Alexa Nikolas is a sinister and criminal force,” an anonymous website insisted. The former child star of Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101 turned activist for Hollywood abuse survivors “will destroy anyone and anything in her path.”
Nikolas, 33, is no stranger to speaking her mind — and experiencing blowback for it. She’s battle-hardened after wading into much-publicized entertainment industry controversies over decades involving the likes of Britney Spears, Jonah Hill, Nickelodeon showrunner Dan Schneider and her advocacy organization Eat Predators.
But this was different. The website alleged, among other smears, that she’d blackmailed several ex-boyfriends by repeatedly threatening to air abuse claims against them and had herself married a serial sexual offender, endangering her children. “Every single thing on there was just false,” she says. “My first thought was, ‘Who else has seen this?’ Then, ‘Who could this be?’ And then, ‘What else are they capable of?’ “
Nikolas is a wry, wily presence with a penchant for stunts, like selling Sickelodeon merchandise. Yet over lunch in West Hollywood, she’s atypically subdued. The day before, news broke that Kate Whiteman — a 45-year-old accuser of Oren and Alon Alexander, the Manhattan twins currently standing trial for sex trafficking — had been found dead in Australia. (The coroner’s office won’t provide further information about her death, citing consideration for family members.)
Nikolas didn’t know her. But she’s learned that they shared something in common. Like others, both had been targeted with mysteriously operated websites that are filled with character-assassinating claims and are impossible to take down. In recent months, the origins of these sites have been connected and allegedly unmasked in court. A lawsuit blames top crisis publicist Melissa Nathan as well as digital fixer Jed Wallace, both of whom have previously been sued by Blake Lively for their work on behalf of client Justin Baldoni during their It Ends With Us legal feud. Behind sunglasses with blackout lenses, Nikolas says of what she terms “smear campaigns” and her fear that Whiteman may have harmed herself: “How could this not drive someone to the lowest place ever?”
Neither Nathan nor Wallace responded to The Hollywood Reporter‘s inquiries. They’ve denied such improper activity in court and through Nathan’s attorney, notable Hollywood power lawyer Bryan Freedman.
Nikolas notes that her own damaging site appeared several years ago, shortly after she publicized Freedman’s own sexual-assault settlement from 1991, in which he didn’t admit liability. (The plaintiff testified in a deposition about an alleged incident at his college frat house.) Nikolas had also organized a protest at the L.A. office of the lawyer, who had previously represented her ex-husband after she accused him of sexual battery (a suit she eventually dropped). Freedman later worked with Nathan and Wallace on the It Ends With Us legal saga and other matters.
The site targeting Nikolas, which became her top Google result, included numerous false assertions, including that her current husband was a predator. “I broke down crying,” she says of discovering it in January 2023, “and [her spouse] was horrified and afraid. He’s just a guy with a regular job. What if he has to get another one? Or is volunteering at our kids’ school?” She’s spent years dealing with the fallout, acknowledging that the site’s aim was successful in that it caused her to pull back from some of her activism.
Nikolas learned that her site may be connected to other smear sites late last year. “I just started bawling,” she says of finding out “it wasn’t only happening to you.” She pauses. “There’s something about it that’s devastating but also cathartic.”
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This clandestine smear machine seemingly connects some of the most talked-about scandals of recent years. They include the Alexander brothers’ trial, the defamation battle over actress turned director Rebel Wilson‘s first feature, The Deb, and the legal feud between K-pop exec Min Hee-jin and entertainment giant Hybe.
Revelations about the smear sites were disclosed in federal court on Dec. 8 as part of one of the lawsuits stemming from the It Ends With Us fiasco. Former Baldoni publicist Stephanie Jones has sued her former colleagues, including Nathan, as well as Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer, claiming in part that their actions against Lively damaged her own business.
In December, Jones’ legal team asserted in a proposed amended complaint that as it investigated the culprit behind an anonymous website made about her, it had discovered “a growing list of attack websites from the same band of conspirators,” alleging “Nathan, her ‘hired gun’ Jed Wallace, and others engage in a regular practice of creating highly offensive and negative online content against individuals … with the clear intent on destroying those individuals’ reputations.” The smear sites have alleged, without substantiation, that targets engaged in — among other activities — extortion, embezzlement, prostitution, drug dealing and human trafficking.
In a separate report filed with the court, a digital forensics consultant hired by Jones’ lawyers detailed how raw online data had been analyzed to determine the connections between the websites and Wallace. The technical assessment found multiple shared indicators, including suspicious commonalities among hosting providers, page formats, link structures, SEO systems, referring domains and IP ranges. THR has separately learned that the full scope of vilifying sites identified by the forensics consultant is larger than those publicly identified in the report.
Jones’ attorneys contend it’s now apparent that Nathan and Wallace have run “a clandestine cottage industry of creating false smear websites and social media accounts targeting their adversaries and those of their clients,” doing so “often in connection with litigation.” They refer to what they’ve uncovered as a “playbook.”
The defense’s own expert has since rebutted the forensics, arguing the methodology is flawed and insufficient to attribute the sites to anyone.
In an email, Freedman denies his clients are the authors of the sites. “There is no technical data, no forensic support, and no factual basis linking anyone retained by the Wayfarer parties to the websites,” he writes. “The forensic analysis commissioned by Stephanie Jones identifies no author and no connection to any party. What remains is speculation presented as fact after more than a year of litigation and no credible evidence. They are attempting to replace evidence with headlines.”
Lively’s own ongoing court proceedings have divulged, through discovery, a “comprehensive communications strategy” emailed by Nathan’s firm to a prospective client, at the cost of $30,000 per month, in which it works “in tandem with our digital team.” (Wallace is identified as heading up “digital and social management.”) The offered services include not just efforts to better rank on search engines and combat sentiment online working against a client’s interests but to “claim, create, monitor, manage and optimize various online platforms” ranging from Wikipedia, Discord and Reddit to TikTok, X and YouTube.
In a deposition in the Jones litigation, a subordinate at Nathan’s company acknowledged drafting content for Jones’ smear site as well as related social media posts about Jones in coordination with Nathan, Wallace and Freedman. Nathan has described the lawyer and the online operator in a text message that has since entered evidence in the case as “very close.”
Freedman is neither pinpointed by Jones’ forensics as a culprit nor named in her suit as a defendant. However, many of the individuals who the sites have targeted believe he’s played a role in the practice, and some documentation appears to support this conclusion.
On Feb. 5, Nikolas sued Freedman as well as Nathan for defamation in L.A. Superior Court. She contends the lawyer “was an integral part of a team working to control [unfavorable] narratives, undercut ‘me too’ accusations and protect powerful individuals. Attacking him put her directly into the line of fire of a PR machine prepared to bury her.” Her attorney Tony Buzbee, known for his representation of a group of Sean Combs’ accusers, issued a statement describing the alleged actions of Freedman and Nathan as “a disgusting example of how far those who represent powerful individuals accused of assault will go to silence those who hold them accountable. Those days are over.”
In an email, Freedman denies any involvement in the sites and says that he has documentation that proves it, though he did not share any evidence. As an attorney in the Jones litigation and named defendant in the Nikolas suit, he is limited as to what he can say on his own behalf.
Both Freedman and Wallace are mentioned in a text exchange between Nathan and the underling, which is now an exhibit in yet another ongoing Hollywood courtroom drama between actress Rebel Wilson and producer Amanda Ghost. The exchange reveals the workaday maneuvering involved in creating a website one Tuesday in August 2024. Amid chatter about migraines and muddling through meetings, the pair allegedly implement a digital campaign on behalf of Wilson, targeting Ghost, from whom the Australian star had become estranged on her directorial debut, The Deb.
“So basically, Rebel wants … one of those sites,” Nathan texts. “It can be really really harsh.” She then provides the project’s brief, via Wallace: “making her a madam basically lol said Jed.” The employee responds, “Oh my god lol ok this one will be fun.” Hours later, apparently hoping to speed up the worker, Nathan texts, “Jed and Bryan asking me for copy lol kill me.” On 60 Minutes Australia in November, Wilson denied orchestrating the campaign: “Obviously, I had zero to do with the website. I don’t even know how to create a website.”
Ghost has sued Wilson, as well as Nathan, her firm and other parties for defamation over multiple alleged smear sites with similar domain names. According to the filing, they falsely portrayed her as “engaged in sex trafficking and pimping young women. That is a complete fiction, dreamed up by Rebel and her agents.”
Freedman isn’t a named defendant in the action, but Ghost’s attorney Camille Vasquez says that any litigator’s involvement in commissioning such sites would be “a profound abuse of power and a betrayal of the lawyer’s role in the justice system.” She explains that “secretly engineering false or misleading narratives to intimidate, discredit or pressure an opponent crosses the line from zealous advocacy into misconduct. When a professionally orchestrated smear campaign is weaponized in litigation, it distorts the legal process itself by polluting the fact-finding mission, influencing witnesses and the public, and attempting to win through reputational harm rather than evidence and law.”
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The sites, which have gone offline since the Jones litigation linked them, shared a signature. Their design was unpolished, even primitive, seemingly to convey a sense of slapdash amateurishness. Likewise, their tone was over-the-top, with the inferred suggestion that the incognito individuals behind these projects were wronged intimates of the targets — desperately and finally speaking their truths to power. The material itself often was a mix of factual assertions, for example about specific professional setbacks or personal troubles, buttressed by legal documents as well as news articles, along with outlandish, unsubstantiated conspiracies and defamatory accusations of illegal or unethical behavior. This piggybacking of false claims atop true ones is a stock disinformation tactic.
Legal and PR players operating at the highest echelons of the entertainment industry tell THR that while all sorts of online tactics — often involving hired guns and some once considered disreputable — have become normalized, the weaponizing of smear sites as professional practice is still out of bounds. They also insist that it’s exceptionally rare to encounter. Even more unusual is for this dark-arts activity to end up exposed in court filings.
For her part, Vasquez maintains that when she successfully represented Johnny Depp during his 2022 defamation trial against Amber Heard, and Nathan managed their PR, to her knowledge “there were no bots, no smear websites, no coordinated propaganda campaigns.”
The alleged key perpetrators in this saga are deeply embedded in Hollywood. Nathan is a seasoned Britain-born crisis PR maven who long worked for Manhattan communications powerhouse Matthew Hiltzik. (Other Hiltzik alums include Hope Hicks, who went on to run Donald Trump’s White House press office.) In 2024, Nathan launched her own bicoastal firm, The Agency Group (TAG), bringing along some former Hiltzik Strategies colleagues as well as clients including Depp, Drake, Logan Paul, The Chainsmokers and key K-pop producer Hybe America. At its inception, Nathan’s company underscored its dedicated digital team’s rapid response ability across online platforms and specialization in brand cleanup.
Wallace, who lives outside Austin, is a lower-profile figure. His lawyer has described his own boutique operation in a court filing as a “crisis mitigation firm engaged by clients to help navigate real-life human crisis, threats, trauma and mental health concerns,” contending it aids clients “when they find themselves unjustly attacked, extorted, doxed, swatted, scammed or need help navigating through the most frightening situations.”
In litigation, Lively has contended he’s “weaponized a digital army around the country” to “create, seed, manipulate, and advance disparaging content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums.” Wallace, who has in turn sued her for defamation, denies this.
Freedman has in the past told Variety that while he wouldn’t call Wallace a fixer, he considers him an especially resourceful operator. People familiar with Wallace’s work have likened him to Ray Donovan, the eponymous shadowy troubleshooter from the Showtime series.
Over the course of the past decade, Freedman has become a recurring character in many of Hollywood’s unfolding sagas, a self-designated “pit bull” known for his combative style. “If you fuck with my client, you get what you get,” he told THR in a 2024 profile.
The parties he represents — his bold-faced book of business has ranged from Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo to Kevin Spacey and Diplo — appreciate his ferocious, win-at-all-costs mindset. “Once he’s on board for you, he’ll kill for you” was Megyn Kelly’s endorsement to THR. Herself a former lawyer, she hired him to handle her departure from NBC News after she’d made comments defending blackface.
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The targets of the sites share little in common, except that they each have enemies and have all experienced similar consequences.
Tamara Rubin long has run a popular online resource focused on lead poisoning and exposure risks from everyday consumer products. She’s spoken at environmental events with Erin Brockovich and Sen. Bernie Sanders. “My kids like to say I’m ‘jazz musician famous,’ ” she notes.
Rubin learned of the website targeting her in October 2024, along with what she contends were related defaming edits to her Wikipedia page. She doesn’t know who’s responsible. “It’s a game of Clue,” Rubin says. “The people who own these companies that we’re calling out try to discredit us.”
The website has “substantially impacted my business, which is based on donations. It also bleeds over into my personal life,” she adds. “I’m behind in my mortgage and my car payments, and my family is dealing with food scarcity. It’s exhausting to have a target on my back.”
While the attack vector in Rubin’s case is still in question, Christian Lanng, the former CEO of fintech firm Tradeshift who was the victim of a smear site, sued Freedman for defamation and extortion in 2024, alleging the lawyer and his firm “hired third parties to create deepfake stories” about him by developing sham websites and fake social media accounts “in an attempt to leverage a higher settlement” in a dispute with a former employee whom Freedman has represented.
An exhibit in the case features a text exchange between Freedman’s legal partner Miles Cooley and a potential plaintiff their firm apparently planned to represent against Lanng. Cooley described “building out an infrastructure” and passed along an update on a “campaign” from “our specialist,” left unidentified, who in turn explained that a “website was acquired — we just need to get content for what you want to exist and can start marketing that. When the website exists that’s when I think it’ll make sense to troll the Tradeshift friendly subreddits and maybe come up with a meme about Christian.”
Lanng tells THR, “When you’re the subject of a fake Twitter account that is both making and encouraging others to make allegations about you, as I was, you learn quickly that most people will never know it was fake. Most people will never know that it was the work of a consultant hired by lawyers, a consultant claiming to be someone else.” (Freedman has previously denied all of this, saying in a statement to THR that it “sounds like a spy novel about the CIA.”)
Paige Jimenez, an Instagram influencer and OnlyFans model, says that Freedman contacted her in 2024 on behalf of the ultra-wealthy parents of her boyfriend. “They hated me,” she says. “They didn’t want me dating their son.” Eventually, Freedman texted her a link to a custom website that “said these crazy things, like I was responsible for Matthew Perry’s death.” (Jimenez showed Freedman’s text to THR.) She sighs. “I think they were upset we went to a music festival and did drugs together.”
Jimenez notes that the website featured details including her apartment address from a domestic violence restraining order she filed against a previous romantic partner. “This was not a secure building,” she says. “I lived alone, and creepy men follow me [online]. Anyone could have walked in my door. I had to flee.”
According to Jones’ digital forensics report, a website targeting the prominent K-pop executive Min Hee-jin is connected to the others. The former CEO of a subsidiary of Hybe and a mastermind behind groups like NewJeans and Girls’ Generation, she has been in a legal war with the Korean entertainment giant. While she did not comment for this story, in a January post on Instagram, Hee-jin explained she had recently met in Seoul with a lawyer “who’s currently handling lawsuits in the U.S. to uncover what TAG PR [Nathan’s firm] has really been up to.” She added, “Pieces are starting to come together.”
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Freedman’s firm for a time operated a since-shuttered subsidiary focused on digital perception management. Its tagline: “Because It Takes a Lifetime to Rebuild Your Reputation and Only a Click of the Mouse to Destroy It.” He advised THR in 2010 that “if you are the target of an online attack” involving what he characterized as “libelous statements” and “you really want to go after your online secret admirer,” the solution is to sue, since “you can often expose ‘Deep Throat’ through some simple discovery.” He continued, “I have consistently found that anonymous defamers feel intense pain from an embarrassing and expensive lawsuit.”
As it happens, an anonymous site about Freedman was created in April 2024, around the same time many of the others began populating the internet. Unlike the rest, the tone is more measured, the assertions about the litigator limited to what’s already in the public record. An author statement claims that they are “one of his many victims,” elaborating that Freedman “knowingly fabricated very serious and completely false allegations against me” that “have ruined my life” during an unspecified legal case.
THR asked Freedman who he thinks is behind his anonymous website and whether he’s taken any action to remove it. He offered no reply.
This story appeared in the Feb. 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
