New details have emerged of Justin Baldoni’s hiring of social media guru Jed Wallace – namely, that he was paid $90,000 for his services, a cache of newly unsealed documents show.
The court papers also reveal Baldoni’s ‘crisis management’ team – hired over the spat with his co-star Blake Lively on the movie It Ends With Us – cost an estimated $9 million, according to Baldoni’s business partner Jamey Heath.
Lively’s lawyers filed over 60 exhibits in New York federal court last week including text messages and emails obtained through discovery in her lawsuit against Baldoni.
But in documents that have now been made public, emails show that Wallace was hired by Baldoni and Heath’s production company Wayfarer Studios for a three-month, $30,000-per-month contract.
Invoices show Wallace billed the team in August, September and October of 2024.
Though little is known about the social media guru, his since-deleted LinkedIn profile calls him a ‘hired gun’ with a ‘proprietary formula for defining artists and trends.’
In an August 8, 2024, email, Baldoni’s publicist, Melissa Nathan, introduced Wallace to Heath.
‘Please meet Jed who will be having his team assist on all social activity based off our own conversations as well as their digital plan you are in receipt of,’ she wrote.
‘Jed and team has worked on some of the most monumental [behind the scenes] projects globally and I’m extremely happy to make this intro between you both.’
Wallace wrote in an email the same day: ‘We will work in lockstep with TAG [Nathan’s firm], but engaged separately.’
Nathan referred to a two-part quote for ‘untraceable’ social media services in a text to Heath two days earlier.
‘Quote two $25k per month – min 3 months as it needs to seed same as above – this will be for creation of social fan engagement to go back and forth with any negative accounts, helping to change narrative and stay on track,’ Nathan wrote.
‘All of this will be most importantly untraceable.’
Although she didn’t name Wallace or his firm in the August 6 text, she said the quotes came ‘from the two teams we use that get the best results.’
A source with knowledge of Wallace’s hiring confirmed ‘quote two’ was referring to Wallace and his firm, Street Relations.
The source said ‘creation of social fan engagement’ meant using anonymous accounts controlled by Wallace’s team to push already-existing pro-Baldoni news stories on social media and argue with Lively fans online.
But the source added that this work ended up being unnecessary due to the large amount of ‘organic’ criticism of Lively from real accounts.
But Lively’s team maintains that there is evidence of a smear campaign against the actress, claiming that the messages allude to a plot using fake accounts to spread negative stories about Lively.
A spokesperson for Lively told Daily Mail: ‘There is an overwhelming amount of evidence documenting the smear campaign instigated by Justin Baldoni, Melissa Nathan, Jed Wallace and the rest of the Wayfarer Parties.
‘All you need to do is look at Melissa Nathan’s texts, Baldoni’s responses, and Jed Wallace’s “services”.’
Wallace has denied any smear campaign or use of fake accounts, saying he was merely paid to monitor social media for Baldoni’s team.
In July, Judge Liman dismissed Lively’s claims against Wallace, who is suing Lively for defamation in Texas over the statements.
‘Blake Lively made false statements to the press through a private administrative filing, claiming Mr Wallace and Street Relations had sexually harassed her, retaliated against her, aided and abetted others who did the same, breached a contract with her and engaged in other improper conduct,’ Wallace’s attorney, Chip Babcock, told the Daily Mail.
‘Mr Wallace, who is a very private person, has never met or spoken to Ms Lively. Ever. He has not engaged in a smear campaign against her at any point in time.’
In an internal group text involving Nathan and her employee Katie Case, Case wrote that Lively’s team ought to ‘grow up’ and that her team ‘had nothing to do with’ negative press aimed at the actress.
‘Someone has to tell them to grow up – they promoted a movie about DOMESTIC VIOLENCE as if it was a silly rom com,’ she wrote.
‘What did they expect?’ she added.
She shared an infamous Instagram post of Lively encouraging moviegoers to ‘wear your florals’ when they go to watch the dark film in theaters.
‘Like come on,’ Case added. ‘We had NOTHING to do with that.’
‘This is crazy,’ another unnamed member of the chat replied. ‘She doesn’t have a good reputation. All of this is organic stuff from real people making TikToks – not bots.’
In another text conversation filed on Thursday, a frazzled-sounding Heath texted a friend that he was having to shell out an eye-popping $9 million on a crisis communications team.
‘I’ve hired a crisis management team. Costing 9million dollars (sic),’ he wrote on August 4 to the friend, named only as ‘Andy’ in the document.
‘Also our pr team,’ Heath wrote. ‘Just have to manage every land mine so it doesn’t go off. And there’s just so much to it.’
A source close to Baldoni’s PR team told the Daily Mail that TAG was hired by Wayfarer for $15,000, and suggested Heath was exaggerating the $9 million figure.
In one group text with film executives on January 2, 2024, Baldoni said he felt Lively had him ‘held hostage.’
‘Trying to find my balance of captaining a ship and leading it while it’s being held hostage,’ the It Ends With Us director-actor wrote.
‘How to give her most of what she wants while maintaining some of my own vision.’
He added he felt he was ‘acting and working with this person who can and will use anything she can against me. It’s all scary – yet I know I have protection.’
