Showgirls and Apologies

Becky Tuch reflects on her private emails going public during the “Bad Art Friend” scandal, and offers advice to Taylor Swift.

Photo by Nathan Timblin/Pexels

I have a confession to make: I’ve been obsessed with the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni legal saga for the past year. I don’t recall the precise origin of the obsession, though I’m sure it was algorithmically-induced. I’d written about the incredible success of Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us on my Substack. Then I read the book. Then I watched the movie on Netflix. Not long after, my news feed was filled with articles about the celebrities’ legal battle. I did not resist.

Theirs is a long and complicated saga for which it would take a few hours to fill in the uninitiated. TL;DR: Actress Blake Lively is suing her co-star and IEWU director, Justin Baldoni, for sexual harassment, breach of contract, infliction of emotional distress, and more. Up until recently, he was countersuing Lively for defamation, extortion, and more. (His case against Lively was dismissed, though there are rumors he intends to appeal.) The lawsuits feature a web of other individuals—journalists, publicists, producers, agents, author Colleen Hoover, Blake Lively’s husband Ryan Reynolds, other celebrities, and even a crisis manager who is the former Deputy Chief of Staff at the CIA.

Amidst the situation’s many intriguing contortions, one particular celebrity’s involvement has especially captured my attention. You might have heard of her. She is a singer named Taylor Swift.

According to the press, Taylor Swift and Blake Lively were best friends for a decade. Swift is the godmother of at least three of Lively’s four children. The internet is full of photos of the friends together—at football games, posing at clubs, walking and holding hands the way girlfriends do.

In the past year, however, Swift has kept her distance. She has claimed that she’s had nothing to do with the saga between Lively and Baldoni. She’s busy, the tabloids tell us—with touring, her upcoming wedding, baking sourdough bread. All she did was lend a song to be used in the film. She barely speaks to Lively anymore. The tabloids have made Swift’s position clear: not involved.

Why my own obsession with this case? Why should I care what happens to a bunch of entitled multi-millionaires and their high-strung publicists? I’ve never been one for celebrity gossip. I hadn’t even heard of Blake Lively until the day she appeared in my news feed. The truth is, for me this feels personal. I’ve lived this. A much smaller, cheaper version of it anyway.

Unfortunately for the singer, recently unsealed court documents tell a different story. The public has accessed pages of text messages between the friends. In these messages, Swift is revealed to have insulted Baldoni and egged on Lively’s effort to take over control of his film. Swift mocks and demeans the director, referring to his “tiny violin,” presumably after he opened up about his own sexual abuse on a podcast. Swift calls Baldoni “a doofus director” and “a bitch” who “knows something is coming,” ostensibly in reference to a New York Times article about his mistreatment of Lively. (Baldoni’s lawyer has denied the claims made in the article; they sued the paper for defamation.)

Far from being uninvolved in the legal saga, Swift’s texts reveal her to be a key player. More so, they reveal her to have been a conniving Mean Girl—the precise opposite of the sweet, girl-next-door persona she has cultivated throughout her career.

This case has struck a nerve with many. Citizen journalists have been busy this past year analyzing leaked voice memos, scrutinizing metadata, combing court documents, examining video footage, and consulting legal experts. Content creators and everyday truth-seekers have sought to attain the real story (which appears to exonerate Baldoni of any wrongdoing) in the face of pro-Lively media spin.

But why my own obsession with this case? Why should I care what happens to a bunch of entitled multi-millionaires and their high-strung publicists? I’ve never been one for celebrity gossip. I hadn’t even heard of Blake Lively until the day she appeared in my news feed.

The truth is, for me this feels personal. I’ve lived this. A much smaller, cheaper version of it anyway.

In 2021, the internet exploded with the story of “Bad Art Friend.” It was named such after a New York Times piece by Robert Kolker, titled “Who Is the Bad Art Friend?” The 10,000-word article described an ongoing legal battle between two writers. Similar to Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, Dawn Dorland and Sonya Larson were both suing one another. Larson, who believed Dorland had falsely accused her of plagiarism, was suing Dorland for defamation and tortious interference. Dorland was countersuing for copyright infringement and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

At the heart of the lawsuits was “The Kindest,” Larson’s short story which appeared on Audible, in American Short Fiction, and was set to be featured by One City, One Story before publication was canceled. The story explored a woman’s complicated feelings about receiving an altruistic kidney donation. Dorland is a real-life altruistic kidney donor, and had posted about it on Facebook. The legal battle addressed, in part, the question of whether Larson had seen the donor letter Dorland had written and shared online, and plagiarized the letter in her story.

I will never know what it was about Kolker’s article that struck the nerve it did. But the piece lit a match. Within twenty-four hours, everyone began talking; everyone had an opinion. Were you Team Dawn or Team Sonya? Fellow writers seized on the piece, as did professors, legal experts, organ donors and recipients, psychologists, journalists, even political commentators. Blogs were written. Videos were made. Multiple Twitter accounts sprang up, including one called “Kidneygate,” which shared all available information about the case. (In 2023, the Court ruled in favor of both parties, concluding transformative fair use—not plagiarism—in Larson’s story, and no defamation or tortious interference from Dorland.)

Like others, I became obsessed with “Bad Art Friend.” But my own interest was not impartial. I had been an instructor at Grub Street, the Boston-based writing center where Larson and Dorland met. I had taken a writing workshop with Dorland many years prior. I was in the writing group where Larson’s short story was originally workshopped.

Oh, and one other thing: Sonya was my best friend.

We were kind of like Blake Lively and Taylor Swift. Minus a couple of mansions, international fame, and a few billion dollars.

Like others, I became obsessed with “Bad Art Friend.” But my own interest was not impartial. I had been an instructor at Grub Street, the Boston-based writing center where Larson and Dorland met. I had taken a writing workshop with Dorland many years prior. I was in the writing group where Larson’s short story was originally workshopped. Oh, and one other thing: Sonya was my best friend.

As with the Lively and Baldoni cases, once the saga caught public attention, everyday people accessed the public court documents and began sharing screenshots online. As with Lively and Swift, our private emails and messages were exposed. And just like Taylor Swift, my own words were reflected back to me for all the world to see.

In private emails that were now public, I’d mocked Dawn cruelly and egged on the publication of a story which I knew to be causing her distress. I made light of Dawn’s suffering and participated in nasty conversations which, because many of us in the writing group were instructors or staff members at Grub Street, had the potential to cause Dawn material and reputational damage.

Some of my behind-the-scenes Mean Girling was done in innocence. I had not been an active member of the writing group at the time the story was workshopped. Thus I never read original versions of the story in question, did not actually know if there was any reasonable basis for Dawn’s concerns. I also did not have a clear understanding of the legal case. My version of events was only what was related to me by my best friend and my writing group.

Nonetheless, there were steps I could have taken to learn more and to curtail the nastiness in our email exchanges, or at least in my own. I could have declined to participate. I could have sought the legal documents which, I learned later, were in the public record all along. I could have reached out to Dawn to hear her side of the story. I could have asked more questions.

But I didn’t. I took my friend’s side, supported my group unconditionally.

Is this what happened with Swift and Lively? Did Swift send her cruel text messages and help facilitate Baldoni’s downfall innocently, believing she was supporting her best friend? Did she leap to her friend’s side without hesitation, the way girlfriends so often do? Was there a small voice inside her that whispered this level of Mean Girling doesn’t feel right, and did she tamp it down, because joining in is so much easier, so much safer, than stepping away and speaking up?

“I’d do anything for you!” Swift is on record texting to Lively. This is in response to Lively asking her friend to come to her home, meet Baldoni, and help Lively wrest control of the director’s film.

Did Swift know that what she was doing was wrong? Did she care? I imagine she cares now, seeing her own words and actions reflected back to her on the world stage, knowing too that these words and deeds will echo when this case goes to trial later this spring.

It’s not over for Swift, though. I believe she has a choice.

Soon after Bad Art Friend went viral, I left my writing group. I apologized to Dawn both publicly and in private.

My apology was sincere. I was genuinely sorry. I was ashamed. What was revealed from my emails was a version of myself I was not proud of. It did not represent the person I am or want to be.

Did it cost me to speak up? I’ll put it this way: There is always a cost to speaking up. Taylor, girl, you have my sympathies.

But here’s the other thing: Remaining silent when you know you’ve done wrong has a cost too. Denying your own bad behavior and refusing to acknowledge harm you’ve caused will almost certainly force you into a state of hiding—forever in hiding, from yourself. Such a cost is the ultimate price.

Did it cost me to speak up? I’ll put it this way: There is always a cost to speaking up. Taylor, girl, you have my sympathies. But here’s the other thing: Remaining silent when you know you’ve done wrong has a cost too. Denying your own bad behavior and refusing to acknowledge harm you’ve caused will almost certainly force you into a state of hiding—forever in hiding, from yourself. Such a cost is the ultimate price.

Taylor Swift has not (yet) come to me asking for advice. But if she did, I would tell her exactly what I think: Now is the time to apologize. It’s okay. You fumbled. You lost the plot, dropped the ball. You believed you were supporting your bestie and you got caught up in the gal-pal-forever-yours-love-bombing of it all.

It happens.

Yet now you have an opportunity. Do not hide from your deeds. Fess up. Own it. Acknowledge the damage you caused Justin Baldoni. Apologize.

Do it for him. Do it for your fans. But most of all, do it for you.

You will survive. You may even thrive. Because honestly, Tay-Tay? As someone who’s been through a tiny version of what you’re going through? I can tell you, it is not easy. It may not be easy for a long time. Yet now is your moment. You have a chance to rise up. Stop living the life of a showgirl and start living the life of a human being.

I can think of no stronger foundation for a creative life, or any life, than this one.

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