"Good Faith" & HR responsibilities (with a Timeline Graphic)
I've seen a lot of people talking about whether or not Lively's complaint was made in "good faith", and I wanted to get a sense of what was made as the HR complaint *during filming* vs what later became the legal complaint.
Mapping out the events, during Phase 1 shooting (Picture 2), there were only really 4 "HR" incidents brought to Wayfarer's attention prior to her demand letter - 3 to Sony, and the 4th added during the discussion to address it all a few days later
- The "sexy" comment while filming the onesies scene
- JH attempting to show her the post-home-birth video
- Problems with the 1st AD
- Heath not facing the wall during the discussion in her trailer
From the amendments she filed, I think it's pretty clear that these events were genuine - she felt uncomfortable, she told friends she felt uncomfortable, she brought it up and discussed it with them.
However I also think that it's likely from Wayfarer's perspective that they felt all issues had been resolved in the June 1 discussion - they apologized for the incidents, the 1st AD was fired, and even in the latest version of the complaint, there are no allegations of problems after the June 1 discussion. So, question #1 I have that I'd love to get other perspectives on is:
Given what had been raised during production, was it reasonable to consider the issue fully addressed by the June 1 meeting, or were they remiss in not triggering a formal HR investigation of the 4 issues?
What is also less clear to me is if the "Return to Production" demands 5 months later were made in good faith. I think there's two different possible views / narratives:
- Given time away from set and disengaging from a fawn response that primed her to smooth things over and minimize real issues, she realized that there were many more problems than she had raised in the June 1 meeting, and they hadn't adequately addressed all of them. Since they didn't think they had done anything wrong before she brought up those 4 things, she preemptively initiated the Demands through her lawyer to ensure she was safe going forward because she wasn't confident in her ability to advocate for herself.
- Despite the fact that there were no further issues after the discussion, Lively was dissatisfied with the outcome as she didn't feel they were appropriately contrite / was still holding a grudge over the fact that things happened in the first place. From June 1 onwards, she ruminated on all of the grievances, digging through her memories to come up with every instance where they had done something wrong, and generalizing it to a belief that Wayfarer was not capable of or appropriate to be handling a movie on the subject matter of IEWU. As such she came up with the Demands letter as a way to ensure control over the set and enforce behaviour that she considered appropriate.
(Obviously there's a ton of space to extreme ends of both those narratives, from her being a terrified victim to her being a Machiavellian schemer, above is just trying to hit the relatively neutral middle points of the two)
So my question #2 that I'm pondering is: Were the Demands / expansion of the allegations of SH after June 1 still a "Good Faith" HR complaint, or were they an unreasonable retaliation / escalation of a matter that should have been considered closed.
Reference spreadsheet (shared originally in a previous post) for each of the numbered items is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dRYK_6TWSKKR4UP3mSret793fH5CyjHHH7lHBp7asAc/edit?usp=sharing
(Yes I know this is insanely extra. Listen, I'm caught in an AuDHD hyperfixation and I'm looking forward to when it lets me go. Until then - this scratched an itch in my brain)
