Blake Lively Under Fire For Not Wearing A Hair-Net In CT Bakery

WILTON, CT — No good deed goes unpunished.

In Hollywood, at least.

When A-list actor Blake Lively dropped in to her bud's bakery, Rise Doughnuts in Wilton, to work a shift behind the counter, social media ignited, as social media is supposed to do. (Film fan website MovieWeb called Lively's venture into the wilds of Wilton "a strange PR stunt.")

Lively, of course, has been splayed all over the tabloids lately, embroiled as she is in a high-profile lawsuit which clams director Jason Baldoni sexually harassed her on the set of their 2024 movie "It Ends With Us." Baldoni has filed a $400 million defamation and extortion lawsuit against Lively, her publicist, and her husband, "Deadpool" star Ryan Reynolds.

Movie fans are either playing for Team Lively or Team Baldoni, apparently, and each side wastes no opportunity to kick a stool into the path of the other. For Baldoni partisans, Lively's good-natured turn as a pastry chef presented a rare chance to not only embarrass their nemesis, but get law enforcement involved.

In the photos that flew across Instagram, Ms. Lively's fabulous hair, normally one of her stronger assets, could be seen cascading into the powdered sugar and sprinkles as she served customers. That's a no-no, as public health aficionados will be quick to point out. So many negative waves were beamed into Yelp so quickly that the managers of the review site disabled comments for its Rise page.

Wilton Director of Public Health Barrington Bogle told Patch the complaints poured in to his office, which had no choice but to initiate an investigation, still ongoing.

"When we do get complaints, we do respond to them immediately," Bogle said.

But are the gripes from disillusioned Wilton locals, or grumblings astroturfed in from the Baldoni Brigade?

The gossip sheet TMZ said, "A source close to Blake tells us ... 'The so-called complaints are from people who have never been there and who don’t even live in Connecticut. Targeting a lovely, small, family-owned business is a new low in the retaliation campaign.'"

That family includes celebrity chef and Wilton resident Hugh Mangum, a former Food Network "Chopped" champion and judge on "Beat Bobby Flay" and "Fire Masters." Mangum opened the gourmet doughnut shop, which many call the best in Connecticut, at 28 Center Street in the heart of town in 2022. It remains open during the DPH's investigation.