May 28, 2025 • 37 mins
On the show today, the subpoena against Taylor Swift has been pulled from the upcoming Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively trial, and a new statement has given us a clue about where the women’s famous friendship really stands.
Plus, a series of toxic workplace allegations against Blake Lively have just been made public, and some of these stores about what it was like to work with her are truly unhinged. But how many of them are true?
In order to figure this out, we have to deep dive into the rise and fall of Blake Lively’s infamous lifestyle company, from its Vogue launch to the moment it all went up in (artisanal) flames.
Subscribe to Mamamia
GET IN TOUCH:
Do you have feedback or a topic you want us to discuss on The Spill? Send us a voice message, or send us an email thespill@mamamia.com.au and we'll come back to you ASAP!
Read all the latest entertainment news on Mamamia... here.
THE END BITS
The Spill podcast is on Instagram here.
Read all the latest entertainment news on Mamamia... here.
Subscribe to Mamamia
CREDITS
Hosts: Laura Brodnik and Kelly McCarren
Executive Producer: Monisha Iswaran
Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
Mamamia studios are styled with furniture from Fenton and Fenton.
Visit: fentonandfenton.com.au
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
So much.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders
that this podcast is recorded on From Mamma Mia. Welcome
to the Spill, your daily pop culture fixed. I'm Laura
Brodnick and.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Kelly mccaren and I cannot believe that I get
to sit here for the very first recording of the
Spill in the brands spanking new studios. It's so fancy.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I know we're still on couches, but now we're on
fancy couch chancy couches.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
As soon as I walked in, I was like, oh,
I'm so jealous because when I moved, all I wanted
was vent In and fent In everything, but I couldn't
have bought it. But now I kind of get to
live it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I know now when you've vis couch.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes, I mean I do do a lot of records sometimes,
so I'll effectively be living here.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes, we're in our new Mumamea offices finally after recording
remotely for a few weeks, and this is the first
time you and I have recorded together in the new studio.
It is the excitement hence White took us about half
an hour to get started.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yes, yes, yes, well we also had a lot of
shit about We've seen each other for at least five days.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh that is a long time, a lot of build up.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
But what are we talking about today? Because we are
going deep on just one subject and I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, so there's so much to say. This has been
over ten years in the making to get to the
moment of this story. So we are deep diving on
a brand new Blake Lively controversy that most people wouldn't
even be across and I.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Didn't even know it exists.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh my god, buckling, Because you know how people say
you have a Roman empire, like the one thing you
talk about or you think about all the time, and
mine is Blake Lively's lifestyle website.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hard disagreed. Yeah, it's that data leak thing that we
covered like a month ago. You knew so much about
it and I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I know. Okay, so you've got to several Roman empires.
Let's just establish there's two things that keep me up
at night, well three things. Alexander Scara's guards shorts, the
Sony data leak, and the launch and failure and the
behind the scenes stories of Blake Clively's lifestyle website, which
we're going to get into because it's been a big
week in the new cycle for Blake Lively.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It has. Last week it was Paris, this week's it's Blake.
It's not a good time to be a lady in.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Actually absolutely never is. So recently we talked on the
spill of the fact that Justin Baldoni, who is still
locked in a big legal battle with Blake Lively, they're
both seeing each other. The trial is not until March
next year.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
This is going to be ongoing for quite some time.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yes, so they're in the discoverability period though, yeah, exactly
that there's always a lot of mistation coming through. So
recently we reported that Justin Baldoni's legal team had sent
Taylor Swift a subpoena to basically go through her phone,
her computer and potentially have her appear in court to
testify about her involvement with the making ofvid Ends with us.
(02:55):
And then in the last few days it was confirmed
that Justin's legal team had dropped the subpoena and Blake
Lively's team put out this huge response saying that they
had always targeted Taylor Swift because she's a famous woman
and they were trying to use her name to get,
you know, people to to take Justin's side. And they
also alluded to the fact that Blake c Lively's legal
team and Taylor Swift's legal team had worked together to
(03:17):
get the subpoena dropped, which is really interesting because Taylor
and Blake haven't been seen together in a really long time.
There's obviously a lot of theories.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, so they've had a allegrations speculating.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Your theory out there is that Taylor Swift's father, who's
obviously like super involved in her career, like her whole
family is, is the one that leaked to the press
that Blake Clively had allegedly threatened Taylor Swift that she
would release all their personal messages if she didn't take
her side publicly in the Justin and Blake situation. That's
(03:51):
the story.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I don't know if that's true or not, but I
don't think or if it was, you'd be so annoyed,
you'd be like, Dan, please stay out of it. Yeah,
I know, Like I remember one time Luke messaged someone
that I was having a fight with did he and
I was like, can you not? But I asked him, like,
just I think family members or loved ones just stay
(04:11):
out of it. Let grown ups fight their own battle.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Also, you and your friend can have a disagreement and
can come out of it. But once a partner gets involved.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
In exactly because like, just stay out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
If that happened to me, I'd be like my friend
and I can get through this. But if my friend's
partner messaged me, I would hate them forever or their
father side.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
But I did get in trouble for friends now husband
once oh really yeah yeah, But we got through it,
and he sent me a very cranky, cranky, cranky message.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I wouldn't get I wouldn't get over that.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'm like a bloke though, when like, I just don't care, like.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I know, But it's also none of your business. It's
between you and your friend, I know. But it's between
Taylor and Blake and not the dolo. Allegedly their boyfriends
are also involved as well.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Which is because we discussed the yeah yeah, which Travis
unfollowed Ryan, And.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's a whole murky situation.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Why do you think that the subpoena was dropped because
if I'm thinking about it just from a really generalized view,
I wouldn't care if my phone was subpoena.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But then that all your personal information could be put
then into the lawsuit, which is then made public. And
Taylor Sift is such a private personal so then it's
public record. Yeah, a lot of it would be because
I thought it would be just for the team.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I mean, the lawyers can go through to do the discoverability,
but even someone as private as Taylor Swift having her
private messages show into a whole team of lawyers, Like,
even if it wasn't officially made public, things get leaked,
things get passed on, Like true, Taylors's phone would be
an absolute hotbed of information that's like under lock and key.
So I just don't think that she would want anything
out there. Also, it's bringing her to a legal case
(05:46):
that she and her team keep saying that she has
nothing to do with, so even having appen it, yeah,
so that neither of them have said anything publicly about it.
But we just know that Taylorsift's phone is safe for
another day. The other story that has come out about
Blake c Lively. This week deserves our attention because there
have been a whole host of new allegations from someone
(06:07):
who isn't Justin Baldoni and his team, although I do
think that they've played a little bit of a part.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, I'm wondering, like they maybe nudge nudged these people
for what we're about to discuss.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yes, because all of this really happened back in twenty fourteen,
and also allegedly a lot of the people who have
spoken had settlements, So maybe there was a time lapse
on like when they could discuss things, or maybe it's
come out because it's going to be part of the
legal case. Hard to say, but I don't know if
you remember this. In twenty fourteen, when Blake C. Lively
launched her big lifestyle website called Preserve.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I genuinely had never ever even heard of this.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You must have had a life, you must have been
off living.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
They know all about Goop, I know about pooshe Yeah,
that's it. I did not know. Oh sorry, and now
Meghan's got her new lifestyle. Oh as ever, yeah, as ever,
I did not know that there were other websites, wellness website.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Well, this was coming in hot off the heels of
Goop being this huge success and Gwyneth Paltrow launching a
lifestyle brand that was bringing in more money at the
time than her film career. Obviously, Martha Stewart was kind
of the original person in that area. She and Blake
Lively were really close friends and actually lived near each other,
like kind of an upstate New York you know, wherever
which people live.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I don't know, yes, but their yigger apartment house.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Their apartment in the city, and then they had these
like huge estates outside the city and they were neighbors.
And also Blake Clively because she always talked about all
through Gossip Girl, like everyone's like, are You're a wild
party girl and all her interviews and she was like, no,
I just stay home and bake. And I do honestly
think some of that is true.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It also is maybe one of the things that bonded
her and Taylor Swift initially because Taylor Swift is in Notorious.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I love that line that you've drawn there. Oh my god,
they're just girls at home baking. Before the friendship was
ripped apart by Justin Beldone.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And just they really enjoyed baking together. Everyone thought that
they were just out there having their hot girl summers,
having near bake girls, making cup very wholesome.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So blake Lively had always talked about the fact that
she looked up to Martha Stewart to the extent where
she and Ryan Reynolds kept their really problematic plantation adding
a secret they didn't release any photos except to do
a cover with Martha Stewart's magazine. But anyway, I digress
so hot. Off the heels of all of that, and
blake c Lively wanting to really separate herself from the
whole gossip girl persona, she launched a website called Preserve.
(08:25):
So Preserve was an artisanal lifestyle website. Jams so jam
many gems. Preserve sounds like a jam, yes, yes, And
the idea was that everything on the site was it
would have like recipes and articles and all this sorts
of stuff, but mostly it would be things from artisans
around America that blake c Lively said that she had
the hands selected to put on the website. So it's like,
(08:47):
if you bought something from this website, it was like
touched by blake Lively, not physically because something she was
packing the boxes.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
But she wasn't fingering the items before she.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
No, And it was a huge thing when it launched.
It launched with so much publicity. It launched was a
Vogue cover, which we'll get too, because the Vogue cover
was its undoing in the end. Oh so, Vogue described
it at the time as part digital monthly magazine, heart
e commerce venture, part video blog, and the site will
seek out and celebrate people all over America who were
(09:16):
making things food, clothes, pillows, dishes, dining room tables with
their hands.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And was it a photo of her, like baking or
doing homemakery things to accompany the article.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, so they did the whole you know, classic Vogue spread,
beautiful cover, all that sort of stuff. So there was
nothing in so much the Vogue article itself that was
It was a very general celebrity profile. It was a
lot about like Blake and Ran them making their life together.
It was more so the site itself when they launched,
and I didn't obviously didn't work and entertainment journalism back then,
but I just remember going on the site to look
(09:48):
at it just because there was so much buzz around
it and just kind of to see what Blake Clively
was peddling, and it was a bit of a weird time.
So there was a lot of stuff you could buy
on the site, but it was like salt for forty dollars,
and I couldn't tell what was important about the salt
except it was handpicked by Blake Clively. There was barbecue
sauce for twenty five dollars. Apparently that sold out. I
think that's because that was the thing her fans could afford.
(10:10):
Everyone wanted to touch Blake Lively, but all they could
afford was the twenty five dollars barbecue sauce that was
probably cost thirty dollars to.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Ship exactly, like they would have had to buy it
with a bunch of friends so they could get free shipping,
Like yeah, exactly, chip in so.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
We can buy the barbecue and then everyone gets one tablespoon.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, yeah, don't put it on your sausage.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
No, no, no, god no.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
She would never artisanal. Is that the word artisinal?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I think it is a pysonal results, Yeah, a little
bit of relish, if you There was also a lot
of trinkets on the site, so one of them that
went a little viral at the time was a wooden
heart with Christmas lights in the heart so it would
like light up. That was four hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Sounds very tacky.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
There was yeah, oh this place was tacky as hell.
There was a skirt for one hundred and sixty four
dollars that only was made in an extra small very chic.
There was also a floral bike basket made out of
a crate that retail for ninety five dollars, so it
was very much trait. Yeah, like an old crate that
was made into a flower cart that you could then
(11:10):
dig onto a bike. So yeah, So basically it was
selling this lifestyle that was trying to almost mirror the
Goop lifestyle, but the group one was like so crazy
unattainable that it was entertaining. But also Gwyneth Paltrow was
selling a lot of people were actually buying all the
things from her site because you can't just run a
huge business like that off buzz, So people were actually
buying Gwyneth Paltrow's clothing that she was selling and the
(11:33):
beauty product she was selling. Like as much as there
was like a lot of speculation excitement from media, people
were actually buying things from her site, whereas with Blake
Lively's site. I don't think anyone was really buying anything
because it was selling this lifestyle where like you would
wake up in the morning and bake, make Relish and
make relish and bake things in this weird artisanal cupcake
tin that like wasn't made properly but probably cost two
(11:55):
hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Or wearing your skirt that can only fit on.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
One lege that you were wearing it as an anklet.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Two percent of the population competed into so. And also
I think that on a big international scale, Gwyneth is
just so much more famous and a lot of people
are going to subscribe to her or just be really
interested in her lifestyle. Plus you look at her and
you believe everything about the site, and you believe, like
everything that she portrays is very wellness and goop lied.
(12:24):
Even though Blake is on the record as being a baker,
you don't look at her and think, oh, yeah, Serena
the relish maker, Yeah exactly, the salt like she that
you don't really imagine that she's putting forty dollars salt on.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I think the thing is you can attach a celebrity
name to something, but you've got to actually have the
product and the business plan to really make work like skims.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Kim Kardashian makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right, All the Kardashian brands are all made by the
same woman who works on all of them. Does the
business plan, does the strategy, does that? That's what the
Kardashians do really well, is that they pay really clever
people to come in and do all the business for them,
and then they put their faces on it. But they
also just make sure that the back of the shop
is working before they promote it to their followers. And
(13:09):
when they talk about their business acumen, they don't mean
them personally. They mean that they're smart enough to know
to hire the right people. Whereas the part of successful
knowing to like which people to pay and which people
to trust. Even just someone like Jessica Alba is very
famous and she's made over a billion dollars with her
company because it was tapping into products and things that
(13:30):
people really wanted.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So Blakelake Lively is just like I would like to
peddle some relish, yes pretty much, and everyone come and
work for me and will peddle the relish.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And she was like selling fairy lights and things, and
it was just it was a whole thing. The thing
about Preserve is that it looked gorgeous, but it was
all style and no substance. So when you clicked in,
they had obviously spent more time taking photos of Blake Lively,
which is there, she's beautiful. They had spent more time
taking photos of Blake Lively and getting like a beautiful
photography of her on the site than actually putting things
(14:00):
on the site. You could sell all articles you wanted
to read or videos, so when you first clicked on Preserve,
when it first opened, I remember clicking on and looking
at it. Even though I think I was working like
a little rural country town. I had no money, so
I was obviously was gonna buy a milk crate.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Absolutely not purchasing twenty five dollar no, absolutely dollar USD.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That was my food budget for the week. I'm pretty
sure back when I was at my first job, and
it had this photo of Blake Lively where she was
almost sitting in like a like a dusty attic that
they probably like was like in a multimillion dollar home
and it was in blackish dust and there was yeah,
someone dusted the dust over her, and then they had
like some light kind of spilling in from a window.
And she was wearing like a vintage lace nightgown and
(14:40):
I think she had like a cardigan that was falling off.
It was all very much, and she had her hair
it was all tossled, and she was writing like with
a pen and paper.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
But was it like a scribe.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I probably do think it was.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I see the vision that she had, and one hundred
percent she came up with it. She was like, I
just want to do this because it's gonna look.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Really oh, one hundred percent. She was like, my vision
is just this photo and then you guys can build
the website around it. And so the idea was. I mean,
she's good at telling a story, Blake Lively. I'll give
her that. She's really good at spinning a bit of
a yarm for her audience, because I think in her
head she was like, I've woken up in my country
cottage house. I've stumbled from my bed, I've pulled a
cardigan over my lace nightgown, and now I'm sitting in
(15:21):
the window still of my little farmhouse like writing out
my thoughts and.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
We get to Habasthma. Yeah, the dust is going to
set it off.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Exactly and also no one looks like that good may
wake up, but she actually did. Well, Oh, I don't
know about you. Do you look like you have a
like artisanal sumla, I look like Adam Sander's butler, just
like I stepped down anyway in that letter, because then
next to it you actually got to read what she
was writing with that scroll and pen, and it was this.
(15:50):
It was a letter saying it was from Blake Lively
to her audience, and it was her explaining why she
had launched Preserve. And in that letter she wrote that
she was hungry, and not just for enchiladas. That's a
direct quote. She said she was hungry for experience. And
then she said, sitting down to write this editor's letter
has been the hardest thing I've done yet on my
Reserve journey. I'm more intimidated than I should probably admit.
(16:14):
And this bit is so true, but it's like, don't
say it o loud. She said, I'm no editor, no artisan,
no expert, and I'm certainly no arbiter of what you
should buy, wear or eat.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Do you think that she was googling what big words
she could use?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Now? No, I mean again, I don't think she's a
dumb person.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I just think she was a dumb person. I just
say that those aren't words that come to many people's
vocabulary naturally.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yes, potentially, I just don't think if your if this
is the letter that you and you've gone to so
much trouble to take a photo of yourself allegedly writing
the letter in the sunlight, with the dust and the
beautiful hair.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Did you have beautiful handwriting?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah? I think Sobi could see, but it was more
of like she was holding the paper up. It was
a whole yeah, h you're meant to think that someone
had just wandered past accidentally and then just taking a
photo of her writing the letter, and she didn't know
what was going to be taken. It was the original
candid And then she said, but I've been fortunate enough
to travel. I've been all over the world and all
over this country. I've walked, listened, and gathered my thoughts
(17:14):
through countless incarnations of Main Street, USA. And there's so
much life teeming in every pocket of this country. There
are people creating magic with their bare hands, creating things
that land the amazing intersection between art and function. I
found that when approached with a curious spirit. People are kind,
they're generous, they answer if asked. They'll often open their
(17:34):
doors and hearts and let you in.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Because you're Blake wisely, because people.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
With wisdom.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Let me go.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, I don't think anyone else is wondering the world
and being led in with curiosity and yeah, but it's
nice for her that that's her lived expirit So like again,
her whole thinking was that she was going to find
a lot of artisans around the world and help them
sell their wares, and that never really eventuated.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Cue thought thought like nice thought.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So Preserve, I'm sad to say, irip Preserve twenty fourteen
to twenty fifteen because they closed. It closed within a year,
and a lot of it is traced back to the
original Vogue cover. Blake has never said that she's angry
about that, but so, okay, what happened was is that obviously,
landing a Vogue cover is a huge, huge thing. So
(18:27):
Blake lively did the cover and she had Vogue in
her home and it was this huge, huge publicity. And
then months later when Preserve was like really faltering and
there had been so many bad reviews because so many
it was at that time too, when people were doing
a lot of like I lived like a celebrity for
a day, I like did this kind of thing. So
a lot of people were ordering things from her website
to kind of like liver as Blake Lively for a day,
(18:49):
and there were lots of complaints from people who were
like writing stories about her productive her site, that the
packaging was really bad, that things didn't arrive on time
obviously they were super overpriced, and when they arrived people
were like, like, then God TikTok wasn't a thing then,
because she would have been absolutely roasted and said she
was mainly roast on like blogs and websites rings like that, yeah,
and that sort of stuff. So it didn't like kind
(19:09):
of of.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The internet more so than mainstream algorithm. Oh no, you've
gone completely by.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And so when the website closed,
she basically just had to say, like, we weren't ready
to launch, we launched too soon, and so we weren't
able to pull the business together. Well, she did come
out and say like, I just don't think we're doing
good in the world. But you don't shut down in
business because it's not doing good in the world. If
you're a celebrity. She shut it down.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Because it wasn't making it was hemorrhaging money.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It was hemorrhaging money.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And Ryan Reynolds was like, OI, you enjoyed your passion project. Yeah,
but let's we got to nip it in the bard Blake.
You've got a start, we've got a mortgage to pay,
we've got several we've got our big house, we've got
our small house. Yeah, we need you to cut it.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah. It was all happening. And then later on an interview,
she said that if she could go back in time,
the one thing she would do is wait like almost
a year to launch it, because she said, and I
do feel for her in this moment because it would
be a tricky situation. So she said she wasn't ready
to launch preserve that she hadn't got everything light it
behind the scenes. She hadn't really got her team together.
She had of what the company would be. But then
(20:12):
Vogue called and said, we'll put you on the cover
on this state and you have to and she exactly
she said that she's like, you don't say no to Vogue,
you don't say no to Anna Win Tour. And so
in order to secure that Vogue cover that Vogue had
just said to her, we're putting you on the cover
on this state. Have your website ready to go? She
had to hustle behind the scenes, and basically she pressed
(20:33):
start on the website or go I don't know what
you do on a website before. Yeah, press before they
were ready, and then because they had such a bad start,
they faltered so badly behind the scenes. Basically she said
that they can never recover.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Which sucks, Like, Yeah, every single person in their career
has a big f up or they have failures, like
we all do, but most of us don't do it
in the public eye one hundred buses. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And also, I guess, like one good thing about the
fame when you're starting a business is that you have
that built in audience. But obviously the bad thing is not
ro quietly in the background and refine things, get things
sorted before you find an audience. So a lot of
people came in that first two weeks, for the first
two months that Preserve was up, saw what a shit
show it was, and then like bailed out of there
and never came back. And I think also Blake C.
(21:22):
Lively was talking about when her business failed, about how
much she felt she was really pitted against Gwyneth Paltrow
and Martha Stewart, and she's like, I don't feel like
male entrepreneurs get pitted against each other in the same way.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I mean, she's never said this, but I feel like,
because Gwyneth Paltrow, everyone was like, oh, she was a
mean girl to Blake Lively and all this sort of stuff.
I feel like now Gwyneth Paltrow has like really over
corrected an interesting way because she.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Was a mean girl to Blake Lively.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
No, no one's ever that was like a tabloid thing.
I actually don't think she was, but there was this
whole thing of like the blonde white women fighting with
their lifestyle websites and Gwyneth Paltrow's trounced Blake Lively. That
was the kind of story at the time. And now
I think Gwyneth Paltrow has like overcorrected. Whereas any other
celebrity launches a website that's kind of in the same
world as group, she's so quick to jump in like
(22:08):
that's why she had done. Yeah, we had Courtney Kadashi
on her podcast and they've posted photos together because when
Courtney launched Poosh, everyone called her wanna be Gwyneth And
that's also you know, recently she put up that Instagram
story about people are asking me if I'm fighting with
Megan Markel over our lifestyle sites, and then she'd panned
the camera and Megan's like sitting up at her kitchen
table with her leg up on the table, eating cake,
(22:28):
and she just kind of shrugged. So it's like that
whole thing of showing that they're really close, from which
I like the behind.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I do like that the narrative that there's room for
everyone rather than pitting each other, because there is, like
people want to read articles and want to buy things.
They always will, so it's okay to have different platforms
to do it. Can we get into the goss?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Okay, yes, this is what Kelly's been waiting for. So
the reason why we're to luck.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Anyway back to the history. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
we need to talk about the gossip.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I thought we just had to understand where we're coming from.
But yes, the reason why we're talking about this this week,
apart from the fact that I will talk to anyone
about Blake c Lively's Preserve anytime that they want to
chat about it. Is that this week, in the midst
of the whole Justin Baldoni lawsuit, six former staff members
of Blake Clively's lifestyle website Preserve have come forward about
(23:19):
what it was like to work for her. And this
is the first time these stories have ever come out,
which could be Justin's team pushing them. Also, maybe a
ten year NDA, Yeah, potentially.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Because if it shut ten years ago, they might have
had a settlement and signed something that said they couldn't
talk about it for a decade.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
That is word on the street exactly why they're doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh my god, I wonder how much they got. I
would love someone to be awful to me for money.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh okay, I'm I'm sure we could have read that
this is Sydney after all.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Can you be awful to me? And then I'm going
to pray you and you're like pay.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Me, you know what you can buy my silence and
my soul and everything.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
That's I'm so like here for that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, it's like the end of whiteloaders. So like, I
can't believe she took the money. I was like, as
if she couldn't. I would I would have as.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well taken ten grand to be fair.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, exactly, you could have lowballed me. So apparently these
people who have worked for Blake c. Lively think it's
very ironic. These are from the it was Daily Mail
who ran the whole big expos eight and interviewed them,
So they think it's very ironic that Blake c. Lively
is suing Justin Baldoni and his studio for a toxic
work environment when she herself made them work in a
toxic workplace. So they said working for Blake Lively and
(24:27):
Preserve was toxic, unprofessional and chaotic. So one staffer told
The Daily Mail that the entire company was an absolute disaster.
Oh and the workplace allegations that Blake Lively is now
making against Justin Baldoni this is still the same source,
are deeply ironic, given that it was one of the
most insane, toxic, emotionally draining and disorganized environs you could
(24:47):
ever imagine.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
That's not what you want to want to read on
the last store when you go on.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
No, not at all. Another ex employee said, the impression
that Blake Lively left on me after I worked to
preserve is that she just didn't care it was a
really toxic work environment. Well, the we're toxic getting a
whole kind of rundown here. That same staffer was trying
to get examples about saying that, and this is I
think it feels true. Again, it's an allegation, but it
ties into that idea that Blake Lively was really all
(25:13):
about like the visual elements of her company, but not
the inner workings. So this particular person told the Daily
Mail that they were going to do a photo shoot
for the brand at Blake Lively's Westchester Country estate in
New York. That's where she's neighbors with Martha Stewart. And
when the preserved staffers and a model all arrived, so
Blake c. Lively wasn't going to be in the photos.
(25:34):
They had brought a model, they had brought the whole
photo crew. They were going to this whole day shoot
at Blake Lively's home, and they said that she just
stumbled out of the house late, looking like an absolute
mess and wasn't prepared for them at all. And they
gave the impression that she had told all these people
like demanded they come to her home to do this
photo shoot and then she wasn't prepared, is the allegation.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, I know, none of what I'd like if I
had a dollar, But I just think, like you could
literally write this about most CEOs of company. Yeah, there's
always disgruntled employees, there's always a little bit of dever
activity and especially and I'll probably get in trouble for
saying this, but there is a big difference between a
(26:16):
lot of female CEOs and a lot of male CEOs.
Female CEOs do tend to care about the optics and
the aesthetics more. And this is generalization, of course, but
more so than the male CEOs, who are like numbers,
how does it work in the back end. So then
it is harder sometimes to work for women because they're like,
(26:36):
let's do it like this. Oh wait, no, no, no, no,
I actually want to do it like this, whereas a
man's just like do it. I don't care, just as
long as it's making money. And I know, I just
want to put on the record. I know that that's
a generalization, but I also know that I've worked for
a lot of women and a lot of men, and
there's some real key similarities.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think that's fair enough, especially
maybe in a particular type of woman who would be
wanting to run this company or so like the fief
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's not like a data company.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
But I also think it's time back into what Blake
Lively was saying about women having that microscope on them,
because I wonder if they just know that, they'll be
more ripped apart if like the photos don't look a
certain way, or they don't look a certain way or something,
because there's more of a microscope on the look of
it rather than exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But then ten years later there's a huge microscope on
it because she's an awful boss to work for, whereas
if it was well, actually Ryan Reynolds. Because she's a
celebrity and a woman, then people are immediately like, well,
she's just a mule. Even though most workplaces there's problems
with the boss. There always is that to.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Your life works yeah, yeah, oh no, one hundred percent.
The other allegation that's come from her team is that
Blake Clively, who is famously like very very close to
her family. She's got a big family, most of them
are actors or in the entertainment industry. In this case,
she hired her brother, Eric Lively to be the creative
director of the company. And the thing about Paul Eric
is that it seems that he was quite underqualified, oh
(28:01):
to be in that role.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Very underqualified.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I don't personally know Eric. I know her sister's a
bit more because they're like actresses in their own right.
This is the first one I've actually ever thought of
Eric Lively, you have to say. But they alleged that
he was made the creative director and he had no
idea how to do the job. They said he was
very careless with his role and often overslept and wouldn't
turn up to the office relatable and would leave the staffers.
The thing about him over sleeping, He's the only one
(28:25):
who had the key of the office, so everyone had
to wait for him to come to let them into
the Preserve office. Very annoying. Out of everything, this is
the one thing I was like, everything else I'd be
okay with, not this.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Very annoying. The first time I've heard something like that though, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And so all the people who worked at Preserve would
have to wait outside in the cold on the streets
of Manhattan where they were working from a studio apartment
until Eric woke up and came and let them in.
They also said, once they got into the Eric coming down, I'm.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Just imagining he hasn't brushed his teeth. He's roll out,
rolled out of bed for some reason. He's got a
drinking problem in my mind, Like this is just purely
speculation in my head. So he stinks like booze. Yeah,
he's super hungover and he rolls out. He's a little
bit cold because he forgot his coat, and he's sorry,
everyone get up stairs. And then they're like, oh, you
smell because you didn't brush your teeth and you stink
(29:16):
like booze.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Oh my, Eric Lively's not coming out of this looking good.
He also makes you think he'd be the person who
comes Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Everyone's straight here,
but it's got a massive.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Stuff, none for anyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And he's obviously waited in line for a while.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So it was me when I worked in an office. Sorry, guys,
he's so late.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean, look, that's me a lot get through. Also,
maybe I got held up from getting the caffeine to here.
You don't know. Sorry. The other thing is that once
Eric would finally arrive and let the stuff into the
preserve offices. They had to all sit and work from
the floor of a studio apartment, they're alleging because nobody
bought them desks or chairs, and so I don't know,
(29:54):
is it they said were quite comfortable if there was
a rug. I don't know. There was no rug, Kelly.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This is not a world with Ruggs wooden floor boards.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
There absolutely was not. So. One of the former staff
members told The Daily Mail allegedly that for many we
weeks and months there were no desks, and they said
the irony of it being a lifestyle site that was
selling these really expensive weares was not lost on anyone,
and that Eric, who claimed to be an actor but
who never really acted, was acting the part of a
(30:25):
creative director.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Do you think that the kitchen had all of this
expensive Artisian artistical artisanal goods for their I don't think so.
Did they shop at Aldi for their stuff?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Probably not even that, because.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
There is no salt and pepper in this kitchen.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
No, I think, because like I think, like the workspace
for a lot of these kind of lifestyle companies, it's
like when you look at the group officers, like it's
all these beige rooms with sunlight, and the group women
who were always like beautiful and tall.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And women have anything on their desk.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Don't even look at their computers. They are above that.
They've they've they've surpassed computers.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
They make AI from their brain into the comput and.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
It happens exactly, and they're all wearing cream e beasion.
They wafted through the office and that's part of the aesthetic.
Whereas Preserve never like got that far to have the
office be part of their brand, so instead they were
all just sitting on the floor of the studio apartment
in Manhattan. And they also alleged that Blake Clively and
Eric Lively, who somehow become the villain of the story
even more so, would forget to pay them for months
(31:32):
and months and months. So when they finally get allegedly,
can you imagine if Eric.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
This is just kellies, This is a fantasy, is a
weird fantasy?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, it's yeah, one hundred percent. The Daily Mail hasn't
even said this. We've just made it so much.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It would be good working for the Daily Mail because
I could just come up with scenarios in my head.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
You guys don't even need a sauce. I'll make it up.
I will, and so apparently because Blake and Eric Lively
never paid their staff. Allegedly, once their preserved team trekked
through the streets of Manhattan, waited outside the cold, went
upstairs and sat on the floor, they had no money
to buy food, and some of them really because they
never got pay they said, and that some of them
(32:14):
some days couldn't even afford to get to the office
because they couldn't afford to buy subway tickets because they
Blake Lively hadn't paid them.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Come on, allegedly, this sounds like, you know, the devils,
this is actually in the space. Feel like that's a
little bit far fetched. So none of them live in
New York City, probably can afford the subway without you.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I don't know. It was never going to be paying
that much, no, I know, but if you haven't been
paid for a few months, things would be true, a
dire true. And then they said that it ended in
such a terrible way that a lot of them said
they allegedly got these really big payouts from Blake and
Ryan am assuming and Eric. I don't think Eric's paying anyone.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Just also put forward a complaint. He said, Blake, this
is not what I signed up for.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, He's like, I'm having to remember the key. Oh,
I had to push frozen bodies off the floor. Yeah,
I had to try and sell barbecue sauce. It's not
the life Eric dreamed of. So that all happened. And
then the staff have also alleged they tried to get
the story out there for years, but every time they did,
Leslie Sloane, who's Blake Lively's publicist and like very kind
(33:17):
of famous in the celebrity world, have been able to
like shut things down and move stories around and all
that sort of stuff. Diana shut Yeah, yeah, that kind
of vibe. It's like tree Pain Taylors's publicist, then Leslie's
Sloane kind of and so the two of them coming
together unstoppable. And she has been shutting this story down
for years, is what they're saying. But it's only because
the tide has turned against Blake Lively and this whole
(33:38):
thing has come out with Justin Baldoni that they feel
they can speak up. So that's that's the story this week.
Which do you think that that's going to have an
effect now on her public perception or have or have
a role on effect like how people in the case
see her, because it shouldn't matter what she did at
a company like over a decade ago for how she's
(33:59):
kind of behaving now. But I think the other thing
it's getting missed is that she's not just alleging that
Justin Baldoni treated her badly on the set. She's also
alleging sexual harassment all this other stuff. I feel like
this also feels like a bit of a decoy from
that information.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I completely agree, and like, I'm not the same person
I was a decade ago. Are you the same person
you were a decade ago?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Man? I mean, look, maybe a little bit. I'm not
really big on personal growth, but maybe maybe listen, it's
a little bit. But I'm a bit more adult.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think that Firstly, it's two entirely separate issues. Secondly,
it shouldn't have anything to do with it. If they
wanted to take her to court, they could have. Yeah,
Like do you know what, I it's they're two separate things.
And to be fair, as we've discussed before, the internet
really loves piling on women. And you're either really team
(34:45):
Blake or you're really team Justin, and for the people
that are already really team Justin. Of course he is
going to give them more AMMO. But I don't think
it matters. It shouldn't have anything to do with this case.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, on one hand, I sort of see why
her legal team they're trying to show precedent for her
behaving a certain way, because Justin Baldoni is not just
denying what she said. He's got a whole list of
separate accusations, and those accusations are that she took over,
she was controlling, she was overbearing, she was awful to
him and other people who worked on the set, and
(35:18):
that she caused him emotional distress and made them lose money.
And so I understand why his legal team would be like,
if we can show that there's presence of pert of
being like this in workplaces, I can understand why they
think that would work. But I think their tactic is
more like a hay, look over here kind of thing. Yeah,
look at this, like blonde, beautiful woman who was allegedly
bad to her staff and who had a failed on
(35:38):
the floor with it, yeah, and who had a failure
out in the gold and who had a failed lifestyle brand, like,
isn't that awful and they want people to kind of
jump on that idea instead of looking deeper into the
allegations against him. I would kind of like say that
that's maybe more of the plan they have.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
But if they really want to, they can bring these
people on to do a character whatever it is about her,
like at the end of the day, if they want
it to be a part of the case, they'll have
to bring it into the court and they'll be sub painted.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah. I love that. You know what subpoened is now?
Well you that in your every day every day now, I've.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Felt so uncomfortable coming off the time they are being subpoened. Yeah, no,
you said it Beautifullyay, thanks, I still say artisanal artisal.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
You did it. Oh my god. We'll be iant to
take us to the end of the episode. If you've
achieved and learned one thing today, it's that thank you
for that. Blake Lively. So the Blake Live and Eric
ever forget Eric, our favorite supporting player. I wonder what
he is up to now? We should go look into
I am our new favorite and new favorite Blake Lively
family member. And as I said, the Blake Lively and
(36:39):
Justin Bell Journey case is still ongoing, so report any updates,
but at this moment it is set to the first
court date to take place in March twenty twenty six,
so we've got some news before then.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Thank you so much for listening to the Spill today
and don't forget to follow us on TikTok. The Spill
is produced by monsha Is Warren with sound production by
Scott Stronik mom and Mia Studios. Is styled with furniture
from Fenton Fenton. As I said at the top, and
it's usual visit Fenton and Fenton dot com dot au
and we'll be back in your ears on your podcast
feed at three pm tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Bye bye, let H
So much.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders
that this podcast is recorded on From Mamma Mia. Welcome
to the Spill, your daily pop culture fixed. I'm Laura
Brodnick and.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm Kelly mccaren and I cannot believe that I get
to sit here for the very first recording of the
Spill in the brands spanking new studios. It's so fancy.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I know we're still on couches, but now we're on
fancy couch chancy couches.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
As soon as I walked in, I was like, oh,
I'm so jealous because when I moved, all I wanted
was vent In and fent In everything, but I couldn't
have bought it. But now I kind of get to
live it a little bit.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I know now when you've vis couch.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes, I mean I do do a lot of records sometimes,
so I'll effectively be living here.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yes, we're in our new Mumamea offices finally after recording
remotely for a few weeks, and this is the first
time you and I have recorded together in the new studio.
It is the excitement hence White took us about half
an hour to get started.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yes, yes, yes, well we also had a lot of
shit about We've seen each other for at least five days.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Oh that is a long time, a lot of build up.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
But what are we talking about today? Because we are
going deep on just one subject and I'm so excited.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, so there's so much to say. This has been
over ten years in the making to get to the
moment of this story. So we are deep diving on
a brand new Blake Lively controversy that most people wouldn't
even be across and I.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Didn't even know it exists.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh my god, buckling, Because you know how people say
you have a Roman empire, like the one thing you
talk about or you think about all the time, and
mine is Blake Lively's lifestyle website.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hard disagreed. Yeah, it's that data leak thing that we
covered like a month ago. You knew so much about
it and I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
I know. Okay, so you've got to several Roman empires.
Let's just establish there's two things that keep me up
at night, well three things. Alexander Scara's guards shorts, the
Sony data leak, and the launch and failure and the
behind the scenes stories of Blake Clively's lifestyle website, which
we're going to get into because it's been a big
week in the new cycle for Blake Lively.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
It has. Last week it was Paris, this week's it's Blake.
It's not a good time to be a lady in.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Actually absolutely never is. So recently we talked on the
spill of the fact that Justin Baldoni, who is still
locked in a big legal battle with Blake Lively, they're
both seeing each other. The trial is not until March
next year.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
This is going to be ongoing for quite some time.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yes, so they're in the discoverability period though, yeah, exactly
that there's always a lot of mistation coming through. So
recently we reported that Justin Baldoni's legal team had sent
Taylor Swift a subpoena to basically go through her phone,
her computer and potentially have her appear in court to
testify about her involvement with the making ofvid Ends with us.
(02:55):
And then in the last few days it was confirmed
that Justin's legal team had dropped the subpoena and Blake
Lively's team put out this huge response saying that they
had always targeted Taylor Swift because she's a famous woman
and they were trying to use her name to get,
you know, people to to take Justin's side. And they
also alluded to the fact that Blake c Lively's legal
team and Taylor Swift's legal team had worked together to
(03:17):
get the subpoena dropped, which is really interesting because Taylor
and Blake haven't been seen together in a really long time.
There's obviously a lot of theories.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, so they've had a allegrations speculating.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Your theory out there is that Taylor Swift's father, who's
obviously like super involved in her career, like her whole
family is, is the one that leaked to the press
that Blake Clively had allegedly threatened Taylor Swift that she
would release all their personal messages if she didn't take
her side publicly in the Justin and Blake situation. That's
(03:51):
the story.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I don't know if that's true or not, but I
don't think or if it was, you'd be so annoyed,
you'd be like, Dan, please stay out of it. Yeah,
I know, Like I remember one time Luke messaged someone
that I was having a fight with did he and
I was like, can you not? But I asked him, like,
just I think family members or loved ones just stay
(04:11):
out of it. Let grown ups fight their own battle.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Also, you and your friend can have a disagreement and
can come out of it. But once a partner gets involved.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
In exactly because like, just stay out of it.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
If that happened to me, I'd be like my friend
and I can get through this. But if my friend's
partner messaged me, I would hate them forever or their
father side.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
But I did get in trouble for friends now husband
once oh really yeah yeah, But we got through it,
and he sent me a very cranky, cranky, cranky message.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I wouldn't get I wouldn't get over that.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
I'm like a bloke though, when like, I just don't care, like.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I know, But it's also none of your business. It's
between you and your friend, I know. But it's between
Taylor and Blake and not the dolo. Allegedly their boyfriends
are also involved as well.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Which is because we discussed the yeah yeah, which Travis
unfollowed Ryan, And.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's a whole murky situation.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Why do you think that the subpoena was dropped because
if I'm thinking about it just from a really generalized view,
I wouldn't care if my phone was subpoena.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
But then that all your personal information could be put
then into the lawsuit, which is then made public. And
Taylor Sift is such a private personal so then it's
public record. Yeah, a lot of it would be because
I thought it would be just for the team.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
No.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
I mean, the lawyers can go through to do the discoverability,
but even someone as private as Taylor Swift having her
private messages show into a whole team of lawyers, Like,
even if it wasn't officially made public, things get leaked,
things get passed on, Like true, Taylors's phone would be
an absolute hotbed of information that's like under lock and key.
So I just don't think that she would want anything
out there. Also, it's bringing her to a legal case
(05:46):
that she and her team keep saying that she has
nothing to do with, so even having appen it, yeah,
so that neither of them have said anything publicly about it.
But we just know that Taylorsift's phone is safe for
another day. The other story that has come out about
Blake c Lively. This week deserves our attention because there
have been a whole host of new allegations from someone
(06:07):
who isn't Justin Baldoni and his team, although I do
think that they've played a little bit of a part.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, I'm wondering, like they maybe nudge nudged these people
for what we're about to discuss.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yes, because all of this really happened back in twenty fourteen,
and also allegedly a lot of the people who have
spoken had settlements, So maybe there was a time lapse
on like when they could discuss things, or maybe it's
come out because it's going to be part of the
legal case. Hard to say, but I don't know if
you remember this. In twenty fourteen, when Blake C. Lively
launched her big lifestyle website called Preserve.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I genuinely had never ever even heard of this.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
You must have had a life, you must have been
off living.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
They know all about Goop, I know about pooshe Yeah,
that's it. I did not know. Oh sorry, and now
Meghan's got her new lifestyle. Oh as ever, yeah, as ever,
I did not know that there were other websites, wellness website.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Well, this was coming in hot off the heels of
Goop being this huge success and Gwyneth Paltrow launching a
lifestyle brand that was bringing in more money at the
time than her film career. Obviously, Martha Stewart was kind
of the original person in that area. She and Blake
Lively were really close friends and actually lived near each other,
like kind of an upstate New York you know, wherever
which people live.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I don't know, yes, but their yigger apartment house.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Their apartment in the city, and then they had these
like huge estates outside the city and they were neighbors.
And also Blake Clively because she always talked about all
through Gossip Girl, like everyone's like, are You're a wild
party girl and all her interviews and she was like, no,
I just stay home and bake. And I do honestly
think some of that is true.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It also is maybe one of the things that bonded
her and Taylor Swift initially because Taylor Swift is in Notorious.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
I love that line that you've drawn there. Oh my god,
they're just girls at home baking. Before the friendship was
ripped apart by Justin Beldone.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And just they really enjoyed baking together. Everyone thought that
they were just out there having their hot girl summers,
having near bake girls, making cup very wholesome.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
So blake Lively had always talked about the fact that
she looked up to Martha Stewart to the extent where
she and Ryan Reynolds kept their really problematic plantation adding
a secret they didn't release any photos except to do
a cover with Martha Stewart's magazine. But anyway, I digress
so hot. Off the heels of all of that, and
blake c Lively wanting to really separate herself from the
whole gossip girl persona, she launched a website called Preserve.
(08:25):
So Preserve was an artisanal lifestyle website. Jams so jam
many gems. Preserve sounds like a jam, yes, yes, And
the idea was that everything on the site was it
would have like recipes and articles and all this sorts
of stuff, but mostly it would be things from artisans
around America that blake c Lively said that she had
the hands selected to put on the website. So it's like,
(08:47):
if you bought something from this website, it was like
touched by blake Lively, not physically because something she was
packing the boxes.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
But she wasn't fingering the items before she.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
No, And it was a huge thing when it launched.
It launched with so much publicity. It launched was a
Vogue cover, which we'll get too, because the Vogue cover
was its undoing in the end. Oh so, Vogue described
it at the time as part digital monthly magazine, heart
e commerce venture, part video blog, and the site will
seek out and celebrate people all over America who were
(09:16):
making things food, clothes, pillows, dishes, dining room tables with
their hands.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
And was it a photo of her, like baking or
doing homemakery things to accompany the article.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, so they did the whole you know, classic Vogue spread,
beautiful cover, all that sort of stuff. So there was
nothing in so much the Vogue article itself that was
It was a very general celebrity profile. It was a
lot about like Blake and Ran them making their life together.
It was more so the site itself when they launched,
and I didn't obviously didn't work and entertainment journalism back then,
but I just remember going on the site to look
(09:48):
at it just because there was so much buzz around
it and just kind of to see what Blake Clively
was peddling, and it was a bit of a weird time.
So there was a lot of stuff you could buy
on the site, but it was like salt for forty dollars,
and I couldn't tell what was important about the salt
except it was handpicked by Blake Clively. There was barbecue
sauce for twenty five dollars. Apparently that sold out. I
think that's because that was the thing her fans could afford.
(10:10):
Everyone wanted to touch Blake Lively, but all they could
afford was the twenty five dollars barbecue sauce that was
probably cost thirty dollars to.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Ship exactly, like they would have had to buy it
with a bunch of friends so they could get free shipping,
Like yeah, exactly, chip in so.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
We can buy the barbecue and then everyone gets one tablespoon.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, yeah, don't put it on your sausage.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
No, no, no, god no.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
She would never artisanal. Is that the word artisinal?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I think it is a pysonal results, Yeah, a little
bit of relish, if you There was also a lot
of trinkets on the site, so one of them that
went a little viral at the time was a wooden
heart with Christmas lights in the heart so it would
like light up. That was four hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Sounds very tacky.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
There was yeah, oh this place was tacky as hell.
There was a skirt for one hundred and sixty four
dollars that only was made in an extra small very chic.
There was also a floral bike basket made out of
a crate that retail for ninety five dollars, so it
was very much trait. Yeah, like an old crate that
was made into a flower cart that you could then
(11:10):
dig onto a bike. So yeah, So basically it was
selling this lifestyle that was trying to almost mirror the
Goop lifestyle, but the group one was like so crazy
unattainable that it was entertaining. But also Gwyneth Paltrow was
selling a lot of people were actually buying all the
things from her site because you can't just run a
huge business like that off buzz, So people were actually
buying Gwyneth Paltrow's clothing that she was selling and the
(11:33):
beauty product she was selling. Like as much as there
was like a lot of speculation excitement from media, people
were actually buying things from her site, whereas with Blake
Lively's site. I don't think anyone was really buying anything
because it was selling this lifestyle where like you would
wake up in the morning and bake, make Relish and
make relish and bake things in this weird artisanal cupcake
tin that like wasn't made properly but probably cost two
(11:55):
hundred dollars.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Or wearing your skirt that can only fit on.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
One lege that you were wearing it as an anklet.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Two percent of the population competed into so. And also
I think that on a big international scale, Gwyneth is
just so much more famous and a lot of people
are going to subscribe to her or just be really
interested in her lifestyle. Plus you look at her and
you believe everything about the site, and you believe, like
everything that she portrays is very wellness and goop lied.
(12:24):
Even though Blake is on the record as being a baker,
you don't look at her and think, oh, yeah, Serena
the relish maker, Yeah exactly, the salt like she that
you don't really imagine that she's putting forty dollars salt on.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I think the thing is you can attach a celebrity
name to something, but you've got to actually have the
product and the business plan to really make work like skims.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Kim Kardashian makes sense.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Right, All the Kardashian brands are all made by the
same woman who works on all of them. Does the
business plan, does the strategy, does that? That's what the
Kardashians do really well, is that they pay really clever
people to come in and do all the business for them,
and then they put their faces on it. But they
also just make sure that the back of the shop
is working before they promote it to their followers. And
(13:09):
when they talk about their business acumen, they don't mean
them personally. They mean that they're smart enough to know
to hire the right people. Whereas the part of successful
knowing to like which people to pay and which people
to trust. Even just someone like Jessica Alba is very
famous and she's made over a billion dollars with her
company because it was tapping into products and things that
(13:30):
people really wanted.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
So Blakelake Lively is just like I would like to
peddle some relish, yes pretty much, and everyone come and
work for me and will peddle the relish.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
And she was like selling fairy lights and things, and
it was just it was a whole thing. The thing
about Preserve is that it looked gorgeous, but it was
all style and no substance. So when you clicked in,
they had obviously spent more time taking photos of Blake Lively,
which is there, she's beautiful. They had spent more time
taking photos of Blake Lively and getting like a beautiful
photography of her on the site than actually putting things
(14:00):
on the site. You could sell all articles you wanted
to read or videos, so when you first clicked on Preserve,
when it first opened, I remember clicking on and looking
at it. Even though I think I was working like
a little rural country town. I had no money, so
I was obviously was gonna buy a milk crate.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Absolutely not purchasing twenty five dollar no, absolutely dollar USD.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That was my food budget for the week. I'm pretty
sure back when I was at my first job, and
it had this photo of Blake Lively where she was
almost sitting in like a like a dusty attic that
they probably like was like in a multimillion dollar home
and it was in blackish dust and there was yeah,
someone dusted the dust over her, and then they had
like some light kind of spilling in from a window.
And she was wearing like a vintage lace nightgown and
(14:40):
I think she had like a cardigan that was falling off.
It was all very much, and she had her hair
it was all tossled, and she was writing like with
a pen and paper.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
But was it like a scribe.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
I probably do think it was.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I see the vision that she had, and one hundred
percent she came up with it. She was like, I
just want to do this because it's gonna look.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Really oh, one hundred percent. She was like, my vision
is just this photo and then you guys can build
the website around it. And so the idea was. I mean,
she's good at telling a story, Blake Lively. I'll give
her that. She's really good at spinning a bit of
a yarm for her audience, because I think in her
head she was like, I've woken up in my country
cottage house. I've stumbled from my bed, I've pulled a
cardigan over my lace nightgown, and now I'm sitting in
(15:21):
the window still of my little farmhouse like writing out
my thoughts and.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
We get to Habasthma. Yeah, the dust is going to
set it off.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Exactly and also no one looks like that good may
wake up, but she actually did. Well, Oh, I don't
know about you. Do you look like you have a
like artisanal sumla, I look like Adam Sander's butler, just
like I stepped down anyway in that letter, because then
next to it you actually got to read what she
was writing with that scroll and pen, and it was this.
(15:50):
It was a letter saying it was from Blake Lively
to her audience, and it was her explaining why she
had launched Preserve. And in that letter she wrote that
she was hungry, and not just for enchiladas. That's a
direct quote. She said she was hungry for experience. And
then she said, sitting down to write this editor's letter
has been the hardest thing I've done yet on my
Reserve journey. I'm more intimidated than I should probably admit.
(16:14):
And this bit is so true, but it's like, don't
say it o loud. She said, I'm no editor, no artisan,
no expert, and I'm certainly no arbiter of what you
should buy, wear or eat.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Do you think that she was googling what big words
she could use?
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Now? No, I mean again, I don't think she's a
dumb person.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
I just think she was a dumb person. I just
say that those aren't words that come to many people's
vocabulary naturally.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yes, potentially, I just don't think if your if this
is the letter that you and you've gone to so
much trouble to take a photo of yourself allegedly writing
the letter in the sunlight, with the dust and the
beautiful hair.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Did you have beautiful handwriting?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah? I think Sobi could see, but it was more
of like she was holding the paper up. It was
a whole yeah, h you're meant to think that someone
had just wandered past accidentally and then just taking a
photo of her writing the letter, and she didn't know
what was going to be taken. It was the original
candid And then she said, but I've been fortunate enough
to travel. I've been all over the world and all
over this country. I've walked, listened, and gathered my thoughts
(17:14):
through countless incarnations of Main Street, USA. And there's so
much life teeming in every pocket of this country. There
are people creating magic with their bare hands, creating things
that land the amazing intersection between art and function. I
found that when approached with a curious spirit. People are kind,
they're generous, they answer if asked. They'll often open their
(17:34):
doors and hearts and let you in.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Because you're Blake wisely, because people.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
With wisdom.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Let me go.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, I don't think anyone else is wondering the world
and being led in with curiosity and yeah, but it's
nice for her that that's her lived expirit So like again,
her whole thinking was that she was going to find
a lot of artisans around the world and help them
sell their wares, and that never really eventuated.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Cue thought thought like nice thought.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So Preserve, I'm sad to say, irip Preserve twenty fourteen
to twenty fifteen because they closed. It closed within a year,
and a lot of it is traced back to the
original Vogue cover. Blake has never said that she's angry
about that, but so, okay, what happened was is that obviously,
landing a Vogue cover is a huge, huge thing. So
(18:27):
Blake lively did the cover and she had Vogue in
her home and it was this huge, huge publicity. And
then months later when Preserve was like really faltering and
there had been so many bad reviews because so many
it was at that time too, when people were doing
a lot of like I lived like a celebrity for
a day, I like did this kind of thing. So
a lot of people were ordering things from her website
to kind of like liver as Blake Lively for a day,
(18:49):
and there were lots of complaints from people who were
like writing stories about her productive her site, that the
packaging was really bad, that things didn't arrive on time
obviously they were super overpriced, and when they arrived people
were like, like, then God TikTok wasn't a thing then,
because she would have been absolutely roasted and said she
was mainly roast on like blogs and websites rings like that, yeah,
and that sort of stuff. So it didn't like kind
(19:09):
of of.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
The internet more so than mainstream algorithm. Oh no, you've
gone completely by.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And so when the website closed,
she basically just had to say, like, we weren't ready
to launch, we launched too soon, and so we weren't
able to pull the business together. Well, she did come
out and say like, I just don't think we're doing
good in the world. But you don't shut down in
business because it's not doing good in the world. If
you're a celebrity. She shut it down.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Because it wasn't making it was hemorrhaging money.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
It was hemorrhaging money.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
And Ryan Reynolds was like, OI, you enjoyed your passion project. Yeah,
but let's we got to nip it in the bard Blake.
You've got a start, we've got a mortgage to pay,
we've got several we've got our big house, we've got
our small house. Yeah, we need you to cut it.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah. It was all happening. And then later on an interview,
she said that if she could go back in time,
the one thing she would do is wait like almost
a year to launch it, because she said, and I
do feel for her in this moment because it would
be a tricky situation. So she said she wasn't ready
to launch preserve that she hadn't got everything light it
behind the scenes. She hadn't really got her team together.
She had of what the company would be. But then
(20:12):
Vogue called and said, we'll put you on the cover
on this state and you have to and she exactly
she said that she's like, you don't say no to Vogue,
you don't say no to Anna Win Tour. And so
in order to secure that Vogue cover that Vogue had
just said to her, we're putting you on the cover
on this state. Have your website ready to go? She
had to hustle behind the scenes, and basically she pressed
(20:33):
start on the website or go I don't know what
you do on a website before. Yeah, press before they
were ready, and then because they had such a bad start,
they faltered so badly behind the scenes. Basically she said
that they can never recover.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Which sucks, Like, Yeah, every single person in their career
has a big f up or they have failures, like
we all do, but most of us don't do it
in the public eye one hundred buses. It's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And also, I guess, like one good thing about the
fame when you're starting a business is that you have
that built in audience. But obviously the bad thing is not
ro quietly in the background and refine things, get things
sorted before you find an audience. So a lot of
people came in that first two weeks, for the first
two months that Preserve was up, saw what a shit
show it was, and then like bailed out of there
and never came back. And I think also Blake C.
(21:22):
Lively was talking about when her business failed, about how
much she felt she was really pitted against Gwyneth Paltrow
and Martha Stewart, and she's like, I don't feel like
male entrepreneurs get pitted against each other in the same way.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I mean, she's never said this, but I feel like,
because Gwyneth Paltrow, everyone was like, oh, she was a
mean girl to Blake Lively and all this sort of stuff.
I feel like now Gwyneth Paltrow has like really over
corrected an interesting way because she.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Was a mean girl to Blake Lively.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
No, no one's ever that was like a tabloid thing.
I actually don't think she was, but there was this
whole thing of like the blonde white women fighting with
their lifestyle websites and Gwyneth Paltrow's trounced Blake Lively. That
was the kind of story at the time. And now
I think Gwyneth Paltrow has like overcorrected. Whereas any other
celebrity launches a website that's kind of in the same
world as group, she's so quick to jump in like
(22:08):
that's why she had done. Yeah, we had Courtney Kadashi
on her podcast and they've posted photos together because when
Courtney launched Poosh, everyone called her wanna be Gwyneth And
that's also you know, recently she put up that Instagram
story about people are asking me if I'm fighting with
Megan Markel over our lifestyle sites, and then she'd panned
the camera and Megan's like sitting up at her kitchen
table with her leg up on the table, eating cake,
(22:28):
and she just kind of shrugged. So it's like that
whole thing of showing that they're really close, from which
I like the behind.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
I do like that the narrative that there's room for
everyone rather than pitting each other, because there is, like
people want to read articles and want to buy things.
They always will, so it's okay to have different platforms
to do it. Can we get into the goss?
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Okay, yes, this is what Kelly's been waiting for. So
the reason why we're to luck.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Anyway back to the history. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
we need to talk about the gossip.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I thought we just had to understand where we're coming from.
But yes, the reason why we're talking about this this week,
apart from the fact that I will talk to anyone
about Blake c Lively's Preserve anytime that they want to
chat about it. Is that this week, in the midst
of the whole Justin Baldoni lawsuit, six former staff members
of Blake Clively's lifestyle website Preserve have come forward about
(23:19):
what it was like to work for her. And this
is the first time these stories have ever come out,
which could be Justin's team pushing them. Also, maybe a
ten year NDA, Yeah, potentially.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Because if it shut ten years ago, they might have
had a settlement and signed something that said they couldn't
talk about it for a decade.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
That is word on the street exactly why they're doing it.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh my god, I wonder how much they got. I
would love someone to be awful to me for money.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Oh okay, I'm I'm sure we could have read that
this is Sydney after all.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Can you be awful to me? And then I'm going
to pray you and you're like pay.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Me, you know what you can buy my silence and
my soul and everything.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
That's I'm so like here for that.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, it's like the end of whiteloaders. So like, I
can't believe she took the money. I was like, as
if she couldn't. I would I would have as.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Well taken ten grand to be fair.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, exactly, you could have lowballed me. So apparently these
people who have worked for Blake c. Lively think it's
very ironic. These are from the it was Daily Mail
who ran the whole big expos eight and interviewed them,
So they think it's very ironic that Blake c. Lively
is suing Justin Baldoni and his studio for a toxic
work environment when she herself made them work in a
toxic workplace. So they said working for Blake Lively and
(24:27):
Preserve was toxic, unprofessional and chaotic. So one staffer told
The Daily Mail that the entire company was an absolute disaster.
Oh and the workplace allegations that Blake Lively is now
making against Justin Baldoni this is still the same source,
are deeply ironic, given that it was one of the
most insane, toxic, emotionally draining and disorganized environs you could
(24:47):
ever imagine.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
That's not what you want to want to read on
the last store when you go on.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
No, not at all. Another ex employee said, the impression
that Blake Lively left on me after I worked to
preserve is that she just didn't care it was a
really toxic work environment. Well, the we're toxic getting a
whole kind of rundown here. That same staffer was trying
to get examples about saying that, and this is I
think it feels true. Again, it's an allegation, but it
ties into that idea that Blake Lively was really all
(25:13):
about like the visual elements of her company, but not
the inner workings. So this particular person told the Daily
Mail that they were going to do a photo shoot
for the brand at Blake Lively's Westchester Country estate in
New York. That's where she's neighbors with Martha Stewart. And
when the preserved staffers and a model all arrived, so
Blake c. Lively wasn't going to be in the photos.
(25:34):
They had brought a model, they had brought the whole
photo crew. They were going to this whole day shoot
at Blake Lively's home, and they said that she just
stumbled out of the house late, looking like an absolute
mess and wasn't prepared for them at all. And they
gave the impression that she had told all these people
like demanded they come to her home to do this
photo shoot and then she wasn't prepared, is the allegation.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, I know, none of what I'd like if I
had a dollar, But I just think, like you could
literally write this about most CEOs of company. Yeah, there's
always disgruntled employees, there's always a little bit of dever
activity and especially and I'll probably get in trouble for
saying this, but there is a big difference between a
(26:16):
lot of female CEOs and a lot of male CEOs.
Female CEOs do tend to care about the optics and
the aesthetics more. And this is generalization, of course, but
more so than the male CEOs, who are like numbers,
how does it work in the back end. So then
it is harder sometimes to work for women because they're like,
(26:36):
let's do it like this. Oh wait, no, no, no, no,
I actually want to do it like this, whereas a
man's just like do it. I don't care, just as
long as it's making money. And I know, I just
want to put on the record. I know that that's
a generalization, but I also know that I've worked for
a lot of women and a lot of men, and
there's some real key similarities.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I think that's fair enough, especially
maybe in a particular type of woman who would be
wanting to run this company or so like the fief
of it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's not like a data company.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
But I also think it's time back into what Blake
Lively was saying about women having that microscope on them,
because I wonder if they just know that, they'll be
more ripped apart if like the photos don't look a
certain way, or they don't look a certain way or something,
because there's more of a microscope on the look of
it rather than exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But then ten years later there's a huge microscope on
it because she's an awful boss to work for, whereas
if it was well, actually Ryan Reynolds. Because she's a
celebrity and a woman, then people are immediately like, well,
she's just a mule. Even though most workplaces there's problems
with the boss. There always is that to.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Your life works yeah, yeah, oh no, one hundred percent.
The other allegation that's come from her team is that
Blake Clively, who is famously like very very close to
her family. She's got a big family, most of them
are actors or in the entertainment industry. In this case,
she hired her brother, Eric Lively to be the creative
director of the company. And the thing about Paul Eric
is that it seems that he was quite underqualified, oh
(28:01):
to be in that role.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Very underqualified.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I don't personally know Eric. I know her sister's a
bit more because they're like actresses in their own right.
This is the first one I've actually ever thought of
Eric Lively, you have to say. But they alleged that
he was made the creative director and he had no
idea how to do the job. They said he was
very careless with his role and often overslept and wouldn't
turn up to the office relatable and would leave the staffers.
The thing about him over sleeping, He's the only one
(28:25):
who had the key of the office, so everyone had
to wait for him to come to let them into
the Preserve office. Very annoying. Out of everything, this is
the one thing I was like, everything else I'd be
okay with, not this.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Very annoying. The first time I've heard something like that though, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And so all the people who worked at Preserve would
have to wait outside in the cold on the streets
of Manhattan where they were working from a studio apartment
until Eric woke up and came and let them in.
They also said, once they got into the Eric coming down, I'm.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Just imagining he hasn't brushed his teeth. He's roll out,
rolled out of bed for some reason. He's got a
drinking problem in my mind, Like this is just purely
speculation in my head. So he stinks like booze. Yeah,
he's super hungover and he rolls out. He's a little
bit cold because he forgot his coat, and he's sorry,
everyone get up stairs. And then they're like, oh, you
smell because you didn't brush your teeth and you stink
(29:16):
like booze.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Oh my, Eric Lively's not coming out of this looking good.
He also makes you think he'd be the person who
comes Oh my god, I'm so sorry. Everyone's straight here,
but it's got a massive.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Stuff, none for anyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And he's obviously waited in line for a while.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
So it was me when I worked in an office. Sorry, guys,
he's so late.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
I mean, look, that's me a lot get through. Also,
maybe I got held up from getting the caffeine to here.
You don't know. Sorry. The other thing is that once
Eric would finally arrive and let the stuff into the
preserve offices. They had to all sit and work from
the floor of a studio apartment, they're alleging because nobody
bought them desks or chairs, and so I don't know,
(29:54):
is it they said were quite comfortable if there was
a rug. I don't know. There was no rug, Kelly.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This is not a world with Ruggs wooden floor boards.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
There absolutely was not. So. One of the former staff
members told The Daily Mail allegedly that for many we
weeks and months there were no desks, and they said
the irony of it being a lifestyle site that was
selling these really expensive weares was not lost on anyone,
and that Eric, who claimed to be an actor but
who never really acted, was acting the part of a
(30:25):
creative director.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Do you think that the kitchen had all of this
expensive Artisian artistical artisanal goods for their I don't think so.
Did they shop at Aldi for their stuff?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Probably not even that, because.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
There is no salt and pepper in this kitchen.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
No, I think, because like I think, like the workspace
for a lot of these kind of lifestyle companies, it's
like when you look at the group officers, like it's
all these beige rooms with sunlight, and the group women
who were always like beautiful and tall.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And women have anything on their desk.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Don't even look at their computers. They are above that.
They've they've they've surpassed computers.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
They make AI from their brain into the comput and.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
It happens exactly, and they're all wearing cream e beasion.
They wafted through the office and that's part of the aesthetic.
Whereas Preserve never like got that far to have the
office be part of their brand, so instead they were
all just sitting on the floor of the studio apartment
in Manhattan. And they also alleged that Blake Clively and
Eric Lively, who somehow become the villain of the story
even more so, would forget to pay them for months
(31:32):
and months and months. So when they finally get allegedly,
can you imagine if Eric.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
This is just kellies, This is a fantasy, is a
weird fantasy?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, it's yeah, one hundred percent. The Daily Mail hasn't
even said this. We've just made it so much.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It would be good working for the Daily Mail because
I could just come up with scenarios in my head.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
You guys don't even need a sauce. I'll make it up.
I will, and so apparently because Blake and Eric Lively
never paid their staff. Allegedly, once their preserved team trekked
through the streets of Manhattan, waited outside the cold, went
upstairs and sat on the floor, they had no money
to buy food, and some of them really because they
never got pay they said, and that some of them
(32:14):
some days couldn't even afford to get to the office
because they couldn't afford to buy subway tickets because they
Blake Lively hadn't paid them.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Come on, allegedly, this sounds like, you know, the devils,
this is actually in the space. Feel like that's a
little bit far fetched. So none of them live in
New York City, probably can afford the subway without you.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I don't know. It was never going to be paying
that much, no, I know, but if you haven't been
paid for a few months, things would be true, a
dire true. And then they said that it ended in
such a terrible way that a lot of them said
they allegedly got these really big payouts from Blake and
Ryan am assuming and Eric. I don't think Eric's paying anyone.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Just also put forward a complaint. He said, Blake, this
is not what I signed up for.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, He's like, I'm having to remember the key. Oh,
I had to push frozen bodies off the floor. Yeah,
I had to try and sell barbecue sauce. It's not
the life Eric dreamed of. So that all happened. And
then the staff have also alleged they tried to get
the story out there for years, but every time they did,
Leslie Sloane, who's Blake Lively's publicist and like very kind
(33:17):
of famous in the celebrity world, have been able to
like shut things down and move stories around and all
that sort of stuff. Diana shut Yeah, yeah, that kind
of vibe. It's like tree Pain Taylors's publicist, then Leslie's
Sloane kind of and so the two of them coming
together unstoppable. And she has been shutting this story down
for years, is what they're saying. But it's only because
the tide has turned against Blake Lively and this whole
(33:38):
thing has come out with Justin Baldoni that they feel
they can speak up. So that's that's the story this week.
Which do you think that that's going to have an
effect now on her public perception or have or have
a role on effect like how people in the case
see her, because it shouldn't matter what she did at
a company like over a decade ago for how she's
(33:59):
kind of behaving now. But I think the other thing
it's getting missed is that she's not just alleging that
Justin Baldoni treated her badly on the set. She's also
alleging sexual harassment all this other stuff. I feel like
this also feels like a bit of a decoy from
that information.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
I completely agree, and like, I'm not the same person
I was a decade ago. Are you the same person
you were a decade ago?
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Man? I mean, look, maybe a little bit. I'm not
really big on personal growth, but maybe maybe listen, it's
a little bit. But I'm a bit more adult.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
I think that Firstly, it's two entirely separate issues. Secondly,
it shouldn't have anything to do with it. If they
wanted to take her to court, they could have. Yeah,
Like do you know what, I it's they're two separate things.
And to be fair, as we've discussed before, the internet
really loves piling on women. And you're either really team
(34:45):
Blake or you're really team Justin, and for the people
that are already really team Justin. Of course he is
going to give them more AMMO. But I don't think
it matters. It shouldn't have anything to do with this case.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
I mean, on one hand, I sort of see why
her legal team they're trying to show precedent for her
behaving a certain way, because Justin Baldoni is not just
denying what she said. He's got a whole list of
separate accusations, and those accusations are that she took over,
she was controlling, she was overbearing, she was awful to
him and other people who worked on the set, and
(35:18):
that she caused him emotional distress and made them lose money.
And so I understand why his legal team would be like,
if we can show that there's presence of pert of
being like this in workplaces, I can understand why they
think that would work. But I think their tactic is
more like a hay, look over here kind of thing. Yeah,
look at this, like blonde, beautiful woman who was allegedly
bad to her staff and who had a failed on
(35:38):
the floor with it, yeah, and who had a failure
out in the gold and who had a failed lifestyle brand, like,
isn't that awful and they want people to kind of
jump on that idea instead of looking deeper into the
allegations against him. I would kind of like say that
that's maybe more of the plan they have.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
But if they really want to, they can bring these
people on to do a character whatever it is about her,
like at the end of the day, if they want
it to be a part of the case, they'll have
to bring it into the court and they'll be sub painted.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah. I love that. You know what subpoened is now?
Well you that in your every day every day now, I've.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Felt so uncomfortable coming off the time they are being subpoened. Yeah, no,
you said it Beautifullyay, thanks, I still say artisanal artisal.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
You did it. Oh my god. We'll be iant to
take us to the end of the episode. If you've
achieved and learned one thing today, it's that thank you
for that. Blake Lively. So the Blake Live and Eric
ever forget Eric, our favorite supporting player. I wonder what
he is up to now? We should go look into
I am our new favorite and new favorite Blake Lively
family member. And as I said, the Blake Lively and
(36:39):
Justin Bell Journey case is still ongoing, so report any updates,
but at this moment it is set to the first
court date to take place in March twenty twenty six,
so we've got some news before then.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Thank you so much for listening to the Spill today
and don't forget to follow us on TikTok. The Spill
is produced by monsha Is Warren with sound production by
Scott Stronik mom and Mia Studios. Is styled with furniture
from Fenton Fenton. As I said at the top, and
it's usual visit Fenton and Fenton dot com dot au
and we'll be back in your ears on your podcast
feed at three pm tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Bye bye, let H
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.