Is Crisis PR Whiz Risa Heller Ready to Take On Hollywood?

A flattering profile of tech grifter Elizabeth Holmes in the New York Times. The messy exit of Jeff Shell from NBCUniversal. And a standoff with Variety over a story about a supposedly globetrotting Jeff Zucker purportedly hell-bent on buying CNN.

Hollywood and media was buzzing about all those stories and the person they all have in common is crisis public relations expert Risa Heller, who represented the principal in all of them.

That’s all the more impressive for someone who lives on the opposite side of the country. But with her rising West Coast profile, Heller, CEO of an eponymous New York-based crisis communications firm, has tongues wagging about what appears to be a growing role in the Hollywood crisis P.R. machine.

Heller’s name has been front and center all year in the entertainment industry. That came into particular focus last month when she stepped up to battle with Variety on behalf of client Jeff Zucker. (If you’re a former NBCUniversal CEO, Heller seems to be your go-to.)

The spark to this latest conflagration was a July 24 article by Tatiana Siegel suggesting that Zucker, who ran CNN until 2022, was trying to buy the network. Heller blasted the publication while strongly denying central aspects of its reporting.

“There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to a high standard of truth and facts in journalism, but those days are clearly over,” Heller said in a no-holds-barred statement to CNN. “It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false.”

The Variety story was later updated with additional statements, though it didn’t walk back the core claims about Zucker. He is apparently still seeking a retraction.

But her response struck Evan Nierman, CEO of L.A.-based crisis PR firm Red Banyan and author of the book “Crisis Averted: PR Strategies to Protect Your Reputation and the Bottom Line,” as distinct from the style of most Hollywood publicists, who may be at the top of their game promoting clients eager to talk about their films and TV shows, but are perhaps less skilled at personal or professional damage control.

“[Heller is] high level, experienced, assertive,” Nierman said. “Part of the reason you have a crisis PR representative who is operating at high levels is because you expect them to be able to do and say things that you wouldn’t expect from a run-of-the-mill communications professional.”

Even before she’d started making waves in Hollywood with her representation of Shell and Zucker, Heller was getting high-profile press attention in her hometown.

“Is there anybody who has stepped in s–t who does not call her to clean their shoes?” Evan Smith, co-founder of the Texas Tribune, told New York magazine.

Heller, 43-year-old mother of three and a transplant from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to Brooklyn Heights, declined to be interviewed for this story. But an individual with knowledge of her plans confirmed she would “happily” solidify her relationship with Los Angeles by opening an office here — if the right person came along to run it.

And with the exception of a few naysayers — industry watchers say she and her company have got the chops for the job, even if her name is still new to many in Hollywood.

Jon Kelly, co-founder of Puck News, the newsletter-centered media company, confirmed Heller represented him in a personal issue and said her credentials clearly solidify her budding reputation on the West Coast.

“I can’t pretend to know” Heller’s Hollywood plans, Kelly said. “But I think what I would say is she represented to the best of my knowledge the last two chief executives of NBCUniversal, and I’m not sure what’s more L.A. than that.”

Current and recent industry clients include Zucker, Shell and Harvey Weinstein, who employed Heller in 2015 to defend him against accusations made by Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. (In that year, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance chose not to press charges against Weinstein due to lack of evidence. In December, Gutierrez said she felt vindicated when Weinstein was found guilty in three of seven counts in an L.A rape trial. Gutierrez played a role as a support witness in that trial). Heller told New York magazine that she worked for Weinstein for three weeks in 2015 and added, “If I knew then what I know now, would I have worked for him? No.”

An industry communications veteran who also asked not to be named was more skeptical of Heller’s potential for success in Hollywood.

“She’s an intelligent, capable person with very limited experience outside of real estate, corporate affairs and politics,” the individual said. “There is obviously plenty of business for everybody. But the West Coast has proven to be a challenging environment for New York-based firms to really get a foothold.”

It’s true that some of Heller’s clients come from politics, business and spheres other than entertainment. Heller launched her career with posts as communications director for Congresswoman Jane Harman (2004-2005) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (2005-2207). Crisis clients have included Anthony Weiner of “dick pic” fame and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin (undone when a work Zoom caught him masturbating to a porn site), sought her advice, as did celebrity chef Mario Batali after being accused of groping several women.

In the tech world, Heller also was engaged to help salvage the reputation of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried netted an Emmy for portraying her in Hulu’s limited series “The Dropout.”). Heller reportedly engineered a flattering New York Times piece on Holmes that caused tension in the newsroom for its lack of substance (Heller declined to comment on the matter for a Vanity Fair article).

One thing is certain: there are few prominent crisis PR firms based in L.A. The names that come up most often are Howard Bragman — who passed away earlier this year — and Michael Sitrick, founder of Sitrick and Company. Sitrick has represented Rush Limbaugh and Halle Berry, key figures in the Michael Jackson estate case and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles during the priest sex-abuse scandal. He declined to comment for this story.

Veteran L.A. litigator Patty Glaser, who’s representing ousted NBC executive Shell, called Heller “an integral part of a litigation team.”

This is not the first time Glaser has worked in tandem with Heller, though the attorney declined to specify other cases. Heller is “appropriately aggressive, very conscientious, and available 24/7,” Glaser told TheWrap. “Very good at what she does.”

And, Glaser added, Heller “follows what I have always followed, without me telling her — that you never lie to the press. She can say, you can’t talk to me about something, but you never misrepresent, that’s a foolish road to go down. And I have, in my humble opinion, a pretty good relationship with the press because of that.”

An L.A. showrunner — who asked not to be named to avoid refocusing on a negative event — praised Heller for helping to resolve a toxic work environment situation that led to an internal investigation but no legal action. “In my opinion, she was the MVP of that experience for me,” the showrunner said.

The showrunner added that even from a New York base, Heller was sensitive to Hollywood’s complicated bubble.

“Hollywood is a very internal town, everybody knows everybody else, everybody is working for everybody else… We need to keep those relationships,” she said. “When something’s gone wrong, it’s hard to figure out who to trust. Risa came a bit from the outside — she was able to cut through some stuff while respecting those relationships.”

Nierman said Heller’s track record handling clients from various businesses and geographies makes her a solid candidate to take on more of Hollywood’s seemingly endless stream of crises, heightened by today’s cancel culture climate.

“I think people who live and work in Hollywood have a vested interest protecting their turf, and spinning the narrative that you have to be in Los Angeles every day in order to be effective representing clients,” Nierman said. “You can either do the job or not.”

“This issue of where the crisis manager lives and works means a lot more to people on the outside than it does to the person in crisis,” Nierman added. “And I’ve spoken to literally hundreds of people through the years who are facing the worst moments of their lives And if you’re someone who can help them, they don’t care where you are, as long as you can deliver.”

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