Amber Heard said social media is where a lie becomes the truth in response to the complaint Blake Lively filed against her “It Ends With Us” co-star Justin Baldoni, telling NBC News on Monday she "saw this firsthand."
Lively accused Baldoni, the film's director, of sexual harassment, hostile work environment and trying to tarnish her reputation with a targeted social media campaign in an undated complaint filed with the California Civil Rights Department.
The complaint stated that Baldoni retained prominent PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan — the same woman Johnny Depp hired during his high profile trial defamation trial against Heard, his former wife.
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In an exclusive statement shared with NBC News, Heard, who now lives in Spain, said: “Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on.’ I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive.”
In that case, a jury unanimously found that Heard had defamed Depp, and he was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. Heard was also awarded $2 million in compensatory damages in her counterclaim, but nothing in punitive damages.
At the time, Depp said “the jury gave me my life back,” but Heard said the decision “sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”
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According to Lively's complaint, Baldoni hired a crisis communications team to launch a “retaliatory social manipulation campaign” against Lively during the film’s promotion aimed at destroying her reputation.
Nathan delivered Baldoni a plan consisting of “social media mitigation," including “proactive fan posting" and “social manipulations” to “help change narrative” during the film's promotion, the complaint said.
The film's promotion made headlines at the time because the two stars appeared to avoid each other as rumors swirled on social media that they did not get along on set.
Fans also noticed that Baldoni was doing press separately from his co-stars, and that some of the film’s stars, including Lively and Jenny Slate, did not follow him on Instagram.
Bryan Freedman, who is representing Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and all its representatives, called the allegations in Lively's complaint “categorically false.”
He said Wayfarer hired a crisis communications team because Lively allegedly threatened not to show up to set during filming and threatened not to promote the film.
Freedman said Monday in response to Heard's comments, “TAG PR must be the most powerful group of publicists the world has ever seen for it to be able to completely change the perception of both Amber Heard and Blake Lively.”
He said the only correlation between both cases is that "every move they have made has been out there for everyone to see, widely filmed and documented for the public to make up their own minds — which they did, organically."
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