Earlier this week, Blake Lively amended her lawsuit against Justin Baldoni to include the update that two other female actors are willing to testify about being made uncomfortable on set. Per her suit, other castmembers reported their discomfort to Sony, strengthening Lively’s case against Baldoni, It Ends With Us producer Jamey Heath, and Wayfarer Studios. Immediately after Lively’s filing, speculation began that one of the women cited in Lively’s suit was Jenny Slate because, well, she was the second-biggest female star on set. Plus, she voiced strong support for Lively when all of this started going public in December.
Now, The Hollywood Reporter has some new behind-the-scenes info about what went down on the It Ends With Us set. According to the outlet, Slate and Heath got in a discussion about the New York City apartment she was renting while filming the movie; Slate (who has a toddler) told him she didn’t love the place but didn’t want to move because she’d put down a big security deposit. Heath offered that Wayfarer would cover the security deposit if she found a better rental. A nice gesture, ostensibly, “but apparently he made the offer using language that made Slate so uncomfortable — sources say he focused so intensely on the sanctity of motherhood and Slate’s role as a mother — that she filed a complaint to the film’s distributor Sony about the incident,” per THR. Meanwhile, an insider said Heath’s perspective on the situation is that “even when Wayfarer offered a kind gesture, it was weaponized against them.”
All of this is packaged within an exploration of the influence of Baldoni’s Baha’i faith on his interactions with Lively and how he runs his sets. Heath and Wayfarer Studios co-founder Steve Sarowtiz (who was quoted as saying he “will protect the studio like Israel protected itself from Hamas”) all follow Baha’i teachings, as do many other Wayfarer employees. THR proposes that perhaps the Baldoni vs. Lively feud all comes down to a clash of values stemming from the director’s Baha’i practices. Except, a Baha’i scholar interviewed for the piece says some of Baldoni’s stranger behavior—namely, his insistence that he could communicate with Lively’s dead father—isn’t actually part of the religion. (Zackery Heern, a professor of history with a focus on religion at Idaho State University, told the outlet it “is not encouraged” within the faith to speak to the dead, adding, “It’s a bit fringe for Baha’i.”)
Nevertheless, the Wayfarer crew’s devotion to the values of their faith may explain, if not excuse, interactions like the one that allegedly took place between Slate and Heath. You can read the full report here.
