Amber Heard supports Blake Lively after Justin Baldoni hired Johnny Depp crisis firm: 'I saw this firsthand'

Amber Heard joined the chorus of names voicing their support for actress Blake Lively after the actress filed a legal complaint against her It Ends With Us costar and director Justin Baldoni that alleged he sexually harassed her, created a hostile work environment, and waged a smear campaign against her on social media.

“Social media is the absolute personification of the classic saying ‘A lie travels halfway around the world before truth can get its boots on,'" Heard said in a statement provided to NBC News on Monday. "I saw this firsthand and up close. It’s as horrifying as it is destructive."

Entertainment Weekly reached out to Heard's reps for comment.

Heard's comment alludes to her past legal battles with ex Johnny Depp. Prior to the complaint but amid reports of conflict on set between he and Lively, Baldoni hired veteran PR crisis manager Melissa Nathan of the Agency Group in August, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter at the time.

Nathan is the same publicist Depp hired during his highly publicized legal trials with Heard after she wrote an op-ed that heavily suggested he abused her. Depp initially sued U.K. tabloid The Sun for libel over an article that referred to him a "wife beater" in print, but he lost that suit. He later won a U.S. defamation trial against Heard and was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. Heard won $2 million only in compensatory damages for her counterclaim of defamation.

Now, Lively's legal complaint against Baldoni states that her costar and director, among other claims, "manipulated the social conversation to discredit and 'bury' Ms. Lively in retaliation for reporting her concerns about harassing and unsafe conduct during the production of the film, and in the hopes of deterring Ms. Lively from potentially taking those same concerns public. This campaign has been [devastating] to Ms. Lively, including by causing substantial harm to Ms. Lively, her family, as well as her businesses and all the people who work at each of them."

In a previous statement to EW, Baldoni's attorney called Lively's accusations were "categorically false" and "a desperate attempt to 'fix' her negative reputation."

Other celebrities and filmmakers that came out to support Lively after she filed the legal claim in California Civil Rights Department include her Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants costars Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, and Alexis Bledel; author Colleen Hoover, who wrote the book It Ends With Us on which Lively's movie with Baldoni is based; and her A Simple Favor and A Simple Favor 2 director Paul Feig.

"As Blake's friends and sisters for over 20 years, we stand with her in solidarity as she fights back against the reported campaign waged to destroy her reputation," Tamblyn, Ferrera, and Bledel said in a joint statement they posted on Instagram this past weekend. "Throughout the filming of It Ends With Us, we saw her summon the courage to ask for a safe workplace for herself and colleagues on set, and we are appalled to read the evidence of a premeditated and vindictive effort that ensued to discredit her voice. Most upsetting is the unabashed exploitation of domestic violence survivors' stories to silence a woman who asked for safety. The hypocrisy is astounding."