Justin’s deposition: my thoughts re the Stephanie Jones portion

Just read Justin’s entire deposition, the Stephanie Jones portion. Here are my views:

Overall, Justin was great. He comes across as polite, measured, and honest. He was clearly well prepared; he clocked the tricky wording in most questions and managed to avoid being tricked, although twice he realised he was falling for it and had to backtrack. But I do think he did great, and he will be great on the stand if this comes to trial.

Also great was SJ’s lawyer. She was clear and to the point, logical, and well prepared with her line of questioning and the evidence she had to support it/challenge Baldoni with. She didn’t waste time; no babbling, no faffing around. She was not disrespectful of Baldoni, and just once I think she was being purposely difficult in order to get a pointless admission from him (that he couldn’t attest with 100% certainty to something he had no personal knowledge about. Duh). When she had to go head to head with Shapiro, she was direct but did not lose her cool. She is clearly really good.

Now, Melissa and Jed are in deep shit. And if it turns out that they did everything that is being said they did, then they deserve all that is coming their way—in the other lawsuits being filed against them, such as SJ and Ghost, and whatever else might come from this. And I can only hope they won’t drag Wayfarer down, because if there is one thing this deposition shows, it is that Wayfarer have not retaliated against Blake for her SH claims. They confirmed several times they hired crisis PR in response to the media starting to pick up and report on Baldoni’s absence. They sought help from experts to navigate the crisis as they were afraid of Reynolds’ and Lively’s threats made directly to their agents. That was a clear directive to boost positive stories, and to engage in deflection tactics -like flipping the narrative - only if they were being attacked. Anything TAG may have done outside this scope was not sanctioned by them—and guess what, there is very little evidence TAG did that, aside from maybe one story about Lively being a bully.

Now, since the Rebel–Ghost news, I have my suspicions about Melissa and Jed. There’s just no way these people do not engage in shady stuff. But I was honestly shocked to read that the THR story about Justin hiring Johnny Depp publicist was most likely done with her awareness, if not consent or even approval. I want to see Melissa’s deposition, how she explains the text messages between her and her friends about this but honestly, it seems there's very little left to the dispute in this regard. I truly thought she was genuinely surprised and upset with the story, but in the private chat with her friends, who appear to have directly involved on the story, it seems she was aware of it in advance AND joking afterwards about it bringing her more dodgy clients. I mean... Duck off Nathan. And it seems I own someone in the Court sub an apology on this debacle...

Also worth pointing out: the deposition brings up some very contentious clients from TAG and Jed, which is Blake’s shortcut for making their client list public.

So there you go. It seems Justin was surrounded by snakes indeed, extending to his publicists. But he still didn’t throw them under the bus. I have nothing but profound admiration for Justin right now.

PS: Justin discloses Jamie’s endearing, self-deprecating nickname, which is quite funny because people reading the text exchanges incorrectly assumed he was mocking SJ when he was mocking himself. But it made me think of a great nickname for Blake and Ryan: “No Awards Dummies.” Read it and you’ll get it, I'm off to Lively's portion of Justin depo next.