blake Lively about to be canceled? And there's unequivocal proof in there.

01:23:07.620 There is a there are text messages that were left out of the complaint purposely that were left out

01:23:14.540 of the New York Times article purposely that completely refute that either Melissa, Jen or

01:23:21.540 anyone else, Justin, had anything to do with planting that story or even knowing about that

01:23:28.560 story before they learned about it. So this is my problem. There's one thing for the PR hacks to sit

01:23:34.380 around saying, this is how we'll get her. You know, you've hired us to advise you if we need to

01:23:39.100 get her, if she unleashes the hounds against you, this is what we'll do. That is one thing.

01:23:43.740 And it is quite another to prove then they actually did it. And I have to say that I say this not just

01:23:50.420 because I I'm your friend. I have no absolutely no feelings about this guy, Justin Baldoni. In fact,

01:23:56.760 to be perfectly honest, I reviewed some of his social media and he seems kind of ridiculous with his 0.98

01:24:01.240 toxic masculinity lamentations and so on. But that's fine. That's me. So I'm not on his side. 0.95

01:24:08.340 But my point is simply, I just don't see it in their incendiary complaint where they're trying

01:24:12.940 to do their best to bash him and the PR team. I don't see that the second link loop closed of

01:24:19.380 and then here's where they did it. It's just all supposition. They don't have these great texts saying,

01:24:23.760 look what I got placed in the New York Post. Right. It's actually even worse than that.

01:24:31.160 It's it's not just that they can't prove or don't have any evidence to show that it was done.

01:24:38.140 There's actual evidence. There are text messages. There are receipts that absolutely show Blake

01:24:45.800 Lively's publicist, Leslie Sloan, placing, you know, actual stories and hit pieces about Justin

01:24:54.940 in the Daily Mail and and in TMZ. And we have text with the actual reporters

01:25:04.080 that show that this is exactly what's going on. So the reporters at the Daily Mail, I saw the

01:25:11.140 the text between the Daily Mail and you and some others in there. And the Daily Mail reporter is

01:25:17.340 saying that this Melissa Nathan, who was at the heart of it for Justin, she was the crisis PR person

01:25:22.460 they brought in, did not did not bash Blake Lively to him and was not doing that. And you've got Blake's

01:25:29.520 person saying, I know it was Melissa. And you've got the Daily Mail saying, actually, no, Melissa is

01:25:33.920 not doing it. That's exactly right. And then you have Blake's person actually in an exchange

01:25:41.120 with the Daily Mail reporter changing a story completely to go from was Blake Lively difficult

01:25:49.180 on the set to change that into does the cast and crew all hate Justin? I mean, it's it's that's when

01:25:58.860 you start to talk about a smear campaign. You start to look at it from that standpoint. And for the New

01:26:03.440 York Times not to have looked at those text messages, not to have caught them, not to have bothered

01:26:10.180 to ask questions about them is just the reckless disregard for the truth.

01:26:17.240 She does deny that I should point out to the audience that in Blake's complaint,

01:26:21.960 they deny that they have unleashed any sort of campaign hurting or hitting Justin. They say that

01:26:28.620 explicitly that they haven't. I realize you contest that, but that's a point of dispute. I did find the

01:26:34.300 Justin Baldoni text to which I was referring earlier. Let me just read it. It's him.

01:26:41.260 Let's see, expressing concerns that the PR people's written plan was insufficiently aggressive to quote

01:26:47.520 protect him. That's what Blake Lively is alleging. And they include include a screen grab of a text in

01:26:52.600 which he says to said team morning, not in love with the document they sent. Not sure I'm feeling the

01:26:58.900 protection I felt on the call. And then it's this next text exchange that's made all the papers.

01:27:07.180 In response, the two PR ladies start discussing that message from Justin, which was to one of them.

01:27:14.740 So Jennifer Abel says to Melissa Nathan, the crisis gal,

01:27:17.700 Okay, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to confidentially send you something. He's texting me

01:27:23.040 and Jamie on the side just to arm you before this call. I think you guys need to be tough

01:27:27.340 and show the strength of strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios. He wants to feel

01:27:32.720 like she can be buried. Then Melissa responds to Jennifer, of course, but you know, when we send

01:27:39.240 over documents, we can't send over the work we would or could do because that could get us in a lot of

01:27:43.220 trouble. We can't write it down to him. We can't write, we will destroy her. We will go to this.

01:27:48.760 We will do this. We will do that. We will do this. It has to look, he has to look at it as an

01:27:55.760 information document for us to be armed with. That's all. Imagine if a document saying all the

01:28:00.580 things that he wants ends up in the wrong hands. You know, we can bury anyone, but I can't write that

01:28:08.560 to him. I will. I'll be very tough. And then Brian, on top of that, they submit in the next paragraph

01:28:13.980 15, a, a text from Justin to the PR team, Ms. Abel, uh, Jennifer Abel with a screen grab of Blake

01:28:25.220 Lively. I'm sorry, I forget not, um, Bieber, Haley Bieber. And it's a, it's an article about Haley

01:28:33.400 Bieber allegedly bullying women. And he writes to the team. This is what we would need. So their

01:28:42.160 allegation is everybody's talking about how he needs to feel better. We will bury, we are totally

01:28:48.020 capable of burying her. We're prepared to do that. And then you got him saying, here's an example of

01:28:52.700 what I, what I would need, you know, dismissing her as a bully. So, you know, you and I, in another

01:28:58.520 context might say, all of this is circumstantial evidence that supports the plan, though the

01:29:03.760 execution of the plan, the actual articles we may not have in hand, but there's a supposition

01:29:09.100 that they closed the deal. But let's actually break it down because what you and I would do,

01:29:15.980 cause you're a great lawyer. And, um, and, and if you weren't amazing at what you do,

01:29:22.080 you would be the best lawyer in town. That's for sure. Um, so let's break it down. So the first

01:29:28.420 thing they say, and you went over it was this, the plan wasn't sufficiently aggressive for him.

01:29:35.700 You'll find the word aggressive in the complaint. What you won't find is the word aggressive in the

01:29:42.240 text message because he never wants something that's aggressive. He wants something that's

01:29:48.280 protective. And there's a big difference. Aggressive means you're going to go out and

01:29:53.300 attack. Protective means if something comes out, I want to make sure I'm protected. So he says the

01:30:00.480 plan doesn't look sufficiently protective to me, meaning that you got all these attack things in

01:30:07.160 the plan. I don't want to attack anyone, right? I just want to make sure there's not attacks on us.

01:30:14.240 Everything in his words is protection, not planting stories, not doing anything offensive,

01:30:23.320 not doing anything with bots or anything like that. And then, you know, as you, as you walk

01:30:31.780 through that text message string, it's so taken out of context because what they're saying is we can't

01:30:38.780 put this in writing to him, right? They can't put it writing to him because he's expressed over and

01:30:46.100 over and over again. He doesn't want to go on the offensive. He doesn't want to start, you know,

01:30:52.740 attacking anyone. He wants to actually protect her. She actually, he actually wants to protect the film

01:30:59.640 and he wants to protect himself from negative press. That, that's exactly what he wants to do.

01:31:07.620 He wants to be protective. That's all through there. They realize that if they give him a plan

01:31:13.200 that's an attacking plan or saying we're going to bury her or anything like that, he's going to say,

01:31:19.380 we're not hiring you. We don't want anything to do with this. That's what they're talking about.

01:31:24.600 This is all taken out of context. And if they would have included other text messages,

01:31:29.920 he would have seen that to be the clear intention. It's easy to pluck and hand and, and, and, and

01:31:36.240 cherry pick certain text messages that say certain things, but this is nothing of the sort. And let's

01:31:42.940 talk about the Haley Bieber text, right? What he's talking about is this is what we need. We, we don't

01:31:48.720 need to do this. We need actually people to come out and say, she's a bully. If that's what happens, 0.99

01:31:56.500 right? Like people will come out naturally organically and say that nobody planted the

01:32:03.080 Haley Bieber story. That was from a fan who put that out there. What he's saying is what we need is

01:32:09.800 as a, as a protective plan is that people come out and tell the truth. And, and if Blake Lively is a

01:32:17.260 bully, that they're going to come out and say that that's what he wants as a plan, not to plant

01:32:23.140 stories or anything else. As a matter of fact, that's belied by all of the texts that he's sent,

01:32:29.160 right? He doesn't want to bury anyone. This goes back to my early on question, which is,

01:32:35.260 is it retaliation? If somebody who's accused you of sexual harassment or, you know, acts that she

01:32:43.940 finds unacceptable on a set, if you deny them, but say, okay, I'll, I'll implement your reforms.

01:32:49.320 And then she threw a PR person later comes out and starts hitting you publicly, um, in the press. 1.00

01:32:55.200 Is it, is it retaliation as a legal matter for you directly or through your PR agents to say, 0.53

01:33:01.180 she's a bully. This is a bad person. I just, I'm not sure it is. I, if you are doing it to punish 0.93

01:33:09.420 somebody for the, for the sexual harassment allegations, that's one thing. But if you were

01:33:14.580 in the position of denying it's been settled, the person's admitted that everything's been okay since

01:33:20.100 then. And then you have creative differences. She's trying to rest control of the film and all 0.98

01:33:25.040 that. And she's trying to undermine you publicly. And then you kind of say, you're kind of an asshole.

01:33:30.040 I don't know that that's even legally retaliatory. It's actually not retaliatory. It's actually, 1.00

01:33:38.120 it's called providing a defense. It's called like the United States of America. Apparently some people

01:33:44.680 think they can just make any allegation they want. And you can't say, no, that's not true. And you can't

01:33:52.120 say, no, that's not what happened. But, but there's no public allegation at that time that he's

01:33:59.700 engaged in any type of sexual harassment or anything like that. So this whole idea of the

01:34:06.880 smear campaign has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the protection from whatever she is going 1.00

01:34:12.920 to say about him. And in fact, she used all of this to take over the film. And what he's complaining

01:34:20.760 about, frankly, is sitting there having, as a director, having a film taken away from him,

01:34:27.480 having editors who are real human beings, right, who like have lives, you know, not being able to

01:34:34.340 see the actual film, you know, at the premiere, even at the premiere, they're going to see the film

01:34:40.140 they edited for the first time because she took over the editing, right? You know, these are the

01:34:45.760 things that are being complained about, right? And, and is he allowed to deny that he sexually harassed her?

01:34:52.900 Absolutely. It's the United States of America. You can deny it. There's not, there's not a smear

01:35:00.000 campaign going on because she made those allegations. There's a protective campaign 0.96

01:35:06.560 that's in existence if needed, in case she starts to say things like, oh, well, he was a terrible

01:35:14.860 director or everybody hated him on set, or, you know, he shouldn't have never been in the position

01:35:20.500 he was in, or he did a terrible job. Anything that was negative like that, or the film wasn't

01:35:27.520 proper or appropriate, or even bring your florals, you know, bring your friends, like, like we're

01:35:34.040 going to domestic violence, right? We're going to a domestic violence movie and, and, and she wants 0.80

01:35:39.760 to turn it into a Barbie set. So like, those are the things that he wants to protect. He wants to

01:35:45.700 protect her, frankly, even from her own, you know, kind of, um, lack of social, um, proper graces in,

01:35:57.520 in, in knowing what this film is about and not turning it into a sideshow that, that, that it's

01:36:04.840 some, you know, party. There's a message here. He always cared about the message. He wanted to protect

01:36:10.680 the domestic violence victims and that community. And that's who he is as a person. And that's who

01:36:17.200 he is as a filmmaker. And at the end of the day, he was willing to give up all of these rights to her

01:36:22.640 because of her threats. And because he thought the message was more important than his own,

01:36:30.120 um, you know, than his own, frankly, his own career.

01:36:33.440 The, um, timeline of discuss, of discussions between Justin and the editors does show a guy

01:36:43.180 who had seeded a lot to Blake Lively. Uh, he writes in February or March timeframe, 2024.

01:36:49.880 I let her in what's best for the movie is that I suck it up and I let her in. Um, they point out 0.54

01:36:56.440 in this text exchange, one of the editors, uh, that she's been getting what she wants for this entire

01:37:02.540 movie. That's well, that's what, um, Justin responds. The editor says, I want Blake to feel

01:37:06.840 like she's getting what she wants so we can move on from this need of hers. He responds,

01:37:10.660 she's been getting what she wants the entire movie. Um, there's the, him acknowledging that

01:37:17.360 Blake has approval over specific scenes. She redid the so-called nudity rider to get approval of 0.93

01:37:24.400 what happens to the young version of her character, which isn't even played by Blake. Um, they lament

01:37:30.960 in this text exchange again, posted at megankelly.com that the editors and the director are not allowed

01:37:36.080 to look at the actresses cut. Um, okay. We'll continue taking the high road and the editors

01:37:43.460 talking about how they have not seen the movie before it's about to be shown at book bonanza,

01:37:50.700 her cut, uh, Justin saying they were supposed to show ours. And then I was uninvited. The whole

01:37:56.360 thing's pretty cruel and intense. Now, um, this is, you know, this is the other side of the story.

01:38:04.240 I want the audience to understand this is not, it's, we're not taking a position here on who's

01:38:08.440 right and who's wrong and what's out there, but all you've been hearing is what a cad this guy is.

01:38:14.600 He's been canceled, dropped, dumped by his agent. Agents are disgusting. Um, uh, William Morris 0.99

01:38:21.460 Endeavor. He had some award taken away from him, uh, you know, that acknowledged his fight in the

01:38:27.440 past for women. And he's doing a domestic violence movie and every single newspaper has got him out

01:38:32.980 there as like a Harvey Weinstein type for God's sake. This is the other side of the story. And

01:38:37.280 there's more to it up next. We're going to talk about what, what did happen in the press with

01:38:41.900 respect to Blake Lively, um, over the summer and was his team behind any of it? Okay. We're going to

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01:41:10.040 Are you going to sue Blake Lively too?

01:41:18.400 Into oblivion, Megan. Wait till you see this lawsuit. 1.00

01:41:23.720 Oh boy. For what?

01:41:30.520 I'm just going to tell you, you're going to have to wait and see. It's coming up soon,

01:41:34.400 but it's all going to be based on evidence. It's not going to be just a lawsuit. It's going to be

01:41:38.980 the kind of lawsuit that is full of evidence, admissions, documents, which prove exactly what

01:41:49.240 she did and how she bullied her way through the process to take over the movie and used her PR 1.00

01:41:56.640 people to try and destroy Justin. And that's what it's going to be, you know, essentially about,

01:42:03.600 but there will be a number of causes of action. There's a number of different defendants here.

01:42:08.980 Stephanie Jones will be all over this complaint that that is the PR agent who was supposed to be 1.00

01:42:16.120 working for Justin Baldoni. Um, there's, there's, you know, Leslie Sloan, who's another PR agent will

01:42:23.960 be part of this lawsuit. That was Blake Lively's Blake Lively will be sued. And, you know, and we're

01:42:31.060 carefully considering other people that will be sued also. And some of it becomes a surprise.

01:42:36.960 Ryan Reynolds for sure. Oh, wow. He was involved in this to some extent. There was a meeting at their

01:42:45.180 apartment at which, um, you allege that there were some senior production, uh, people who witnessed

01:42:54.720 him allegedly berate Justin Baldoni to the point where these third parties felt upset that they didn't

01:43:02.300 do more to stand up for Justin that they thought Ryan Reynolds was so abusive. I think he would say

01:43:07.520 I was standing up for my wife who'd been sexually harassed by this guy and so on. But what role did

01:43:13.160 he have in all of this? Well, you know, arguably, you know, uh, for the first time at, at the premiere,

01:43:21.640 you find out that Blake Lively, uh, tells people that all of a sudden he wrote a scene in the movie.

01:43:27.400 I mean, you know, shocking everybody, shocking Sony, shocking the production staff. Uh, it's the

01:43:34.840 first time they're hearing it. And, you know, Justin handles that really, really well and doesn't want

01:43:41.280 to say she's a liar or doesn't want to say that's inappropriate or doesn't want to say that's part of,

01:43:45.580 of, of someone else's job. And, and, you know, and, and he treats her very well about that.

01:43:51.900 Um, but you know, what Ryan Reynolds, you know, has, has seemingly done right is used his power and

01:43:59.380 influence to not only help Blake Lively take over this movie, but you know, he's used it,

01:44:06.280 you know, on, on Deadpool and to make fun of Justin Baldoni. I mean, do you think, do you think

01:44:13.480 that's what he did? We have a clip where his character Deadpool, which is very popular in this

01:44:17.300 movie acts more like, more like the Justin Baldoni that I said, turn me off with the, like,

01:44:24.040 I'm against toxic masculinity. And, uh, there's a question about whether he was taking a shot at

01:44:30.000 Justin. Here's the clip. Sorry about that. Come here, girl. Who are you? Oh, I'm Deadpool.

01:44:39.160 And I guess you're Deadpool too. But in here, everybody calls me nice pool. Oh my goodness.

01:44:43.780 Wait, do you see lady pool? She is gorgeous. She just had a baby too. And can't even tell. 1.00

01:44:49.400 I don't think you're supposed to say that. That's okay. I identify as a feminist. Right. 1.00

01:44:56.780 What do you make of that? What I make of that is that if your wife 0.87

01:45:01.040 is sexually harassed, you don't make fun of Justin Baldoni. You, you, you don't make fun

01:45:11.440 of the situation. You take it very seriously. You file HR complaints, you raise the issue

01:45:18.960 and you follow a legal process. What you don't do is mock the person and turn it into a joke.

01:45:28.340 Um, it's, there's no question it relates to Justin. I mean, anybody that can watch that,

01:45:32.760 watch that, the, the hair bun, you know, the, the, you know, the, the comment about the pregnancy.

01:45:40.140 I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty obvious what's being done, but again, like if, if somebody

01:45:45.500 is seriously sexually harassed, you don't make fun of it. It's a serious issue.

01:45:51.340 Hmm. The, um, the press for Blake did get bad in the summer of 2024, this past summer.

01:46:01.140 And the one clip that went everywhere involved a young reporter who was interviewing what I,

01:46:09.620 my understanding is Blake, but you can't totally see it in this clip. It was about eight months

01:46:13.680 pregnant. And the reporter remarked on Blake's baby bump and then Blake, I'm going to play it,

01:46:21.220 but she snaps back about the reporter's alleged baby bump. The reporter did not have a baby bump.

01:46:26.520 She wasn't pregnant. And apparently it had a history of difficulty in getting pregnant,

01:46:32.660 which is why generally you just stay far away for something like that in an exchange. But it went

01:46:39.160 very, very viral. And people were saying Blake Lively was inappropriate and a bully, and it wasn't

01:46:44.920 the first time. And then we saw a bunch of videos here. It is, uh, with reporter that clip with,

01:46:50.240 uh, reporter, Kirstie Fla. First of all, congrats on your little bump. Congrats on your little bump. 1.00

01:46:59.140 Did you guys love wearing those kinds of clothes that you, yeah. Yeah. And you know,

01:47:04.040 working in digital. Everyone wants to talk about the clothes, but I wonder if they would ask the men

01:47:07.200 about the clothes. I would. Yeah. It's not just the women that, that have the clothes. I would 0.52

01:47:13.120 get the conversation. So there, she was upset about being asked about the clothing,

01:47:18.840 but here's Blake Lively in a different interview with people magazine, talking about her clothing

01:47:25.780 in this particular movie that, that exchange with Kirstie was not about, um, this particular movie,

01:47:31.140 but here she is totally fine with talking about wardrobe and stop 15. 1.00

01:47:34.640 I just really loved those patchwork, like jeans that you have. Magnolia Pearl. Oh yeah. Those are

01:47:41.740 my real life jeans. Yeah. A lot of that is like your stuff. The boots were mine. Um, there's these

01:47:47.220 great Louboutins that are also a closeup on them when we're dancing in the bar. Those are mine. Um,

01:47:53.420 I have a few of my husband's shirts and socks randomly in the movie. Um, I have some of Gigi

01:47:58.100 Hadid's sweaters in the movie. Um, yeah, I don't know. There was a lot of my stuff.

01:48:04.080 So the reason I'm showing this to the audience is that people started noticing that Blake seemed

01:48:09.540 sort of bullyish to this person who has far less power and stature in the industry than Blake does.

01:48:16.080 And why did she do that? It was an, when a woman's eight months pregnant, it is not abnormal to 1.00

01:48:21.360 acknowledge it in an interview in a fun way, but she didn't seem to take well to it. And Fla

01:48:29.820 responded afterwards saying that this whole thing got, you know, publicized your, your lawsuit

01:48:34.880 saying she is in no way connected to any attempt to smear Blake Lively. She doesn't know

01:48:41.540 the PR people involved in this. And she said as follows, I'm a journalist. This is what I do for

01:48:46.160 a living. I would never accept money to jeopardize my integrity. I posted the video after I saw the

01:48:51.080 movie, which I didn't like. I had a bad experience with Blake Lively at the time. I kind of had enough

01:48:57.240 of Hollywood. I wasn't afraid of being canceled anymore. So I posted the video. So that one, which I

01:49:03.540 think is the most famous example, Brian, the journalist herself is saying she had absolutely

01:49:08.640 no connection to Justin Baldoni or these PR agents that we've been discussing. And is that basically

01:49:15.140 your point that it, would you say the vast majority, most all of the negative press generated about Blake

01:49:23.640 in the summer did not actually originate with this PR team? I would say all of it did not generate with

01:49:30.660 this PR team. I mean, I, you know, since I've been involved in this case, I've gotten 50 either

01:49:37.760 texts or emails or things to my firm's website, you know, more than 50 actually about this was my

01:49:46.580 experience with Blake Lively. You know, we weren't allowed to talk to her on the set. We weren't allowed

01:49:52.820 to ask for an autograph. We were, you know, instructed, you know, this way or that we were treated like

01:49:58.700 this. I mean, and, and, and, you know, these things aren't coming because that we're doing an

01:50:03.860 investigation. These are completely organic. These are based on people's real life experiences. In fact,

01:50:10.900 you know, we've come across evidence that, that, you know, shows that, that even her own representatives

01:50:16.940 knew that she was threatening and mean and tough and wanted to get her way. This is not something that we

01:50:27.920 wanted out there. It's not something that, that, that Justin wanted out there. In fact, it hurts

01:50:33.800 the movie. It doesn't help the movie. And Justin knew that. And, and Justin's, you know, this was

01:50:39.340 about, you know, domestic violence and getting the message across. I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll just,

01:50:46.360 you know, give you, you know, a couple of examples. Um, you know, in April and May of 2024,

01:50:54.360 you know, when Blake Lively got her own cut of the movie, Justin said, you know, in a text message

01:51:01.940 to his editors, the editors and director isn't allowed to look at an actress cut. Got it. Well,

01:51:10.560 here we go. We will keep taking the high road. Um, even when Justin Baldoni's, um, his, his, his,

01:51:19.780 his version, his cut of the film, um, the Baldoni cut, I'll call it scored significantly higher than

01:51:28.440 Blake Lively's cut. Um, and, and still Blake Lively's cut was the one that was chosen.

01:51:35.020 He still didn't do anything publicly, um, about that. And, and that was the one chosen,

01:51:41.840 you know, because of the threats made by Blake Lively. Um, in fact, you know, there's,

01:51:48.700 we have a source that tells us that some of the cut that, that, that she had has some of Baldoni's

01:51:54.120 version in it. I mean, in June of 2024, Blake Lively took over the marketing for the film.

01:52:00.840 Again, there's nothing in, you know, nothing negative in the press or anything else like that.

01:52:07.280 And, and Justin just wants to take the high road. Um, Blake is, is in June of 2024,

01:52:14.800 Blake's cut is chosen to be shown at book Bonanza and Justin and his, and his editing team haven't

01:52:21.020 even seen it. I mean, they haven't even seen it. And that's in a, in a text message that they're not

01:52:27.300 allowed to, um, Justin is shut out. He's giving notes as a direct, as, as, as a studio, not as a

01:52:35.100 director. He has not seen the locked cut of the film in July of 2024. And in August 5th of 2024,

01:52:44.780 Justin invites the editors to the premiere, but they can't be in the same room with Blake.

01:52:52.400 Justin replies, we won't be in the same room. I was asked not to even come to the premiere.

01:53:00.060 And, and the, the editors say, it would be very hard for me to sit and watch the final film

01:53:05.720 for the first time at the premiere. And Justin replies, okay, yeah, I haven't seen it either.

01:53:14.560 And, you know, that's when you get to, you know, the voice note. And even in September of 2024,

01:53:21.060 without criticizing Blake at all, he says one to the editors, one day we'll finish our cut together.

01:53:27.920 I would, of course, love to show the world, the beautiful version we did. And he says in September

01:53:36.360 of 2024, the purpose of the movie, the amount of women who feel seen. That's why we did this. 0.83

01:53:44.980 And it worked. And, you know, there are statistical scores of the movie showing that, that

01:53:50.920 Justin's version, the Baldoni cut, um, scored higher than Blake Lively's cut, um, with the

01:53:59.140 under 35 year old female demo. Yes. And, and notwithstanding, you know, um, because of her 1.00

01:54:06.280 threats that she wouldn't market, um, the film that she wouldn't do publicity. That's why her cut

01:54:12.780 was released. Mm-hmm. The, she had some problems in promoting the film. She now says that they were

01:54:21.360 told they agreed with a marketing plan that would not lean into the sadness of domestic violence,

01:54:28.120 that they would lean more into the female empowerment nature of overcoming it. And that

01:54:33.800 therefore she didn't promote it in any way that was not on brand for what they had settled on when

01:54:41.260 she promoted it. She also generated a new round of bad publicity for herself. And it's discussed

01:54:48.220 amongst the PR agents saying, this wasn't us. This was her. Here's an example of Blake Lively being a

01:54:55.280 bit too, perhaps lighthearted in promoting a film about a very serious subject matter in Sop 13.

01:55:02.720 And it ends with us is in theaters now. So grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it.

01:55:08.960 So if someone understands the themes of this movie comes across you in public, uh, and they want to

01:55:14.580 really talk to you, what's the best way for them to be able to talk to you about this? How would you

01:55:18.520 recommend they go about it? Like asking for like my address or my phone number or like my location

01:55:23.800 share. Oh, I could just location share you. And then we could, uh, so we're making the hot chocolate

01:55:29.920 cookies that, that Atlas makes for young Lily in our movie. It ends with us. You guys, we talked

01:55:34.940 about our movie. Not at all. Thanks for joining us in theaters, August night. Yeah. That's a wrap

01:55:40.580 guys. We got it. So this is what, this is your point, Brian, that when, when she was out there

01:55:46.880 talking about it, she seemed a bit too glib. She was flippant. I mean, the public's not stupid,

01:55:54.500 not stupid, right? They, they see this and you know, everybody is their own investigative journalist 0.99

01:56:00.660 and everybody has their own point of view and the domestic violence community. I, I feel like

01:56:06.300 was outraged over it. And, um, and, and again, you know, this wasn't something that Justin pointed

01:56:12.380 to, like it was something Justin wanted to help with, but he couldn't help with it because she had

01:56:17.900 already taken over the marketing campaign. It was her marketing campaign at that point.

01:56:26.340 He, the, um, going back to sort of the underlying dispute between the two of them, because I think

01:56:33.040 a lot of people may be wondering why, why would Blake Lively work so hard to wrest control of this

01:56:37.820 film away from him? Like she's a rich person. She's going to get other movies. Like why would she 0.95

01:56:43.480 have done this? Isn't it more plausible that she just didn't like him because of the 17 points she

01:56:49.760 raised where, you know, and that there's quite a bit in there. I'll read just a couple. So people

01:56:54.440 know what we're talking about. It turned into a 30 point document that they got promises from Justin.

01:57:01.800 He would rectify. Um, I'll just give a couple of examples, but this is what she was saying. She was

01:57:06.560 subjected to, uh, when, in order to come back to work in January, she said there, there can be no more

01:57:12.480 showing nude videos or images of women, including producer's wife to break Blake Lively or her

01:57:16.560 employers. No more mention of Mr. Baldoni's or Heath's previous pornography addiction or Blake

01:57:23.780 Lively's lack of porn consumption. No more discussions to Blake Lively and her employees about personal

01:57:29.920 experiences with sex, including as it relates to spouses. Uh, no more mentions to Blake Lively or her

01:57:36.860 employees of personal times that physical consent was not given in sexual acts. No more

01:57:42.240 descriptions of their own genitalia to Blake Lively. Right. So like all of these are so ugly

01:57:47.360 that it, it definitely leaves the reader thinking these guys are a bunch of jerks. No wonder she hated 1.00

01:57:54.000 them. So, so let, let's be really clear about what this 30 point list was. This 30 point list was never

01:58:01.080 provided to Justin or Jamie or anyone else. Never. And I challenge anyone to find an email or a text

01:58:11.140 message where it was provided to them at all. As a matter of fact, they category it's written in such

01:58:16.720 a way. It says no more, no more like presuming that it happened already. The only thing that was provided

01:58:23.820 to them in writing was the 17 point list, which included things that they wouldn't do anyway. Um,

01:58:31.340 if this 30 point list was so important and that, that they had never seen or heard before, frankly,

01:58:37.060 um, that, that showed up for the first time in writing in the complaint of all things. If that

01:58:43.380 was so important, why didn't they say no? Unless you signed the 30 point list, we're not coming back.

01:58:48.340 The 17 point list were, were natural, normal things that they wouldn't do anyway. The 17 point list

01:58:56.160 is a ruse putting things in there. Like no more presupposes it happened before. This is part

01:59:02.800 of just the absolute misrepresentation of what the truth is. It's just not true. That 30 point list

01:59:12.120 never shown to them. Let me ask you about some specifics in here because I'm just going to go to

01:59:17.860 the place that hurts. I'll, I'll read you the ones that jumped out at me is not good. Not good. Um,

01:59:23.200 page 48 of her complaint on another occasion, Mr. Baldoni and Ms. Lively were filming a slow dance

01:59:28.440 scene for a montage in which no sound was recorded. Mr. Baldoni chose to let the camera roll

01:59:35.040 and have them perform the scene, but did not act in character as Ryle, which was the name of his

01:59:40.600 character. Instead, he spoke to Ms. Lively out of character as himself. At one point he leaned forward

01:59:46.700 and slowly dragged his lips from her ear and down her neck. As he said, it smells so good. None of this

01:59:54.700 was remotely in character or based on any dialogue in the script and nothing needed to be said because

01:59:59.020 again, there was no sound. Mr. Baldoni was caressing Ms. Lively with his mouth in a way that had nothing

02:00:06.500 to do with their roles. When Ms. Lively later objected to this behavior, Mr. Baldoni's response

02:00:11.120 was, I'm not even attracted to you. You want to take that one on? Love to take that one on.

02:00:17.960 That's, you know what? Documents don't lie. People do. So let's go to the footage. Let's take a look at

02:00:27.540 the footage and let's see exactly what it shows. And, you know, let's talk about the film. Like we're

02:00:33.780 not making, you know, Bugs Bunny here, right? Like this is a film about domestic violence. This is a film

02:00:40.040 about sexual scenes. This is a film, you know, and if Blake Lively, you know, had objected to that,

02:00:46.960 you know, why didn't she stop in that moment and say enough? That's it. I'm not doing this. She 0.99

02:00:53.620 doesn't need the money. She doesn't need any of that. I mean, this is so taken out of context and

02:00:58.840 there's footage on all of this. So, you know, you'll be able to see how Blake Lively reacted to it,

02:01:05.640 what she said as a result of it, how she reacted after that scene, you know, as she was walking away

02:01:11.780 from that scene. There is footage of all of that. So, you know, all of this will come out. You know,

02:01:17.860 this is lawyers writing things in such a way that, you know, is as salacious as possible to try to have

02:01:26.060 someone, you know, make up for their own, you know, problem with their own reputation.

02:01:35.280 And she wants an excuse. She wants to blame him for that.

02:01:39.880 Let's go to paragraph 52. There's a birth scene in the movie. When the birth scene, she's the 0.63

02:01:45.480 mother. When the birth scene was filmed, the set was chaotic, crowded and utterly lacking in standard

02:01:49.940 industry protections for filming nude scenes, such as choreographing the scene with an intimacy

02:01:54.100 coordinator, having assigned nudity rider, or simply turning off the monitors. So the scene was

02:01:59.480 not broadcast to all crew on set and on their personal phones and iPads. Mr. Heath and Mr.

02:02:04.180 Baldoni also failed to close the set, allowing non-essential crew to pass through while Ms.

02:02:08.300 Lively was mostly nude with her legs spread wide and stirrups and only a small piece of fabric 1.00

02:02:12.840 covering her genitalia. Among the non-essential persons present that day was Wayfarer co-chairman,

02:02:18.260 Mr. Sarowitz, who flew in for one of his few set visits. Ms. Lively was not provided with anything

02:02:24.120 to cover herself between takes until after she had multiple, had made multiple requests. She became

02:02:31.160 even more alarmed when Mr. Baldoni introduced his, quote, best friend to play the role of the OBGYN

02:02:35.660 when ordinarily a small role of this nature would be filled by a local actor. She felt the selection

02:02:41.680 of Mr. Baldoni's friend for this intimate role in which the actor's face and hands were in close 0.98

02:02:45.340 proximity to her nearly nude genitalia for a birth scene was invasive and humiliating. 0.91

02:02:52.200 They said, here's my note, Brian. I circled it. And this is what my note reads. Bad. Bad. That sounds 0.98

02:03:01.360 bad. So, Megan, when was this? Was this after the 17-point list was agreed to?

02:03:11.620 I don't know. I don't remember. Well, let's put it this way. If it was and her complaint says

02:03:17.880 everything was fine moving forward, you have a little bit of a discrepancy in the document itself.

02:03:23.820 But again, you know, the greatest part of these complaints about onset behavior

02:03:28.700 is this is all filmed. This is, you know, there's no surprises here. This is all going to be on tape,

02:03:36.960 and the truth is all going to come out of exactly what happened. And Ms. Lively does not strike me as

02:03:42.680 someone, you know, who's not in a position of power, right? She is controlling her own destiny.

02:03:51.020 And trust me, she's not someone who was taking advantage of any step of this project.

02:03:59.060 Well, that's one of the weirdnesses of this. She had more power than he did, for sure. There's no

02:04:04.180 question she had more power than he did. So the thought of her just sitting there like,

02:04:07.400 oh, poor me, my genitals are exposed. I mean, it just doesn't seem characteristic. Even those 0.98

02:04:13.680 interviews, you can see she's a very strong personality. Now she wants us to believe she

02:04:18.840 was this shrinking violet on the set being exploited by all these mean guys like Justin Baldoni.

02:04:24.920 I don't know, Brian. I'm not sure whether this will be bought. The other thing is that I do think

02:04:30.720 we should spend a minute on is, you know, you referenced it in passing, but there are allegations

02:04:37.080 in here that are already falling apart. Like the thing about the breastfeeding on the set and how 0.88

02:04:45.680 allegedly Justin and his partner Heath were barging into her trailer and like watching her breastfeed and

02:04:55.140 looking at her naked breasts without her consent, which would be outrageous if true. But you include 0.67

02:05:01.980 in your complaint the following text exchange between Blake Lively and Justin, where he's

02:05:09.220 acknowledging that she and her baby are sick in some way. I'm sorry. That's the last thing you

02:05:14.880 needed right now. I pray it comes and goes with mild symptoms. I'm here for you anytime. Would love to

02:05:20.300 check in. I know this week was a lot. I'm committed to making things run smoother. She responds, our

02:05:24.700 mistake. Molly did get the new pages at 11 last night. She didn't realize they were new, but you can always

02:05:29.440 send them to me as well, please. And then she adds, I'm just pumping in my trailer. If you want to work

02:05:35.720 out our lines. And he responds, copy, eating with crew and we'll head that way. She says, take your

02:05:42.380 time. And he says, I'm here. I'll meet you in hair and makeup. She says, okay, I'm sorry. Just seeing

02:05:47.520 this. So she says that she seems to be the one saying I'm pumping. If you want to come over, I'm,

02:05:53.400 I'm, we can work out our lines. Then the other thing is that nude birth scene, which I do think

02:06:02.160 we should talk about because I was creeped out by this allegation too. She alleges in her lawsuit that 1.00

02:06:08.320 that the partner Heath wanted to talk porn with her and she felt very uncomfortable and she was doing

02:06:17.260 this birth scene and he like whipped out a picture or a video of a birth scene with his wife nude.

02:06:23.480 And she felt like this is really inappropriate and uncomfortable. And you write in your complaint

02:06:28.700 against the times that, um, this article based on lively's internal complaint sensationally alleges

02:06:37.140 that Mr. Heath had shown lively a video of his naked wife, um, even labeling, labeling,

02:06:42.740 labeling the footage she did as pornography. This is patently absurd. The video in question was a 0.91

02:06:48.780 non-pornographic recording of Heath's wife and baby during a home birth, a deeply personal one with

02:06:54.420 no sexual overtone to distort the benign event into an act of sexual misconduct is outrageous and

02:07:00.060 emblematic of the links to which lively and her collaborators are willing to go to defame

02:07:03.100 plaintiffs. And you include a screen grab from the video, which I have to say, not only looks

02:07:11.480 absolutely wholesome, but made me wish I had had a home birth of my own kids in a bathtub in my

02:07:20.240 husband's arms, the way that like my point is simply, I'm starting to glean that this is not a

02:07:25.620 truth teller on the other side. I, you know, there is a complaint filed with the civil rights division

02:07:31.900 that is signed under penalty of perjury as a representative of Blake Lively, that this is true

02:07:39.280 and correct. And that complaint says, this was Jamie Heath showing her pornography that take, I mean,

02:07:51.440 I wish we could show the picture, but, but you know, that's not, that's not pornography. And,

02:07:58.460 and it's part of, it's part of the, the artistic creativity of a birth scene that, that, that they're

02:08:05.080 talking about. And it's not like he even played the video for her. It's the screenshot of, of the first

02:08:11.740 screen. It's anything but pornography. So to swear under penalty of perjury, that everything's true

02:08:18.240 and correct. And to call that pornography is going to really be an interesting deposition, isn't it?

02:08:24.040 Mm-hmm. Well, I think it's not going to go as well as the one between you and yours truly, Webb.

02:08:28.600 Then, uh, there's the, the notion of her saying that Justin Baldoni called her sexy, called somebody

02:08:36.540 else on the set sexy. And you've got in your complaint against the times, uh, a text exchange

02:08:43.540 between Blake and Justin in which Blake Lively raises the issue of how they can make her character

02:08:52.720 look sexier. And she writes, uh, we'll show you both ways. It's something about a hat, but beanie

02:08:59.700 is much sexier. It's the look feels TV without, and then goes on, especially with a crop top in the

02:09:06.800 snow. It justifies the rest of the skin and bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. And so your point is simply,

02:09:12.620 it's one thing for her and her lawsuit suit to say, Oh my God, he's like calling her sexy. And,

02:09:18.540 and then you see, they were discussing what would make the character look sexy. So it's like,

02:09:25.480 there really are some contexts to the discussions that have been blasted all over the New York Times

02:09:31.320 and this lawsuit. And I mean, my own feeling in seeing all this, Brian is just like

02:09:36.100 withhold judgment. You know, we've been doing trial by media for years now, for years, and it doesn't

02:09:43.520 work well. It really doesn't. No one takes the time to go through a responsive document like the

02:09:48.840 one you filed. Most lawyers don't file a responsive document like you filed. They don't fight the PR war

02:09:54.280 and then they lose it. So what's your prediction of where things go for it from here? I mean, you know,

02:10:01.620 my prediction is, is, is, is that this is going to get worse and worse for Blake Lively. And the reason

02:10:07.300 it's going to get worse and worse is people are going to be more comfortable telling the truth.

02:10:11.860 And what this is about is really the truth. And she's put Jamie Heath and, and Justin Baldoni in,

02:10:18.940 in, in this, in this position of being called sexual predators, sexual harassers. They have no

02:10:25.960 choice, but to go all the way, no choice. So, you know, we're going to go all the way. And, and the

02:10:33.380 unique thing again, in this case is going to be, we're going to put every single text message out there.

02:10:38.760 We're going to put every email out there. We're going to put every document out there. That's

02:10:44.060 relevant to the case, not something that's disrespectful or otherwise would embarrass

02:10:48.520 Miss Lively. Cause that's not what we want to do, but we want to make sure that people have the facts

02:10:54.420 and people can make their own determinations as to what happened. Sure. Could people have felt

02:11:00.880 comfortable during filming? Absolutely. It's, it's an uncomfortable situation at times when you have

02:11:07.820 sex scenes and when you have domestic violence issues, then that's what you're, you know, that's

02:11:12.820 what you're talking about, you know, but, but, but Justin is the kind of person that takes responsibility

02:11:18.360 for it. That if he knows about something that someone feels uncomfortable with, he's willing to

02:11:23.360 change. He's willing to take responsibility for it. That's what, that's who he's about, right?

02:11:28.320 He's not a sexual predator, not even close. And for her to weaponize that and use that to take over

02:11:35.520 this film makes me question what's really going on. And this power couple and this power dynamic are

02:11:42.780 using that power to be able to try and really destroy someone's life. You know, you know, both Jamie

02:11:50.140 and, and, you know, Justin are married. They have lives, you know, Justin has children, you know,

02:11:56.600 they have to listen and read about this. It's, it's terrible. It's terrible for their careers.

02:12:02.400 Their careers are over unless we fight back and we will fight back. Like no one has ever fought back.

02:12:10.520 Do you think Ryan Reynolds was responsible for WME, which I think is his agency that he's represented by

02:12:17.960 dumping? Justin? I don't know because I don't know the facts of whether he's, he's responsible or not,

02:12:26.340 but certainly coincidence is an indicator of truth.

02:12:31.520 Hmm. The finally her lawsuit claims that she suffered to claims that her hair company got attacked 0.93

02:12:42.560 online, uh, unfairly by bots with no followers, disparaging it. She's got a line of hair care

02:12:49.600 products that her booze company, she doesn't drink apparently, but she's got a booze company 1.00

02:12:54.160 same that she has been in bed, unable to function for periods of time that her children, her children,

02:13:03.580 that Ryan Reynolds too has suffered, that they have suffered mightily as a result of this alleged

02:13:09.100 smear campaign against them in response to what you say. I think they're suffering because they

02:13:16.360 filed a lawsuit that is slowly, um, being shown to be a fabrication. I think that's where they're

02:13:24.840 suffering. Um, and I think that had they not filed the lawsuit, they wouldn't be suffering and,

02:13:32.240 and it's only going to get worse because as we unearth every single document and we put

02:13:39.100 it out there for the public to see the truth. Um, that's where the real suffering is. And they had

02:13:45.260 no business trying to destroy people's lives. But when you back someone in a corner, give them no

02:13:51.020 option and call someone a sexual predator and make up that there's a smear campaign, what do you expect?

02:13:59.100 People aren't just going to kowtow to them because they're a power couple. 0.93

02:14:02.940 We will continue to watch it. Brian Friedman. So great to have you. Thank you so much for sharing

02:14:11.180 so much with us. Thank you. I'm so good to see you. I really appreciate you as a person

02:14:16.780 and, um, and just love you so much. Truly. Likewise, we've been through quite a battle

02:14:24.260 together and, uh, I think we both emerged the better for it. I'm in your debt, as you know,

02:14:29.280 the one and only Brian Friedman. He did not disappoint, right? He's a brilliant lawyer.

02:14:34.440 You can see why I have him on retainer just in case anyone messes with me. And I'd love to know

02:14:39.880 your thoughts on this, right? I don't, I don't really know these characters. It's not my,

02:14:43.560 it's not my world, uh, Hollywood, but I remember seeing the videos of her last summer thinking,

02:14:48.540 yeah, she sounds annoying. And I, when I read the times article outing, you know,

02:14:54.360 his alleged bad, I'd never heard his name before. I have not seen the film. The thing that stood out

02:15:00.020 to me was I don't understand this because she's the one in the power position here. It's Blake Lively

02:15:05.860 and some guy who pretty much nobody knows. And she's on the set. She's the star. How is it that

02:15:11.740 she got so, you know, bullied and taken advantage of? And then they're talking about how they had

02:15:16.980 meetings with Ryan Reynolds. Like, and again, he's way more powerful than anything. What is

02:15:23.860 Justin Baldoni's interest in alienating, picking on, harassing Blake Lively and alienating her husband,

02:15:34.320 Ryan Reynolds? Like, why would he do that? Now, maybe he did, you know, maybe he did. Maybe there's

02:15:40.940 something wrong with him. There's a, there's a text in his messages where he talks about how we should,

02:15:44.800 we should talk about the fact that I'm neurodivergent. So maybe he is making excuses

02:15:50.020 for bad behavior there. Or maybe she is especially sensitive and prone to playing the victim and wanted 1.00

02:16:00.920 things just exactly the way she wanted them and decided that she wasn't treated in the way she

02:16:06.940 wanted to be. And she was going to make this guy pay because you see him almost in the fetal position

02:16:12.560 in these texts over and over. Like, let's give her what she wants. Let's not upset her.

02:16:17.780 Just let it happen. Like, he's afraid of her. You can see in these texts, uh, even with his texts with

02:16:22.360 the PR people, he is scared of her. He knows what she can do to him. And, um, the question here is

02:16:28.880 what did he do to protect himself? He definitely talked with PR agents about protecting him.

02:16:35.320 And the question is what exactly did those PR agents do? They talked a big game. They did talk

02:16:41.700 like big swagger and cowboys who could destroy her. Um, did they actually do it? That I don't see

02:16:48.240 in her allegations. I see swagger, but I don't see the substance of it other than some minor things,

02:16:55.700 which you would expect where they, you know, tried to get good PR going for Justin or do nice,

02:17:01.160 you know, sort of messaging around the film. All that's fair game. Anyway, look, this is what I

02:17:07.060 did. This is, I'm, as you know, I'm not feeling well. I was up till 2, 2 AM. This is her complaint.

02:17:14.280 Look at all my notes. Okay. Then this is Justin's complaint. And these are all my notes that I just

02:17:21.640 went through many of them with Brian. This is the timeline of all the text messaging between

02:17:27.740 Justin and those two editors is so-called dream team, which we're posting on megankelly.com. And

02:17:33.080 you can look through them all yourself, articles, packets. I'm neck deep in this weird industry that

02:17:42.240 I really want nothing to do with, but it's the case. Everyone's been talking about. And as you know,

02:17:49.140 I love Brian Friedman. So, uh, let me know what you think. Megan at megankelly.com. M E G Y N 0.97

02:17:56.200 at megankelly.com. We are back tomorrow with the fifth column. See you then.

02:18:05.060 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 07, 2025

Secrets of Disgusting Media, and Explosive New Details About Blake Lively, with Billy Bush and Bryan Freedman ｜ Ep. 977

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