'Tense' Rebekah Vardy 'tries to gain empathy' in interviews
How ‘tense’ Rebekah Vardy ‘tries to gain empathy’: Body language expert JUDI JAMES reveals how WAG put on a steely show at court before ’emotional’ and teary display in wake of Wagatha Christie fallout
- Judi James said WAG keeps eyes to the floor during before looking up when she is seeking to ‘gain empathy’
- Mrs Vardy appears ‘intentionally un-communicative, tense and self-protective’, body language expert said
- A High Court judge ruled on Friday that the 40-year-old had leaked stories about Mrs Rooney to The Sun
Rebekah Vardy appears ‘tense and protective’ in interviews discussing the fallout of the Wagatha Christie saga, a body language expert said today.
Judi James noted that the WAG keeps her eyes to the floor during the exchanges before looking up when she is seeking to ‘gain empathy’.
Ms James, who has authored 26 books on body language, contrasted Mrs Vardy’s ’emotional’ display in the interviews with TalkTV and The Sun against her steely show in court.
‘Her appearances during the trial involved tailored, dour business suits; immaculate, severe hairstyling and a raised chin and focused staring ahead that seemed to signal decisiveness, strength and vindication,’ she told MailOnline.
‘Her recent Instagram photo showed a punk warrior, walking away from the camera throwing a defiant V sign.
‘Now we are being shown a pared-down, bare-faced and tousled-hair Rebekah during these interview clips, leaking emotional hints and cues like a sieve as her body performs the equivalent of a more self-contained poker face.’
Judi James noted how Rebekah Vardy kept her eyes to the floor during the exchanges before looking up when she is seeking to ‘gain empathy’
She also contrasted Mrs Vardy’s ’emotional’ display in the interviews with TalkTV and The Sun against her steely show in court
A High Court judge ruled on Friday that the 40-year-old had leaked stories about Mrs Rooney to The Sun with her former agent Caroline Watt.
But in a short clip released ahead of the interview tonight on TalkTV, mother-of-five Mrs Vardy tries to restore her reputation, insisting she ‘did not do it’ and saying she feels ‘let down by the legal system’.
The clip ended with Rebekah, the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, bowing her head with tears in her eyes.
Meanwhile, in a second televised interview with The Sun, Mrs Vardy revealed the moment she asked Coleen Rooney: ‘What the f*** is this?’ following her now infamous Wagatha Christie post, in which she was accused of leaking a slew of stories about her WAG rival to the press.
Ms James described Mrs Vardy’s body pose in the clips as ‘intentionally un-communicative, tense and self-protective’.
‘Her chair is angled slightly towards the cameras and her leg is crossed away from the interviewer in a closed, barriered gesture,’ she said.
‘Her hands are clasped carefully to the side of her lap and this clasp seems to prevent any emotional leakage during these clips, even though at one point we can see them undulating as though she is trying to contain her emotions.’
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xbdFkm1KRHM%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26hl%3Den-US
The body language expert suggested her eyes betrayed a similar determination not to reveal her true feelings.
‘In these clips Rebekah’s eye movements suggest a desire to shield her thoughts via some cut-off rituals,’ she said.
‘She is often looking downward as she speaks, with an eye-dart suggesting she is recalling what happened. When she looks up it tends to be at the end of her statements here.
‘She seems to look up more easily when she is trying to gain empathy. Her point ”You know when you read something…” is an attempt at shared experiences with the interviewer as she talks about being trolled.
‘Her ”smile” at this point looks ironic or stoic, with the lips closed and the corners of the mouth pulled down.’
Mrs Vardy told The Sun that she had to stop taking her children to their father, Jamie Vardy’s football games due to chants directed at her.
“As a mum, all you want to do is shield your children from all that s*** and sometimes it’s just impossible to do,’ she said.
James said: ‘Her recent Instagram photo showed a punk warrior, walking away from the camera throwing a defiant V sign. Now we are being shown a pared-down, bare-faced and tousled-hair Rebekah during these interview clips, leaking emotional hints and cues like a sieve as her body performs the equivalent of a more self-contained poker face’
Ms James said: ‘The most emotional hint or facial expression of distress comes as she talks of her children and her chin begins to pucker and lift slightly in what can often signal the start of tears.
‘The moment her head jerks and falls down to her lap in another clip looks dramatic but is less revealing as she is performing a cut-off by hiding her face and in the clip we only get to see what looks like a gulping movement as she looks up again.’
Mrs Vardy also discussed the moment she phoned Mrs Rooney after her famous Instagram post accusing her of leaking stories.
Analysing her body language when talking about her rival, Ms James said: ‘When Rebekah relates her contact with Coleen her micro facial movements suggest disgust and rejection.
‘In many ways she mimes the ritual of a baby rejecting food. Her browns pucker into a frown, her top lip curls upward and she even performs a tongue-poke as her head shakes from side to side.’
‘My phone imploded… I said Coleen, what the f*** is this?’ Rebekah Vardy reveals moment she confronted Rooney over Wagatha Christie post – but says if she bumped into WAG in street she would take her for coffee as she has ‘no bad feelings’
By Kaya Terry and Laurence Dollimore for MailOnline
Rebekah Vardy has revealed the moment she asked Coleen Rooney: ‘What the f*** is this?’ following her now infamous Wagatha Christie post, in which she was accused of leaking a slew of stories about her WAG rival to the press.
The 40-year-old was enjoying a trip to Dubai when she saw Coleen, 36, had taken to social media to accuse her of leaking stories to the Sun newspaper following her own months-long ‘sting operation’, ending the post with the now immortal words: ‘It’s… Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
Speaking out today after refuting the claim and taking it to the High Court – sparking a sensational £3million libel battle, which she lost last week – the wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, 35, said she was in shock upon reading the accusation.
However she extended an olive branch to Coleen, admitting that she would ‘take her to Cafe Nero’ for a coffee if she bumped into her in the street, as she is not one to ‘hold a grudge.’
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Clemmie Moodie of the Sun, Rebekah said Coleen had called her from a withheld number in the moments before openly accusing her on October 9, 2019.
She said: ‘All of a sudden my phone imploded. I had a missed call from a withheld number, but then she (Coleen) messaged me and said: ‘I’ve been trying to call you’.
‘I picked up the phone and called her and basically said, ‘What the f*** is this?’
At one point Mrs Vardy tells McCann ‘I’m going to try’ and puts her head in her hands. The presenter hosted last week’s Tory leadership debate before it had to be caused when she fainted
Rebekah Vardy was bombarded with 100 abusive messages from trolls every day amid the Wagatha Christie row
By Jessica Warren for MailOnline
Rebekah Vardy has said that online trolls called her a ‘rat’ and linked her to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, after she was accused of leaking stories about Coleen Rooney to The Sun.
The 40-year-old said that up to 100 threatening messages were sent to her each day, and ‘felt sick’ with the abuse, developing a fear of being in public places.
She was also sent physical letters to her home, which included ‘crazy s**t’ from psychics, and was called names in the street.
Mrs Vardy sensationally lost her £3million libel battle against Mrs Rooney, 36, at the High Court last week.
The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, 35, said that after the accusation, going out was ‘horrendous’, and was scared to leave the house, with people looking at her, and calling her names behind her back.
‘I thought that eventually it would die down, it would go away, but it didn’t. It just got worse and worse,’ she told The Sun.
‘I was linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, people suggesting I was a member of IS, stuff like that.
‘It was as if I’d murdered someone. Every time something happened it was my fault, every time something new broke, it was my fault.’
The mother-of-five also revealed that she has been hospitalised twice with mental health issues since October 2019, when she was accused of the leaks.
She saw multiple counsellors, and was given medication for both anxiety and depression.
The comments were Mrs Vardy’s most detailed yet about her emotional reaction to the bitter court battle.
They illustrate the psychological toll on the WAG following one of the most high profile and embarrassing celebrity spats of recent times.
But it seems Rebekah is ready to forgive and forget, adding that if she saw her in the street tomorrow she would ask her ‘if she wanted to go for a Caffe Nero.’
She later claims she ‘reached out’ to Coleen in November last year but did not get a response, before insisting she has no ‘bad feelings’ towards her.
She says she wished she had ‘done things differently’ and that her timing was ‘terrible’, but that she ultimately does not ‘blame her’.
Rebekah said her main gripe was with ‘the process’ and the judge ‘getting it wrong.’
The exclusive interview is likely part of a series of efforts to restore her reputation that may include a documentary, a biography and two retail campaigns.
Mrs Vardy was told by a High Court judge that her evidence was ‘evasive and implausible; and was accused of deliberately deleting WhatsApp messages central to the case.
In her ruling, the judge said it was ‘likely’ that Mrs Vardy’s agent at the time, Caroline Watt, ‘undertook the direct act’ of passing the information to The Sun.
But she added: ‘Nonetheless, the evidence … clearly shows, in my view, that Mrs Vardy knew of and condoned this behaviour, actively engaging in it by directing Ms Watt to the private Instagram account, sending her screenshots of Mrs Rooney’s posts, drawing attention to items of potential interest to the press, and answering additional queries raised by the press via Ms Watt.
The judge added: ‘In my judgment, the conclusions that I have reached as to the extent to which the claimant engaged in disclosing to The Sun information to which she only had access as a permitted follower of an Instagram account which she knew, and Mrs Rooney repeatedly asserted, was private, suffice to show the single meaning is substantially true.’
For a week in May, the case captivated millions who were left open-mouthed by the evidence including explosive and expletive-filled Whatsapp messages sent by Ms Vardy as well as Coleen’s evidence about leaking false stories about her private life to find who was giving them to the tabloids and how her marriage almost fell apart after her husband Wayne was caught drink-driving with a party girl.
Mrs Vardy admitted that she ‘felt sick’ following the ruling, which is likely to cost her and her husband millions in damages and legal costs.
She said she now receives a torrent of abuse online and is scared to go out in public after being approached in the street.
She said people would say things ‘behind her back’ and that she would receive ‘100 abusive’ messages per day.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PJGN_KAtBp8%3Frel%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26hl%3Den-US
Jamie Vardy (pictured) was pictured for the first time yesterday since the sensational Wagatha Christie verdict, behind the wheel of his £130,000 Bentley
Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy together in 2016. The WAGs have ended up in court in the libel trial of the year and Mrs Vardy’s reputation is in tatters after bringing the case and losing
Rebekah Vardy denied that photos of her and Coleen Rooney together at an international football match (pictured) were a ‘set up’ following information from a photography agency
Mrs Vardy said trolls sent her letters accusing her of being ‘linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann’ and of being a member of ISIS.
She said it was ‘as if I’d murdered someone’, revealing how she received a litany of death and rape threats.
The WAG also revealed that several of those sending vile abuse have been arrested by police, leading to numerous ‘letters of apology.’
When asked if she is impressed by Coleen’s detective skills, after she posted 50 stories on her private Instagram account and only let one person view them to see who was behind the leaks, Mrs Vardy branded the whole thing ‘ridiculous.’
She said that she would ‘never do that to someone’ and that she would have instead gone to their house to ‘have a conversation’.
Happy: A victorious Coleen Rooney was seen laughing in the stands at Old Trafford on Sunday – after winning her libel case against Becky Vardy
Legal expert Mark Stephens has dashed cold water on any ideas Mrs Vardy may have had in terms of an appeal and described her decision to go to court as ‘ill-advised’.
He told MailOnline: ‘She has got no hope whatsoever of appealing. The judge has made findings on the fact, in order to appeal she has to demonstrate that the judge has erred in law some way – and she has not.
‘This case was always ill-advised. If you go into a libel courtroom, the lawyers are paid to dissect you. They did it. They damaged both women reputationally.
‘Unfortunately for Vardy the stain will be very long lived. She will be better off retiring to a Scottish island and not saying much ever again.
‘An appeal is going to be throwing good money after bad and this is already an own-goal. What you don’t want is an own hattrick that makes a disaster out of a crisis.’
Media litigator Matthew Dando, a partner at Wiggin LLP, told MailOnline: ‘It is a devastating and damning judgment for Rebekah Vardy that leaves her credibility in tatters. It is hard to imagine a stronger judicial condemnation of her evidence.
Mrs Vardy and her Leicester City footballer husband Jamie pictured together outside the High Court on May earlier this year
Mrs Rooney pictured arriving with husband Wayne to the High Court in London in May earlier this year
‘It will do real damage to Rebekah Vardy’s finances too as she will have to pay Coleen Rooney’s legal costs as well as her own.
‘It is hard to imagine Rebekah Vardy emerging from this with anything less than a fatal wound to her character and credibility’.
TV production companies planning to make a documentary telling her side of the story are expected to offer between £50,000 and £250,000 for her involvement, according to The Times.
Streaming giants Netflix, Amazon and Disney are already believed to be battling it out to broadcast Mrs Rooney’s side of the legal battle made by Lorton Entertainment – the same company responsible for the feature film on Wayne.
A source close to Coleen said she could be in line for ‘several million pounds’ for her participation.
Mrs Vardy had sued Mrs Rooney for libel over her claim that she had leaked details of her private life to the press.
It followed an elaborate sting operation that saw Coleen post fake stories on her Instagram in order to see which ones ended up in The Sun.
Justice Steyn, said in her ruling that Coleen had successfully proved her allegation was substantially true.
Coleen Rooney (pictured at court on May 17) is mulling a new TV series about the court case
Mrs Vardy and her footballer husband have been left with a £3million legal bill after Mrs Justice Steyn ruled in favour of Mrs Rooney in a judgment that said swathes of her evidence given under oath had been ‘manifestly inconsistent’, ‘not credible’ and needed to be treated with ‘very considerable caution’.
The huge legal bill means the Vardys may be forced to sell their beloved Portuguese villa to cover the costs.
The bombshell verdict from Court 13 of the High Court was handed down remotely online last week by Mrs Justice Steyn just over two months after the trial in May.
Mrs Vardy’s failed libel suit has been branded the most ill-advised in history.
However she still insists she was not the person who leaked the stories about Coleen to the media.
She told the Sun that she ‘would do it all again tomorrow’ as she is ‘innocent.’ She also revealed that she has four documentary offers on the table.
Rebekah, who now risks losing a quarter of the £12million fortune she shares with Jamie Vardy, said: ‘I am extremely sad and disappointed at the decision that the judge has reached. It is not the result that I had expected, nor believe was just. I brought this action to vindicate my reputation and am devastated by the judge’s finding.
Who are the REAL winners? Celebrity lawyers paid ‘£800-an-HOUR’ as £3m Wagatha Christie trial becomes one of Britain’s most expensive libel cases EVER
David Sherborne (left), 53, was acting for Mrs Rooney. He has represented an array of stars including Johnny Depp in the London case. Hugh Tomlinson QC (right), who represented Ms Vardy, is a top-flight privacy silk who has launched a number of battles with the Press in a wide-spanning career. He is a board member of campaign group Hacked Off.
With estimated costs expected to approach £3m, the Wagatha Christie case will be one of Britain’s most expensive libel cases.
Both Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney employed ‘superstar’ barristers to plead their case, and it is believed both men will walk away with a hefty paycheck of up to £500,000 each.
Coleen’s brief David Sherborne and Rebekah’s QC Hugh Tomlinson are believed to charge at least £800 an hour – and that includes preparing their case, not just for the time they spend in court. Each senior lawyer had an experienced junior barrister backed up by a team of solicitors.
Even a year ago at a costs hearing in August 2021, the total pre-trial bill for the case was reckoned to be between £1.5m and £2m.
At that point, documents showed a £300,000 difference in legal budgets by the warring WAGs and Coleen’s lawyers objected to the ‘disproportionate costs’ racked up by Rebekah’s side, describing it as ‘Too many lawyers working far too many hours.’
Rebekah’s side had budgeted £836,735, compared to Coleen’s £537,029, making it 55 per cent higher. While that amount did include a projected fee for the trial costs, the case also took many unexpected turns after that stage with several hearings taking longer than expected.
When Coleen’s side made an unsuccessful application to have Rebekah’s former agent Caroline Watt to the action in February 2022, Coleen was ordered to pay £65,000 of Caroline Watt’s £70,000 costs just for that hearing and associated work. Coleen’s own estimated legal costs for the two-day hearing were £163,926, while Rebekah’s were between £100,000 and £143,000.
Whatever the final bill, it won’t match the stratospheric costs incurred in Britain’s longest defamation case, the David and Goliath McLibel trial, which cost McDonalds an estimated £10m (at 1997 prices).
The multinational sued two penniless London Greenpeace supporters for a leaflet they were distributing and involved no fewer than 313 days of hearings at the High Court over 2½ years. Although McDonalds won the case, it was regarded as a pyrrhic victory as the judgement did find some of the points in the campaigners’ literature proven, and the lawsuit had merely served to publicise the criticisms.
The celebrity lawyers – and the judge who delivered a SCATHING ruling
Karen Margaret Steyn QC is sworn in as a Justice of the High Court in 2019
David Sherborne
Mr Sherborne also has a reputation as the barrister the rich and famous turn to for legal assistance – his previous client list includes Diana, Princess of Wales, Hollywood actor Michael Douglas and former prime minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie.
Mrs Rooney’s barrister is no stranger to high-profile libel trials at the Royal Courts of Justice, notably representing Johnny Depp in the actor’s 2020 libel claim against the publisher of the Sun, News Group Newspapers (NGN).
The barrister, called to the bar in 1992, has also represented dozens of claimants, including celebrities, suing NGN over phone hacking at the News Of The World.
Hugh Tomlinson QC
An experienced media barrister, Mr Tomlinson is at the front of Mrs Vardy’s legal team in the libel case.
Called to the bar in 1983, his previous clients include the Prince of Wales in his legal battle against the Mail on Sunday over his diaries, easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Mr Tomlinson, who became a QC in 2002, is a board member of campaign group Hacked Off.
Mrs Justice Steyn
The High Court judge overseeing the case, Mrs Justice Steyn (pictured right) was appointed in 2019 and sits in the Queen’s Bench Division – the part of the High Court which deals with defamation, personal injury and breach of contract claims.
As well as overseeing the ‘Wagatha Christie’ claim, other prominent cases she has heard include Arron Banks’ libel claim against journalist Carole Cadwalladr and the FDA union’s unsuccessful legal challenge over Boris Johnson’s decision to support Priti Patel following bullying accusations.
The daughter of former Law Lord Lord Steyn, Mrs Justice Steyn covered a variety of cases as a barrister, including a case over the expansion of Heathrow airport.
‘I think I’m probably suffering with PTSD’: Rebekah Vardy reveals she has been hospitalised with mental health issues TWICE since Wagatha Christie accusation… and ‘felt like jumping off Dubai mall’ at her lowest ebb
Rebekah Vardy has said she think she is suffering from PTSD following her High Court libel trial with Coleen Rooney, and thought about jumping off the top of a shopping mall in Dubai.
Now that the Wagatha Christie trial is over, Mrs Vardy said that she needs to seek out therapy, having been hospitalised for mental health issues twice.
The 40-year-old sensationally lost her £3million libel battle against Coleen Rooney, 36, at the High Court last week.
‘I think I’m probably suffering with PTSD,’ she told The Sun. ‘I feel physically sick when I talk about the trial and what happened, and I have nightmares.
‘I haven’t gone to get a diagnosis yet but I do know I probably need some more therapy. It’s been a horrible time.’
Rebekah Vardy sketched in the High Court where she was accused of lying and giving ‘implausible’ evidence. She left court for an hour without explanation, returning with some Lucozade, her laptop and her lawyer
Mrs Vardy was enjoying a trip to Dubai when she saw that Mrs Rooney had taken to social media to accuse her of leaking stories to The Sun newspaper following her own months-long ‘sting operation’, ending the post with the now immortal words: ‘It’s… Rebekah Vardy’s account.’
The wife of Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, 35, said that she thought about jumping from the top floor of a shopping mall in Dubai while pregnant, after being accused of leaking the stories.
She described it as her ‘lowest point’, anticipating the UK response when she returned to the country.
‘Jamie and I were in a shopping mall at the time buying baby clothes, and I just thought, ‘I don’t want to go through this, I don’t want to live like this’,’ she told The Sun.
‘For a split second, I said to Jamie, ‘I feel like I just want to jump off this top floor’.’
The mother-of-five also said that she has been hospitalised twice with mental health issues since October 2019, when she was accused of the leaks.
She saw multiple counsellors, and was given medication for both anxiety and depression.
Mrs Vardy said she was struggling with panic attacks and felt as though her life was falling apart, describing the ordeal as exhausting.
Kidney stones had also developed due to the stress, she added.
Mrs Vardy said that she felt ‘bullied’ and ‘slut-shamed’ during the libel trial, saying that her answers were ‘manipulated’ and ‘twisted’.
While she did not regret the trial, Mrs Vardy said that it felt ‘misogynistic’ and ‘classist’, with people pitching the ‘two successful working-class women’ against each other.
Following Mrs Rooney’s famous social media post, Mrs Vardy said that she has lost some friends, but keeps a small circle, keeping football separate from her family life.
Jamie Vardy, and his wife Rebekah Vardy, arrive together at the High Court in London, Tuesday, May 17, for the libel trial
She added that she and Mrs Rooney were ‘not close’ to begin with, but said that there are ‘no bard feelings’ on her side.
Mrs Vardy had sued Mrs Rooney for libel over her claim that she had leaked details of her private life to the press.
It followed an elaborate sting operation that saw Mrs Rooney post fake stories on her Instagram in order to see which ones ended up in The Sun.
Justice Steyn, said in her ruling that Mrs Rooney had successfully proved her allegation was substantially true.
Mrs Vardy will have to pay her rival’s costs as well as her own, which sources in both camps say comes to between £2million and £3million.
The huge legal bill means the Vardys may be forced to sell their beloved Portuguese villa to cover the costs.
The bombshell verdict from Court 13 of the High Court was handed down remotely online last week by Mrs Justice Steyn just over two months after the trial in May.
Mrs Vardy’s failed libel suit has been branded the most ill-advised in history.
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