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


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 18 minutes

Words per Minute

168.2063

Word Count

23,240

Sentence Count

1,675

Misogynist Sentences

49

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary

Billy Bush and Brian Friedman join Megyn on The Megynkel show to discuss Justin Baldoni s bombshell lawsuit against the New York Times, and Blake Lively s suit against the Times, respectively. Megyn is joined by Billy Bush to talk about his new show, Hot Mics with Billy Bush, which debuts Monday on YouTube and TuneIn.


Transcript

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.
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.
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
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
00:05:06.920 my life as an option. And when everybody else abandoned me, Brian, well, I literally, everybody
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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
00:22:27.260 suggesting I had behaved racially. You know what? I'm going to review my forgiveness, uh, because I
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
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
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.
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
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
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
00:32:01.680 Twitter story and, you know, rammed it up over and over. And even after it had died down,
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
00:32:39.040 as the East coast correspondent, I was Matt Lauer. I reached out to Matt to get some advice, you know,
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
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,
00:35:31.580 Doug actually reached out to this person's spouse because we knew them socially a bit and said,
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
00:36:16.980 was doing his level best to push the story everywhere that I was allegedly this horrible
00:36:23.020 racist person. I mean, this this industry is disgusting and there are no more disgusting
00:36:28.600 people than the hosts of those morning shows. They are exact. And the hypocrisy is what's so
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
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
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?
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
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.
00:40:31.820 That's what my stepfather used to say. Life is a shit sandwich. And every once in a while,
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
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
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,
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
00:52:44.420 smear campaign to destroy her reputation. She claims that alleged smear campaign was retaliation
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
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
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.
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
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,
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
01:01:57.440 these allegations of sexual harassment and she used these allegations of bullying, um, to try and
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
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
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
01:04:42.820 her and then retaliating against her with a smear campaign in the press after, you know, after the
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
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
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,
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
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
01:15:39.060 person. And they're celebrating it. And in your lawsuit against the New York times,
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
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
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
01:24:01.240 toxic masculinity lamentations and so on. But that's fine. That's me. So I'm not on his side.
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,
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.
01:32:55.200 Is it, is it retaliation as a legal matter for you directly or through your PR agents to say,
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
01:44:49.400 I don't think you're supposed to say that. That's okay. I identify as a feminist. Right.
01:44:56.780 What do you make of that? What I make of that is that if your wife
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
02:02:45.340 proximity to her nearly nude genitalia for a birth scene was invasive and humiliating.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.