Johnny Depp's trial against Amber Heard could revive his career, a crisis PR expert said — but only if he plays villains

• Johnny Depp's lawsuit against Amber Heard claims her domestic violence allegations ruined his career.
• Even if he loses, his career has a good chance of rebounding, a crisis public relations expert said.

In his lawsuit against Amber Heard, Johnny Depp blamed his ex-wife for ruining his career.

Her December 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post calling herself a victim of domestic violence, he alleged, cost him his roles in the multi-billion-dollar "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise and the "Harry Potter" spinoff "Fantastic Beasts" movie series. In his ongoing defamation trial against Heard, he and agents who worked for him testified that salaries dried up, major studios gave him the cold shoulder, and his career fell apart.

But the trial itself has a good chance of revitalizing Depp's career, according to Juda Engelmayer, a crisis public relations expert and the founder of HeraldPR.

He is too valuable a star to disappear from the movies completely, Engelmayer told Insider. He just might not get too many roles as the hero anymore. And forget about Disney movies.

"I don't think it'll be family-friendly. I think his role will be different," Engelmayer said. "He'll be cast in independent films or films where he is maybe the bad guy, a criminal, a mobster. Someone who at first is not a likable guy, not a fun guy, but someone who's the bad guy."

With a livestreamed trial, Depp gets to make his case to the public

Even if Depp loses his lawsuit — and there's a good chance he will, given the high bar for defamation cases in the United States — the trial is a way of airing out to the public his side of the story.

Depp alleges that Heard defamed him in her op-ed, while Heard has countersued and alleged Depp assaulted her numerous times before and during their marriage, which ended in 2016.

Lawyers for Heard, in pretrial motions, tried to prevent the proceedings from being livestreamed. But the judge ruled in favor of Depp's lawyers, who argued it should have as much public access as possible.

According to two sources familiar with Depp's thinking, whose identities are known to Insider but who requested anonymity so as to not affect the ongoing trial, Depp wanted to be able to make his case to the public as well as the jury.

"He's already lost his career. He's lost his reputation. And no matter what happens in this trial, there are going to be people who will always think that he's a wife-beater," one of the sources told Insider. "So I think that informed his thinking here. Maybe he loses, but this is a way at least he gets his story out."

Engelmayer — who has represented Russian oligarchs, Harvey Weinstein, Paula Deen, and recently picked up "fake heiress" Anna Sorokin as a client — says the strategy will probably work.

He pointed to Mel Gibson, who was widely shunned after making antisemitic and racist remarks, but whose career nonetheless partially recovered with 2016's "Hacksaw Ridge," for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination, and the financially successful Christmas comedy "Daddy's Home 2."

"Mel Gibson came back. Not to the exact extent he used to, but he's come back," Engelmayer said. "Johnny Depp is not seen in the same way. He has always been seen more charming and more delightful."

Depp's legal issues are also a civil matter, not a criminal one. And members of the public, after the case has wrapped up, may walk away from the trial even less sure he did anything wrong.

Depp has previously used the legal process to defend himself, suing a British tabloid in the UK for calling him a "wife beater," and lost. But in Fairfax County Court in Virginia, he and his lawyers are spending weeks in front of cameras making the argument that it was Heard who was the true abuser in the relationship and that she can't be trusted when she says otherwise.

"Johnny Depp is showing studios and showing publicists that he can win audiences over," Engelmayer said. "That's the turning point of whether or not it's going to turn on Johnny Depp. This is not a criminal trial, it's a civil trial. So in the end, he wins even if the jury believes him or doesn't believe him, awards him money or just awards him a symbolic win, or even if he loses completely."

But the tide could still shift

The first three weeks of the trial were dominated by Depp, who, as the plaintiff in the case, testified first alongside other witnesses who supported his claims.

Last week, Heard took the stand. She drew a damning portrait of Depp as an alcohol-soaked and cocaine-addled abuser who she said frequently beat her in bouts of rage and sexually assaulted her.

Heard is scheduled to continue testifying on Monday morning before facing cross-examination in the afternoon. Her sister, Whitney Heard, is expected to testify as well and corroborate some of her claims.

Heard also faces public relations issues. Depp has painted her an abuser, and few major figures of the #MeToo movement have publicly stood up in her defense.

Depp also has an army of online fans attacking her, particularly on TikTok, where videos mocking her testimony have gone viral. Heard switched up her own public relations team mid-way through the trial, reportedly unhappy with the media coverage she was receiving.

The trouble for Heard, Engelmayer told Insider, is that Depp is successfully convincing much of the public that his relationship with Heard was, in the least, very complicated.

Both of them, he said, are coming out "looking scarred and looking like troubled people."

"What he is showing is that this bad relationship wasn't one-sided, it was two-sided," Engelmayer said. "I think that established that they're both difficult, psychologically and emotionally troubled people."

But Heard's career will turn out fine, Engelmayer said. She is expected to remain a fixture in Warner Bros.'s "Aquaman" movies, and the backbone she's shown in the trial can't hurt.

"She comes out as a woman who is speaking out and speaking her truth," Engelmayer said. "She'll be picked for movies too. And the box office will judge both of them on that."