Dark arts in Hollywood - how the powerful publicity smear machine changed

"She's a phony, but I guess the public likes that…" This is the line that actress Joan Crawford is said to have declared about film star Bette Davis.

The back-and-forth sniping between the pair played out in the tabloids of the 1930s and 40s. "Bette is a survivor... She survived herself," Crawford is also said to have remarked.

Their tempestuous relationship was so notorious that in 2017 it was made into an Emmy award-winning TV series, Feud.

Hollywood rivalries are of course nothing new - yet conflicts today rarely play out so publicly. That might be why the dispute between actors Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, which spilled out into the open in December 2024, is still in the headlines three months on.

The subsequent legal battle brought to light a fallout during production of the film, It Ends With Us. After the promotional and cinematic run had ended, the pair - who didn't appear on the red carpet together at the premiere in New York - filed lawsuits against each other.

Lively has accused Baldoni and others of carrying out a smear campaign against her after she complained about alleged sexual harassment on set. Baldoni, meanwhile, has accused Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist of carrying out a smear campaign against him, and claim that she tried to take over control of the film. Both sides deny all allegations.

What emerged as this all played out is that crisis PR managers had been employed. Legal representatives for Lively obtained numerous text messages between Baldoni's publicist Jennifer Abel and the crisis team he retained, led by Melissa Nathan, whose previous clients include Johnny Depp and Drake. Ms Nathan was alleged to have texted Ms Abel, "You know we can bury anyone."

Lively has now reportedly taken on the CIA's former deputy chief of staff Nick Shapiro to advise on her legal communications strategy.

While the outcomes of the lawsuits remain to be seen but the feud has cast the spotlight on an industry that would ordinarily remain largely invisible: that is, the publicity machine at work behind the scenes in Hollywood.

"On every set, there are fights, liaisons… there are all sorts of things that go on," explains Richard Rushfield, founder and columnist at Hollywood newsletter The Ankler. "Hollywood is a world full of very messy people coming together for these giant projects, where they put together teams quickly to make these things and disband immediately after.

"Between all that a lot of stuff goes on, and they deal with it quietly – they're very obsessive about controlling the narrative. When this stuff explodes into the public, beyond control, it makes everyone very nervous."

But the world of the Hollywood PR has shifted in recent years, partly because of the growth of social media, which has changed the relationship between celebrities and fans, bringing them into direct contact and removing some of the mystique.

So, what does that mean for the people whose job it is to keep a lid on the industry's messy reality?

Few fallouts have spilled out into the open in recent years – and those that did were picked over simply because they're so rare. Actor Dwayne Johnson revealed "a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating" with his Fast & Furious co-star Vin Diesel, in a 2018 interview.

The stars of another action film, Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, are reported to have filmed many of their scenes separately.

And then there were the alleged tensions between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker, who were co-stars of Sex and the City, which ran for six years. In 2018, after Parker offered condolences for Cattrall's brother's death, Cattrall responded on social media, calling Parker a "hypocrite" and stating, "You are not my family. You are not my friend."

But behind the scenes, hundreds of other spats will never see the light of day. "Some of a publicist's best work may never be seen," says Daniel Bee, a publicist and brand consultant based in Los Angeles, "because it stopped something that was wrong, or re-crafted something to a different narrative, or pointed the light in a different direction.

"The most interesting stuff I've ever done as a publicist is the stuff nobody will ever know about."

Since Daniel Bee started out as an entertainment publicist in 1997, he has observed a shift in the wider industry. "I started my career in the British media, there were 11 national newspapers competing with each other. It was a bear pit, hard work, and it was getting to know individuals via relationships.

"Now, you're up against an anonymous algorithm and accounts where you don't know who you're up against. It's harder to control than ever before."

Certainly, social media has posed challenges for those attempting to control narratives around major films and their stars – while also heralding new forms of "dark arts" through which publicists can attempt to shape opinion.

"There has always been an army of advisors and consultants doing PR voodoo," says Eriq Gardner, entertainment law expert and founding partner of Puck News. "While I'd love to say the public is media-literate and savvy enough to read between the lines to see the spin, the truth is there are a lot of powerful forces at play and sometimes a large amount of misinformation."

So-called PR voodoo is different now that a celebrity – or their fans – can access an audience of millions with a click.

While the publicists of previous eras might only have had to worry about print and broadcast platforms, smartphones and social media mean today's digital landscape is a wild west where anyone can shape their own narrative. A badly judged post or comment can damage an actor's career.

But the flipside is a whole new medium in which PRs can practise their "voodoo".

One of the tactics is "astroturfing" – or disguising an orchestrated campaign as a spontaneous up-swelling of public opinion.

This works by manipulating public opinion and creating a false impression of grassroots support (hence the name) or opposition, often coordinated through social media accounts in a way that seems organic.

The practice isn't new, but has been given new life with the advent of social media algorithms.

"It's deliberately planting disinformation, or twisted versions of the truth, in certain sections of social media," says Carla Speight, founder of the PR Mastery app. "The aim is the halfway point of influential where they will get a bit of traction, but so that it's not too obvious – you wouldn't hire a Kardashian to do it.

"It's built up in layers," she continues. "It's like playing a very sinister game of chess. You're putting all the pieces in the right places, just the right amount of mixed-up information, and then you just watch it explode."

Although the posts might appear to be genuine public opinion, in fact it's a faked crowd – whether that's made up of bots or real people, who can be paid to coordinate their posts.

"All it takes is one or two people to create a meme and put it with the right people," says Ms Speight. "It needs to appear as a trend, and then it's gone. Something is dripped here, something else over there, and when it's done well… it causes a bit of mischief."

But all of this is simply a new platform for an age-old trend that has been going on long before the advent of social media, according to Mr Bee. "Undetected smear campaigns have always been a thing," he points out.

"Previously it would have been a publicist whispering to a diarist of a national newspaper. The issue with digital media is it's anonymous and untraceable."

What has changed, he continues, is that audiences have become savvier. "Whereas before, a quite subservient audience would just take what was given to them in the media, with natural scepticism, curiosity, and a greater level of information, I think people use more critical thinking."

Eriq Gardner is less convinced: "I'm not sure the public approaches what they read with enough scepticism."

And yet those in the industry are often alert to it. According to Ms Speight, "Usually, there's a distinct sort of tell, and it may be the PR thing where we have 'spidey senses' and we can sort of see it, but you're asking, 'Where has that come from? Who started that?' And when there's never a specific place to point it to, that's usually a tell-tale sign."

What's clear, though, is that, with studios providing some publications with significant advertising revenue, as well as supplying talent for special events and front covers, revelations often emerge elsewhere in the media.

"When [scandals] come out, it's usually from places outside of Hollywood," argues Mr Rushfield. "The Harvey Weinstein story was broken by The New York Times and the New Yorker."

It was The New York Times that first reported Lively's legal complaint in December. "It's one of the few places that can afford to do that, and then everyone else jumped in so nobody was sticking their neck out." Baldoni filed a $250 million lawsuit against the New York Times in December, although a federal judge indicated this week that it might be dismissed.

Even when bigger outlets break news about Hollywood disputes, the growing dominance of social media means that stories might not have the same cut-through they had previously.

Doreen St Felix, a writer who was previously an editor on Lena Dunham's newsletter, recently wrote in The New Yorker that stories of harassment and abuse, for example, now receive a "curdled, cynical, and exhausted reception" - this, less than a decade after the emergence of the MeToo movement.

She went on to claim that: "The late 2010s genre of #MeToo reportage cannot thrive on today's volatile internet. Information is misinformation and vice versa. Victims are offenders and offenders are victims."

Sometimes, however, the best way for publicists to prevent stories being amplified is by bypassing social media entirely when reacting to a scandal.

"If you give it to the press first, they don't quote as many of the comments on social media," says Ms Speight. "You control the narrative completely, because the comments come afterwards."

Mr Rushfield points out that very little of the revelations in the entertainment press comes out because someone "uncovered" something. "Almost everything you read is there because somebody placed it there - somebody is dictating a story."

None of this industry would exist if the appetite weren't there and if the viewing public didn't want to unpick details about their lives – and rifts. And yet attitudes towards celebrity have undoubtedly changed since the advent of social media.

"It's now a two-way communication, which it never was before," points out Mr Bee. "It was generally celebrities, or lawyer or government or whatever, just saying something that gets reported, and that message is conveyed. Now, you have to be prepared for a two-way conversation."

But he thinks there are different attitudes to the media today than in the era of celebrity gossip magazines. Nodding to the UK, he continues: "We had the Leveson Inquiry, we're about to get an ITV drama about phone hacking, it's as if the curtain has been lifted."

As for the Lively and Baldoni lawsuits, it's not clear how these will play out - but the very fact that it has so unusually spilled into the public domain is a reminder of how well-oiled the Hollywood publicity machine is the rest of the time. And that is unlikely to change soon.