\n\tIn 1969, the chaos theory founder Edward Lorenz articulated the Butterfly Effect, in which a single, small action in one area can lead to broader, unexpected outcomes in others. The phenomenon, based on his research into weather patterns, is a helpful metaphor for a storm now gathering force in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen Blake Lively<\/a> and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni<\/a> first clashed on the New Jersey set of their hit romantic weepie It Ends with Us, they no doubt didn\u2019t realize their careers would both be overwhelmed by the maelstrom. Nor that years on, and millions of dollars in legal fees later, the dispute would remain constant public fodder, heading to a May jury trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom.<\/p>\n \n\tBut what\u2019s most surprising is what\u2019s taking place downwind \u2014 thanks to their mutual animosity and assets. The personality-driven spectacle has uncovered a clandestine smear machine. Its workings span industries and continents, playing an extrajudicial role in recent high-profile conflicts involving Rebel Wilson<\/a>, Scooter Braun<\/a>, the wellness guru Andrew Huberman<\/a> and other bold-faced names both within and beyond entertainment. The Hollywood Reporter has been connecting the dots and surfacing the claims<\/a> over the past three months.<\/p>\n \n\tThe revelations began to appear in court this past December, when Baldoni\u2019s ex-publicist Stephanie Jones filed a lawsuit against him, his production company Wayfarer and his crisis communications specialist Melissa Nathan. Jones\u2019 legal team had hired a digital forensics firm to examine a vilifying anonymous website made about her and discovered that it allegedly was the handiwork of Nathan as well as a fixer named Jed Wallace, who\u2019s had a long association with Baldoni\u2019s attorney Bryan Freedman<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tJones\u2019 forensics firm also found, according to her lawsuit, that her website was connected to \u201ca growing list of attack websites from the same band of conspirators.\u201d The sites mix factual assertions about their targets with unsubstantiated conspiracies and defamatory claims of misconduct ranging from extortion and embezzlement to drug dealing and prostitution. Jones\u2019 attorneys say Nathan and Wallace have run \u201ca clandestine cottage industry of creating false smear websites and social media accounts targeting their adversaries and those of their clients,\u201d often in connection with litigation. Her legal team describes what it\u2019s uncovered as a \u201cplaybook.\u201d Freedman has denied that Nathan and Wallace are responsible for the sites, which have since gone offline, and objected to Jones\u2019 forensic data, deriding it as \u201cspeculation presented as fact.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe sites \u2014 THR was able to review them via the Internet Archive \u2014 are strikingly rinky-dink. This is likely not by accident. Professional hit jobs, they position themselves as the handmade, lo-fi work of amateurs, typically self-styled whistleblowers speaking their truths to power. The sites are amplified by online bots. The apparent goal is to discredit accusers in public \u2014 then circulate the smears to their social circles \u2014 as well as demoralize adversaries amid legal disputes, forcing quiet settlements on preferred terms.<\/p>\n \n\t***<\/p>\n \n\tThe key players and their antagonists in this saga exist at the center of the entertainment industry\u2019s attorney-publicity matrix. Freedman has become one of the most well-known lawyers<\/a> in entertainment for his over-the-top aggression, hired by everyone from Range\u2019s founding CAA defectors to Megyn Kelly, who has recommended him to THR by explaining that \u201conce he\u2019s on board for you, he\u2019ll kill for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNathan launched her firm The Agency Group (often referred to as TAG PR) \u2014 whose clients have included Drake, Logan Paul and The Chainsmokers \u2014 along with several of her former colleagues at PR crisis consulting powerhouse Hiltzik Strategies. Until now, Wallace has been the lowest profile of the trio, a mysterious Texas-based operator who\u2019s been compared to the titular troubleshooter in Showtime\u2019s Ray Donovan. Lively\u2019s legal team has claimed in a legal filing that he specializes in \u201cexecuting confidential and \u2018untraceable\u2019 campaigns\u201d against opponents. For his part, his own lawyer describes his business as helping clients \u201cwhen they find themselves unjustly attacked, extorted, doxed, swatted, scammed or need help navigating through the most frightening situations.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSo far, several celebrities have been tied to the smearing. On Mar. 13, THR published a leaked recording of Wallace instructing Nathan to assert \u2014 without evidence \u2014 that movie producer Amanda Ghost was a sex trafficker. They were working on behalf of actress-director Rebel Wilson, who\u2019d been feuding with Ghost over their film The Deb.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe can\u2019t just do, like, oh, she\u2019s a bitch, she sucks,\u201d Wallace says in the recording<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s, like, it\u2019s got to be really, really heavy and connected to something that heavy.\u201d He references the involvement of Freedman, who cited unattributed Ghost websites, including their reference to her as the \u201cIndian Ghislaine Maxwell,\u201d in a Sept. 2024 court filing.<\/p>\n \n\tGhost has since filed a defamation suit against Wilson. In a deposition, an employee of Nathan\u2019s characterized such websites as acting \u201cin supplement or aid to ongoing litigation.\u201d Those who\u2019ve been targeted and their allies view the practice as both a pressure tactic in which reputational sabotage is weaponized, as well as a subversion of the legal process itself.<\/p>\n \n\tFor her part, Wilson has denied any involvement in the sites. But Ghost\u2019s attorney Camille Vasquez has told THR that their side believes Wilson \u201cnot only contributed to the malicious sites but that she was the driving force behind them. The evidence we have submitted to the court in California supports that conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tEarly on, the It Ends with Us legal maneuvering ensnared Lively\u2019s friend Taylor Swift, revealing the popstar\u2019s personal texts and, for a time, positioning her as a potential deposition witness. Yet in April her old nemesis, Scooter Braun, was pulled into the wider scandal<\/a> when a new court filing in a related smear-site case contended one of the music mogul\u2019s business rivals had been anonymously maligned.<\/p>\n \n\tBraun\u2019s connection was notable in part because a separate previously identified smear target was the prominent K-Pop executive Min Hee-jin, who had worked at the Korean entertainment firm Hybe when Braun was the CEO of Hybe America. (Another Hybe executive has told THR that the pair had no reason to be at odds and that they did not interact; Braun declined to discuss the allegations with THR.)<\/p>\n \n\tMin posted on Instagram in January that she\u2019d met with a lawyer \u201cwho\u2019s currently handling lawsuits in the U.S. to uncover what [Nathan\u2019s firm] TAG PR has really been up to,\u201d adding, \u201cPieces are starting to come together.\u201d Until recently, Nathan was Braun\u2019s longtime publicist.<\/p>\n \n\tAnother name linked: wellness podcaster Andrew Huberman. New litigation asserts that his former live-in girlfriend was targeted online in similar fashion<\/a> after she was a key source in a March 2024 New York Magazine investigative cover story about what the publication termed his \u201cmechanisms of control.\u201d Huberman didn\u2019t respond to THR.<\/p>\n \n\t***<\/p>\n \n\tOther targets of the smears initially tied by Jones\u2019 technical analysis range from a billionaire businessman to a financially struggling consumer-goods advocate. Kate Whiteman \u2014 who accused the Manhattan high-society brothers Oren and Alon Alexander of sexual assault<\/a>, leading to their arrest and recent conviction<\/a> \u2014 died after she was maligned on one of these anonymous sites. (The coroner\u2019s office in Australia, where she\u2019s from, wouldn\u2019t provide information about her death, citing consideration for family members.)<\/p>\n \n\tOthers include the former fintech CEO Christian Lanng, who alleged in a 2024 defamation and extortion action that Freedman and his firm \u201chired third parties to create deepfake stories\u201d about him \u201cin an attempt to leverage a higher settlement.\u201d (An exhibit Lanng presented featured Freedman\u2019s law partner sharing an update from \u201cour specialist,\u201d left unidentified, about an acquired website and a plan \u201cto troll\u201d Internet forums which discussed Lanng\u2019s company \u201cand maybe come up with a meme about Christian.\u201d) In court, Freedman has denied the allegation, and he\u2019s told THR it \u201csounds like a spy novel about the CIA.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThen there\u2019s actress-turned-activist Alexa Nikolas, the former star of Nickelodeon\u2019s Zoey 101 whose own damaging site appeared shortly after she publicized Freedman\u2019s own sexual-assault settlement from decades prior, in which he didn\u2019t admit liability. She had also organized a protest in front of the lawyer\u2019s Century City office. (Freedman had previously represented her ex-husband after she accused him of sexual battery \u2014 a suit she later dropped.)<\/p>\n \n\tThe lawyer was neither pinpointed by Jones\u2019 forensics, nor named in her suit as a defendant. But Nikolas sued Freedman for defamation on Feb. 5, contending he \u201cwas an integral part of a team working to control [unfavorable] narratives.\u201d He\u2019s so far remained silent on the matter and has yet to respond in court. Nikolas\u2019 recent assertions have widened the scandal to include Braun and Huberman.<\/p>\n \n\tNone of this would\u2019ve been possible without Lively and Baldoni, adversaries whose spite and resources compelled them to continue to pursue litigation when just about everyone else in their positions would have quickly settled in the cloaked realm of arbitration.The dark combination of their enmity \u2014 and their egos \u2014 has led to this rare bright light shone on an otherwise concealed aspect of the entertainment business.<\/p>\n \n\tThe stars\u2019 fight went nuclear in December 2024, when Nathan\u2019s text to a colleague promising that \u201cwe can bury anyone\u201d was trumpeted in an investigation<\/a> by The New York Times. The following 15 months has revealed the evident scope of that promise.<\/p>\n