Hollywood says: GO AWAY, BLAKE !!

Hollywood had enough, it's over. Hi, and welcome to Flossum Talk. I'm Sashti Floor, journalist, Hollywood truth teller, and your voice of reason in a town built on delusion. Happy New Year's everyone. As you can see, I'm sitting here trying to dress up a little bit for you guys. And I've also changed my background a little bit. I'm moving things around in my studio to see what fits best. And I actually do like this layout. I think it's a little bit calmer and maybe it looks a little more professional. So anyways, let me know what you think in the comment section. And also if you have other ideas, I'm always open for input and improvements. Anyways, I hope you guys have some great plans for New Year's and that you're looking forward to 2026. We were going to celebrate with some friends, but then they got sick. So then we're just going to be here by ourselves, dressing up for each other and Oscar and welcoming 2026 with open arms, anyways, Hollywood has spoken again and now they're calling Blake Lively's lawsuit a soap opera. Uh, this is from the Hollywood reporter, which is pretty major. They were the ones who made that list a few days ago with the biggest winners and losers of 2025. And Blake Lively was also on that list. And today they made a list of the biggest Hollywood bummers of 2025, and you won't believe what they're saying about Blake Lively. So my big question now is how is a jury ever going to believe anything Blake says when no one else does? Also in this episode, I wanted to look a little bit about how the media chose to cover this case and how that has changed from when Blake Lively sued Justy Baldoni in December of 2024 until today and how embarrassing this is for them. Anyways, let's get into this Hollywood reporter article. So it says here the biggest Hollywood bummers of 2025. And then in a year of serious crisis, there was no shortage of minor annoyances from the decline of Squid Game to the rise of Tilly Norwood, that AI actress, to the unending Lively-Baldoni soap opera. And then there's stories about other things, other big bummers of 2025 in Hollywood, and then it says here, everybody in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni saga is horrible. I mean, that is pretty harsh. I don't think everyone's horrible, but I do think that we've seen the worst coming out in some people. And we've seen how incredibly hypocritical Hollywood really is and how many cowards there are with no moral compass. Anyways, it continues to talk about this legal feud like this. The only clear winner in the Blake Lively versus Justin Baldoni courtroom saga was collective schadenfreude. And that schadenfreude is not on Justin Baldoni's behalf. We know that for sure. And they continue, what began as a celebrity dispute ballooned into a rolling public demonstration of how not to behave on set, in the media, or under oath. Each new filing somehow made everyone involved look worse. Choosing sides became impossible. I don't think so. It's not impossible. I think it's very easy for people to choose a side here. Although I'm not saying that Justin Baldoni's side is perfect in any way. We've seen they say and do things as well that I think could be questionable sometimes, but I think everyone knows where the truth lays here and there's no more discussion about this SH. It just kind of disappeared. No one's talking about Blake Lively as a victim anymore. Anyways, they continue. Choosing sides became impossible. And by the end, the prevailing emotion wasn't outrage or sympathy, but fatigue. The kind that comes from watching very rich, very unpleasant people litigate their privilege in public. Yeah. One thing that we learned from this is definitely how celebrity privilege and big egos can cost you millions and millions and hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think the summary that both sides came out with last week, when Blake Lively's lawyers were just talking about how she's staying strong through all of this, and it was all about me, me, me, and I'm, she's being a victim while Baldoni's side was saying, Hey, there's other things going on in the world. And we really appreciate the support that we're getting. But yes, there are other things that are more important than this lawsuit. Yes. This is where Hollywood stands right now. As I said, Hollywood Reporter did another report last week where they basically called Blake Lively a laughingstock. And now this story as well, Ryan Reynolds must be furious right now. Anyways, as I said, I wanted to focus a little bit as well on how the media has covered this lawsuits from the beginning of when Blake Lively filed this in December of 2024 until now. Because as you remember, after that New York Times article, everyone jumped on this, it was a big scandal and the headlines were everywhere portraying Blake Lively as a victim of SH and of course his smear campaign and everyone was shocked and had so much sympathy and empathy for Blake Lively that it was even possible to create an untraceable smear campaign like this. Until we learned, of course, there were more sides to this story. Not only did we see Justin Baldoni's receipts coming out at the time when he sued them, but we also have seen throughout this year, throughout discovery and more and more evidence being unsealed, that there were a lot of twisted facts involved in all the reporting we could see in mainstream media. I've been covering a lot of the articles covering this story here on my channel. And one of the things that I noticed especially is how the media was focusing on all the legal stuff in the beginning. And now it's all about scandal. It's all about these little cherry pick facts that they find from the evidence that they can blow up and make headlines from. People Magazine was very pro-Blake in the beginning, but then I feel like as soon as Taylor Swift entered, they kind of changed their ways a little bit. For them, it's always been important to be on good terms with the big celebrities because that gives them sometimes exclusive interviews. And this time it was so obvious after Taylor Swift's dad revealed that he was the source of the information that Blake Lively had tried to pressure Taylor Swift to support her in public. When that story hit, all of a sudden People Magazine started shifting a little bit. At least that's what I noticed. And the last four or five months, I think we've seen them being much more balanced in their reporting on this. Although I have to add that they do still pick up those stories that I'm sure Leslie Sloan or someone else from Blake Lively's team is feeding them to make Blake Lively look wholesome and like a good mother and good wife and very relatable. Also TMZ in the beginning was so pro-Blake Lively and they did publish a lot of misinformation, something they actually admitted to as well. One of the stories I remember was when they said that there was another person who was willing to testify against Justin Baldoni, another person from another project. Remember there was so much talk about that. Then we realized it was Claire Ayoub, this female director who did another project with the Wayfair parties. And she ended up having some kind of disagreement with Baldoni, but there was nothing else there. And then she had recorded this conversation that we all got to hear and we know there was nothing there. But anyway, TMZ said that she was willing to testify. The thing is she couldn't have testified because she had nothing to do with this case. And they should know that, but still they said another victim is willing to testify, which was just BS. They also said that Travis Kelce was showing love for Blake Lively because he published this podcast episode talking about traveling, that Sisterhood of the Traveling Pans, a movie that Blake Lively did a million years ago. And then they realized that, oh, that was an old podcast that was re-uploaded. And they did come out and talk about it, but still so sloppy. And another thing they did, which I thought was really suspicious is that they said that Justin Baldoni had missed the deadline to appeal his case. We know that's not true. And also thinking that Harvey Levine, the editor of, and the owner, I think, of TMZ, he's a lawyer. He knows these things. Yeah, there were so many things like that that was published on TMZ that made people think like, hey, what's the deal here? Are you like in cahoot with someone here? In their live stream, it seemed like they were not on Team Blake at all. So I don't know where they stand. I just hope that they can do some more due diligence in 2026 before reporting on things because misinformation like this spreads so fast and people don't come back to see if there's any updates on an article or if it's been corrected. The industry magazines have been very pro-Blake as well, especially Deadline, all their articles. I've been like, what? And Variety, except that Variety did a story on the content creators who were being subpoenaed by Blake Lively. I did really like that. They interviewed me for that story. And the Hollywood Reporter has been a little more balanced. I think they did this story that was huge and got a lot of attention when it dropped about how Justin Baldoni and Jamie Heath and the rest of the Wayfair parties brought Baha'i faith into the set of Evidence With Us, and that's where things started, like that's where the friction came from. I don't really think so. What we know by now, I don't see that there's any truth to that really. They were talking about this culture of hugging, which kind of just disappeared as well. Especially since we know that Blake Lively is a big hugger as well. But I think the main reason this story got so much attention was because of the illustration that they made of Blake and Justin, and then Ryan Reynolds' nice pool and Brian Friedman there. And Blake Lively was so upset by this. Her, one of her spokespeople said to Daily Mail that the framing in this picture is outrageously insulting as it plays into every sexist trope about women who dare file a workplace complaint, turning them into the aggressor and suggesting they deserve the retaliation that comes their way. Surprise, surprise there. And then of course you have all the fashion magazine, all the women magazines, they're just kissing ass. And they're all, all their stories about Blake has been like fluff pieces about her outfits and about her hair care line and whatever products she's trying to sell. So I think the outlets mainly that has been telling the truth basically is Daily Mail and sometimes Page Six as well. It's interesting to think that New York Times broke this story last year and they haven't done really any follow-up stories. I think they did one story when Justin Baldoni's lawsuit was dismissed, but they haven't followed up on anything in this legal case, and that is very telling. I remember when LA Times did the expose of the Golden Globes based on my lawsuit and my legal filings, and they did follow-up stories like every single day for like six months after that. It was huge. So when you break a story like that and then choose not to follow up, that says everything. I think all the speculations people had in the beginning, because they were reading between the lines, because Blake didn't really tell us the entire truth. She just cherry picked some text messages and painted a picture that she wanted to sell us. And I think a major problem now is that all of these facts are really undisputed. The things that Blake lively accuses Justin Baldoni of, he's not denying it. He's just saying that they are ridiculous. And that is what people are starting to realize. And that is why all these Blake Lively supporters are just disappearing. It's funny. Now, looking back, I was a part of four documentaries in 2025, one on HBO Max, one on Hulu, one on Discovery Plus, and then one for Andy Signor over at Popcorn Planet that he's planning, I hope, publish in 2026. Anyways, all of these three documentaries were really leaning towards Blake Lively's narrative. Some of them extreme, some a little more balanced. But now that we've seen so much from the depositions and the evidence being unsealed, it makes all of them look ridiculous. And of course, no one is going to admit that they were wrong. So instead, now they're just trying to ridicule the entire situation. And that's exactly what the Hollywood Reporter is doing here. They're not saying like, Hey, we were wrong. We reported on this as a serious allegation and something that really needs to be taken seriously and looked at. And now everyone realizes that, oh, we were fooled. Now they're just looking at this as a lot of mess and they want it to go away because this case can do a lot of damage and has already done a lot of damage in Hollywood. We don't know yet how this will affect SAG in the future. They were supposed to step in here. SAG was nowhere to be seen. It was obviously Blake Lively's responsibility to get in touch with SAG and tell them what happened on this set, but she didn't do that. But still SAG should have some sort of responsibility here. They're supposed to protect people. Same goes for Producers Guilt of America and Directors Guilt of America. Where were they? I spoke about that the other day as well. How are they going to have to change their rules now to prevent something like this from happening again, to prevent a situation where a big actress can come in and take over an entire movie and then sue the director afterwards for all his money. And also for the studios here, how are they going to deal with this? As you know, Blake Lively walked all over Sony and took away their power as well. So how are the contracts going to change also for new directors, up and coming directors who want to work with bigger stars, they're going to be terrified. And as we now know, a lot of actresses have come out and complained about these intimacy coordinators that are all over the place all the time, ruining the shoots for them. We know Gwyneth Paltrow talked about it. Jennifer Lawrence has talked about it. Cameron Diaz has talked about these intimacy coordinators and how they really feel uncomfortable with them being present. Also something that obviously is related to this lawsuit. Yeah, I think this has told us a lot about Hollywood itself. How dirty it is and also how publicists works. I did not know how dirty it was behind the scenes. I'm as shocked as everybody else learning about how things went down behind the scenes. Now let's hope that 2026 is going to give us some real answers now that more and more evidence will get unsealed. I can't wait for the media to finally pick up the story about Van Zandt. No one has really mentioned it except Daily Mail and Page Six. And there was actually an article in Deadline about Van Zandt, but they managed to put a negative light of Justin Baldoni anyways, with the headline reading, Justin Baldoni damns Blake Lively for abuse and sham lawsuits, seeking text smear campaign evidence. Nothing to hide. Actress. Lawyers declare. Yeah, so they were covering it, but they weren't really throwing any shade at Blake Lively. They reached out to her lawyers. And as you know, her lawyers defended using that sham company to file that lawsuit to get to the text messages on Jennifer Abel's phone and then give it to the New York times. They say this is completely normal. Everyone does it. Yeah. Let's hope that 2026 becomes the year of truth. I am so excited for more of the truth to come out and I'm so excited to get into this new year with you guys. You are amazing. You made my 2025 so beautiful. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. And even though I'm here talking about these awful things that people do to each other, I think that there's still so much we can learn from this and to also remember to be respectful of each other. And then sometimes when you get in a situation where you have to pick between right and wrong, always trust your gut feeling. You know what the right thing to do is. And as we've learned from this case, a lot of people probably didn't follow their gut feeling and they thought, Hey, what can I gain from this? And I'm a big believer in karma. And I think everyone at the end will get what they deserve. Anyways, that's it for me for 2025. I wish you all a happy new year. And if you haven't subscribed yet, please do that and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode of Flossom Talk and I'll see you next year. Bye.