Kate Beckinsale says Blake Lively’s complaint shows how social media can be ‘weaponized to ‘foment hatred against actresses’
(CNN) — The controversy between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni has Kate Beckinsale reflecting on her own professional experiences.
Beckinsale took to social media recently and said while she has never met Lively or her “It Ends With Us” director/costar Baldoni, she believes Lively’s civil rights complaint against Baldoni highlights “this machine that goes into effect when a woman complains about something legitimately offensive, upsetting, harmful, whatever, in this industry.”
“I’ve been on a film, for example, where I was by the end referred to over the walkie talkie and to my face as ’that c**t’ because I had said I’m finding it difficult,” she recalled. “My co-star’s drunk every day and he’s obviously going through something and I have full sympathy for that, but I’m also waiting as is the whole crew six hours a day for him to learn his lines and it means I’m not getting to see my daughter in the evenings for the whole movie.”
Earlier this month, Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department against Baldoni, alleging sexual harassment and a coordinated “plan” seeking to “destroy” her reputation.
Bryan Freedman, an attorney for Baldoni and his Wayfarer Studios, denied the allegations in a statement to CNN, calling the claims made by Lively “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt and rehash a narrative in the media.”
“It is shameful that Ms. Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives, as yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ her negative reputation, which,” Freedman added, “was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film; interviews and press activities that were observed publicly, in real time and unedited, which allowed for the internet to generate their own views and opinions.”
Beckinsale wrote in the caption of her video: “Everyone in EVERY industry should be taken seriously and not punished when something egregious happens to them at work. The difference, I suppose, in our industry is that it becomes something that is played out in the public sphere… it can also destroy someone’s livelihood, mental health and reputation and that can be very difficult to recover from.”
“I don’t want our younger generation of actresses to be facing all the same things as we all do and did, but they have it even worse because of social media and how that can be weaponized to a literally nuclear level, designed to eviscerate,” she added. “It is very, very, very easy to foment hatred against actresses, as was seen in the transcripts of conversations full of repulsively between the publicists and crisis team involved in this case.”
When it came to Beckinsale’s complaint about the unidentified costar she said was drunk on set, extending the time away from her daughter, the unnamed movie and the studio’s response was to give her a bike to ride around.
She also shared other examples where she felt she was “gaslit and made to feel like I was the problem” on another production.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
