Body language expert Dr. Louise Mahler is giving her two cents as she continues to watch Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s trial. Speaking to Australia’s 7NEWS, she explained that the Hollywood stars are both playing characters of sorts — they’re just doing so in different ways.
“They’re both actors and Johnny Depp has chosen a simpler act. So his act is just consistent and slow. And he’s able to hold that for week after week after week,” she shared. “Whereas her emotive act is harder to maintain. Who knows if she’s just exhausted, bored, whatever, but it doesn’t come across well.”
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Focusing on the Magic Mike XXL star, Mahler pointed to the tension in her jaw, noting, “She gets that right from the beginning. It’s when she tries to recall the emotional situations, it seems very manufactured.”
The expert also insisted that Heard’s hyperventilating isn’t authentic and seems to be more of a “calculated strategy.”
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“It’s more coming from the body. It’s trying to create emotional thought. It’s the wrong way around. If it is genuine emotion, what happens is, you almost see the trigger in the mind and then the breath follows,” Mahler stated. “Her high breath is trying to bring her to tears, and I have to say she doesn’t achieve it. People who perform, if they do breathe high, they’ll actually turn to crying after a while because it puts pressure on the throat.”
Examining the more obvious things, such as Heard’s tissue use, Mahler was just as confused as the rest of us. “One would normally blow one’s nose because there’s moisture, but she actually puts the hankie up and breathes in,” she recounted. “Some people have said she’s breathing in a substance or something. I don’t know about that, but that would be a very odd thing to do.”
In addition, Mahler feels the mom-of-one’s “monotone” voice is odd given the seriousness of the situation, and when she does get emotional, her tone “recovers too quickly. If it does get out of hand, there are no actual tears. So when the crying’s there, there are no actual tears.”
Meanwhile, Depp isn’t innocent of putting on a front either, as Mahler declared, “He’s got his character down pat.”
“His character is, ‘I can hardly believe this is happening,’ which means that he’s taken a strategy of closing his eyes, breathing and speaking slowly, looking down. He has gaps in his speech. He speaks slowly,” she said. “He has a sense of lack of belief, which then brings about a bit of humor. He has stuck to that act throughout, which makes it credible because consistency builds credibility.”
“It’s one of the keys to trust. It has unconscious messages to the listener, which says this man is consistent. He is consistently smooth in his behavior,” the expert continued. “It’s a credible performance. Is it a true performance? Who knows. But that’s certainly the way their acts are coming across.”