The Roast of Justin Baldoni (& Flaa)
13:43 Share

Good morning, millennials, because it's morning right now. We're dropping this right after we record it. And weirdly, even though we're having like a day of leisure, we are recording at the exact time that we record the regular show. Well, when I woke up this morning, I said, there's one thing I have to do. And it's to come on the internet and clear my name. You know, we, I, it's, you know,

We make everything about ourselves, of course. It's just kind of like our natural inclination. Yeah, we're human. It's seemingly impossible not to make the Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively drama about us. One, because I have like, I know there was a grassroots movement and also an astroturf movement, but I was a part of like the Blake Lively, Team Blake Lively grassroots movement. And I definitely like feel like

We were huge advocates and voices during that time. We were. So much so that when I was reading everything that's since come to light, which we will get into later in a bit. We have to catch up with ourselves, yourselves. So much so that I was reading it. I was like, damn, were these publicists frustrated by the toast that we would not budge? We could not be turfed and we could not be manipulated. It's so true. They must be sick of us. A thousand percent. And there is a personal connection that I will get into later in the show. There's so many things to say. And we're going to get into it.

later in the show. The one thing I want to say, and we are going to get into it later, I promise. But the one thing I want to say, because if you take away one thing from this episode, it's like Jackie and I actually like all the time get so much shit for like having no quote worse takes. Like we're always like, I guess, delivering hot takes, just giving our opinions. People like classic Jackson Claude always being on the wrong side of history. No, we're classic Jackson Claude going against the grain. No, no. Classic Jackson Claude thinking independently and not being able to be brainwashed by literal

paid for by agencies. So the fact that like we're always getting shit for like, you know, whatever everyone's team X, like we are team Y. And I feel so justified right now in this moment, obviously because we were right about this, but also like I think it's a greater- Think about all the other things we're probably right about then.

then. And think about all the other campaigns that like we don't know about. Right. That are campaigns. Right. Like who were we all, you know, sort of encouraged to dislike and Jackie and I never did. I mean, we ended up being right about ballerina farms. All these things that happened over the summer. It was kind of like the summer of truth. Like you and I were right about ballerini. We were right about Blake Lively. Like it just feels good. Now I will, I will not the whole episode go wax on about how we were right. But like,

I wasn't even like waiting for this. I was like, you know what? We said our piece. It's they said, we said, and Blake's reputation was definitely tarnished in the public eye. Now for me, if anything, it made me like, like her more. I didn't have an opinion about her before, but I was like, damn, this girl's really going through it. She's a mom of four. She just had a baby. She's like working so hard. And,

And now I have like even more respect for her because she like had to deal with all this shit. Yeah. I never even particularly like stand. Like I. Yeah. And also sometimes like cancellation maketh man. It's so true. We're about to see a whole new version of Blake Lively when she comes out of this. Like it really.

hones you as a human being. It does. For better or for worse. For better or for worse. Because when someone's so beloved all the time, like that's nice for them. It's not super interesting. Agreed. But that's nice. But now you have a chip on your shoulder. Welcome to the club. Yeah. And now you got something to say. I want to hear. I'm listening. So we will get into it at some point in the show. But Jax and I are just excited to be back on the ones and the twos. We've been off podcasting now for like,

A week and a half. We have a lot to catch up on. So how was Turdy's staycation? It was, yeah. So I'm down in Florida with Jackie. We're spending the holidays together. But before I got down here, Ben and I spent a week together in Miami. It was so nice. Just like very relaxing. Pool, beach. I got a sunglass tan. You know, all the things. Not much to report because it was just like genuinely relaxing. Yeah. Yeah.

That's really nice. And you spent that week like kind of having the opposite sort of effect. Right. Doing the most. I did not have a relaxing week, but I had an extremely productive and fulfilling week because I spent the week getting ready for Turdy's arrival. And as you saw, if you didn't watch the Patreon yet, like go watch it, even though it seems like a lot of you have watched it and you're really loving it. And I'm so glad because I put my heart and soul not only into the project, which I think everyone could feel, but I put my heart and soul into that vlog an hour and 15 minutes. And you also like get nervous. Like that's a lot of...

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Michael Vick. Hold on. We get Michael in here. Rudy, come to your mother. We've separated them. Okay. Separation of church and state. Um, I also put my heart and soul into the vlog. An hour and 15 is a lot of jacks. And I was really like worried how it would be received. And I'm so glad that people are really loving the entirety of it. So thank you guys so much. It was such a pleasure to be the recipient of your gift. I,

I love my room so much. It's kind of been a beacon of peace and restoration for me during these trying times with like Lively and Justin Baldoni. It was seriously like so above and beyond. The vlog was amazing, obviously, but like the gift that I received. Let's get real, take a bath.

I watched parts of the vlog. It was really long. I did. I skipped through it. Obviously. Claudia, like we don't watch each other's work. We live it. We live it. Sometimes like if a patron is going up that only one of us had a hand in, like the one that Jackie did. I will say like, I need you to watch this before I post it. I want to make sure I didn't say anything bad. I want to make sure it's not a piece of shite. Yeah. Like requires approval. But Jackie knew she had a...

King piece of content She didn't need my approval And then when The time came Yes I did skip to the end To see my reaction I did like skirt through A lot of the talking parts Like I just wanted to see More like I'm very HGTV like that Understood you don't like The confessionals Of the behind the scenes drama Exactly And also because you saw What the room looked like A lot of the stuff In the beginning Like

You don't have the suspense of like, it seemed like I wasn't doing much. I was getting a wardrobe from Ikea and maybe a fire pit for my backyard and a mirror for my room. And I'll take you guys along. What it turned into. So much more than that. So much more than that. It's really like a story being told. Yeah.

You're a storyteller. I am a storyteller. When will you guys get that? Like I live for content. We get it. We get it. I live for content creation. Someone said my vlog was giving Molly Mae and let me just tell you like I dined off that for days. It's giving comfort creator. That's what they call Molly Mae. Comfort creator. Like YouTubers who like document their life very uneventfully. Like they're not doing crazy stunts. They're just like makeup and chill and girlfriends and cooking. Yeah.

And people just sort of watch it in the background. They become their comfort creators. I love that. And I know a lot of people are looking for new comfort creators ever since Emma Chamberlain like took an oath of whatever from YouTube. So maybe it's you. Oh my, a comfort creator. I love that. Yeah, I'm not like, you know, pussy popping on the dance floor. No, she's not jumping out of planes like, do we need pranks on her grandma? And like there are some funny moments, but it's not even comedy. Like it's comfort creation. That's kind of your thing. Oh my God. I love when there's a word for what I'm thinking. Okay. And speaking of words that...

I didn't know. AstroTurfing. AstroTurfing. I think, okay, do you have anything else you need to catch up on? No, I guess not. Let's get into it. Okay. So I'm sitting outside. I forget where I was when I heard this. You were in my house because you were telling all of us. Yeah, no, but I forget which part. I think I was sitting getting some sun. You were getting sun, yeah. And I saw this...

Now, much like everybody else, everybody's initial thought was like, this was Blake Lively trying to rehabilitate her image. And to be honest, I was staunchly team Blake in the beginning. But even I saw this, I was like, it's very hard to prove these things. There's no way she has any actual evidence. I was like, you know what? Pop off, queen. Like, you have a ton of money. You and your husband have endless resources. Bury him. I love it. I did think it was like a rehabilitation thing. And it wasn't until that I read the actual article

It's not a lawsuit. What's it called? It's her... I keep using the wrong word and all these layers like that complaint. People are like, that's not right. It wasn't until I read her complaint that I was like, one, not only like I was right, but two, she has so much proof and so much evidence. Screenshots, receipts, proof, timeline.

One of the biggest mysteries to me of this whole saga is like, how did she get these people's text messages? Yeah. Something about like in discovery when she was like suing them, like you have to hand over evidence, but also Melissa. Jennifer, the other one, because a lot of people said, because if you look at it, it looks like it's coming from her phone. Yeah. People thought she was subpoenaed.

and had to fork over the messages, but she says she wasn't. She has no idea how. So one of them works for Jonestown PR or whatever. Okay. And she has since, since all this happened, she was fired because I think she went to start her own shop and the owner of that PR company like fired her, took her phone on the way out. This is what I read. Oh,

And then happily gave it over. Yeah. Because... So she can, you know, ruin her new biz. Right, right. Oh, love that. And then... So I feel like there's also a lot of confusion here because there was a lot of different, like, parties and agencies involved. So...

Melissa Nathan, who's kind of like the mastermind publicist of this whole thing, who I have so much to say about. But the first is that she's a part of this company called the Tag Agency, the agency group. So everybody's like the agency group, all their clients, they're all doing grassroots work.

AstroTurfing. And it's actually a fairly popular PR company. I know a lot of people whose publicists are there. It's not a nefarious PR company. The PR company itself is not like one of these Hollywood machines. But Melissa is like this nefarious actor who works with this company based out of Dallas who is like the AstroTurfing bot farm energy company.

So I think a lot of people are now like misunderstanding how some of the agencies work and being like everyone who works for tech PR has a

why can't I remember the word astroturfing has astroturfing movements against them that's actually not true it was like a special combo of Melissa and this person she knew based out of Texas who ran these types of campaigns which I had never even heard of I think what was also confusing is like Justin Baldoni is nobody in this world how does he have enough money to like put Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds out of business but it's the backer of Wayfarer Studios because this her Blake Lively's initial sexual harassment complaint against HR like what

would have really damaged the studio that he...

works with and he has a lot of... No, Justin, his studio, he is Wayfair Studios. But he has financials. A partner, Jamie. And this guy, Jamie, who's also named in the suit for doing really fucking weird things like showing naked videos of his wife to Blake Lively on his phone. So it's those people who are backing Wayfair Studios who are paying for this because, like I said, like Justin Baldoni, he's not Richie Rich. Right, he's not made of money. Moneybags Baldoni. That he could spend more money than them. Yeah. And win public opinion. I don't even think Blake... First of all, I...

I'm like the most chronically online person ever. I did not know that this was a thing that you could do. I doubt Blake did either. I think a lot of people didn't know that until recently. And now it does make sense. There are so many like random tweets by random people that go super viral. It kind of even reminded me of holding space. Who the fuck was that person? A real person. A

A real person. Yeah, it was a real person. Happy for him. But that was only positive. No, a studio could do that to create a moment for themselves. Like it could happen in a positive way or a negative way. The thing is like negativity catches fire so much faster. But there are a lot of people with like these, you know, quote tweets, block tweets with hateful opinions that go super viral. And now you have to like question everything. It's insane that you like,

That it's at this level. I think like, you know, as big pop culture fans. If someone said to me like, this is what they do in Hollywood. They have these bot farms and they make these fake accounts and then they all go viral. I'm like that, that doesn't happen. Like that's conspiracy. It is, but it's not. But it's not.

And the crazy part, you're right, that it is Wayfair Studios because so many people who are like, who hate Blake and just like want to, who the campaign worked on and don't want to believe her. They're like, well, why didn't she just go to the studio? And that's a crazy thing. Justin Baldoni was the studio. Not only was he the director and the star, it was also his production company who produced the whole film. So everyone, all the bosses on set, the HR department, it's him. Yeah. So that's why when the SAG strike, the whole thing really starts when the SAG strike happened, they went on break and Blake was,

had a meeting um just basically being like there's been like really weird behavior on set like I don't want to come back after the strike until it's all settled so there's this long list of complaints that she made that um that she asked for them to stop doing his freaks to stop doing Jay and the freaks to stop doing and they like wrote it out and it's a part of this complaint so that was the first thing in the complaint that's like really damaging it's basically an admission of guilt that like they all agreed to come back to work after the sex strike because this would stop oh so you agree it was happening you know and so it's Blake's

in the suit that she's filing is that everything that happened to her afterwards was retribution, retaliation from Wayfair Studios. But also, if we discredit Blake and she ever comes out and says this, no one's going to believe her. For the rest of this parjelicious episode, head over to patreon.com slash the toast. We

We are going in on the Justin, Blake, and flaw of it all. Of course, the flaw of it all. And talking about this entire saga from start to finish while never forgetting to say that we were right. This is such a fun pop culture episode because we also do a little bit of rapid fire pop culture at the end of the episode talking about all the other things that have happened since we've been off.

So it's a really great pop culture catch up. And if you're missing your girlies, head over to the Patreon because we are missing you and we have so much fun content over at our Patreon this month. Really great vlogs from this month. But also if you join our Patreon today, you will get access to every episode we've ever done for Patreon. So that's over 400 episodes of

of content. You will no longer have to miss us so dearly until we return in the new year. And Patreon, if you've never used it, it's a fab app and website. If you don't want to download an app, just head over to the website, patreon.com slash the toast. You make a login.

Two seconds, boom, yada in, and you have access to all of this content that we have been doing for years. And it's really pargy stuff, a lot of personal stuff, family stuff, vlogs, really fun, fun times with the fam. And friends, there's friends too. There's Dana, there's Abe. Everyone's popped into the Patreon page.

at some point in the last seven years. So it's seven years worth of content and it's really a grand old time. So if you're looking for a little something today, head over to the Patreon and we will be back soon. We love ya and we miss ya. Bye.