Blake Lively’s alleged smear campaign in her legal fight with Justin Baldoni may be tangled up with Rebel Wilson’s directorial debut, The Deb. Last year, Wilson accused the film’s producers, Amanda Ghost, Gregor Cameron, and Vince Holden, of shady behaviour, claiming they acted inappropriately toward the lead actor and even tried to embezzle money from the budget. The producers, in response, filed a defamation suit, and now their lawyers believe Lively’s case might be connected, pointing to the same smear campaign websites.
According to Variety, the latest filing in Los Angeles Superior Court accuses Wilson of working with PR professionals to secretly launch anonymous sites that spread racially charged lies about Amanda Ghost. It also names a new defendant, crisis publicist Melissa Nathan. Ring a bell? She’s the same person Blake Lively accused of running a smear campaign against her while working with Justin Baldoni.
Are Blake Lively and Rebel Wilson’s cases interconnected?
According to the complaint, Wilson wasn’t just ranting online, she targeted Amanda Ghost with grotesque lies. In court, the producers’ lawyers presented a text from Melissa Nathan, where she wrote that Rebel “wants one of those sites” and even detailed how brutal it should be, suggesting Ghost be painted as a “madam” tied to Russian oligarchs. Not long after, sites like amandaghost.com and amandaghostsucks.com appeared, dragging Ghost through the mud with tags like “the Indian Ghislaine Maxwell” and “madame for one of the world’s richest men.” (For context, Ghost is of Indian descent, and billionaire Len Blavatnik’s AI Films financed The Deb.)
The filing cites a text message which only came to light due to Lively-Baldoni’s ongoing case, showing Wilson as someone who used faux feminism as a weapon. “So basically, Rebel wants a one of those sites… Should be a mixture of that document that I think Carolina pulled about Amanda goes [sic] or the intern pulled… It can be really harsh… Russian oligarchs and making her a madam basically lol” Nathan reportedly wrote in August 2024 to another publicist at TAG PR, the same firm involved with Lively’s case.
Back in December 2024, Blake Lively accused TAG PR of “masterminding an untraceable attack against her last summer” as her legal battle with Baldoni went public. A social media strategist named Jed Wallace was also mentioned in the filing, he allegedly worked to boost Baldoni’s image. Now, according to Amanda Ghost, he was directly involved in coordinating and running the defamatory sites about her, working alongside Nathan and Wilson. “Behind the scenes, [Wilson] used paid PR professionals to launch a shockingly low and racially-charged attack on another professional woman, all to get her own way in a business dispute and destroy the reputation of a woman who dared to stand up to her,” an excerpt of Ghost’s complaint reads.
