(Top) Janet Nova in grey suit trying to block Jonathan May-Bowles as he tries to hit Rupert Murdoch with a foam-pie during the parliamentary hearings in London. (Bottom) Janet Nova at the hearings before the foam-pie incident took place. (Reuters)

London, July 21: The heroics of Wendi Deng Murdoch drew gasps of awe when she lunged out of her seat in a committee room on Tuesday to protect her husband, Rupert Murdoch, from a protester wielding a shaving cream pie.

But there was another woman who actually intervened before Wendy Murdoch did: Janet Nova, the News Corporation’s interim group general counsel.

It may have gone unnoticed in the scuffle and in the media hype that ensued, but Nova was the first to react to the protester’s approach. She leapt to her feet and, clutching her iPad, tried to block the man’s reach toward her boss. Wendy Murdoch followed right behind her, and she appeared to reach over Nova as she swung her arm in a great arc to deliver a sharp punch.

Nova, who is 46 and based in New York, is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Law School who has been with the company since 1997. She was one of the troupe of lawyers and public-relationship advisers who prepared Murdoch for his appearance before a parliamentary committee looking into phone hacking by the company’s British newspapers.

Through over two hours of questioning, Nova, wearing a grey suit, sat patiently a few feet behind and to the left of Murdoch. When the protester — identified in British news reports as Jonathan May-Bowles, a comedian who performs under the name Johnnie Marbles — stormed towards the witness table, Nova provided the first line of defence and Wendy Murdoch the second, while James Murdoch, Rupert’s 38-year-old son, seemed frozen in surprise.

It was a curious moment, transforming a hearing that was, for many onlookers, mainly about seeing Rupert Murdoch humbled into one in which he enjoyed at least a little bit of sympathy from the crowd in the room and from the millions of viewers who watched on television.

While Nova’s role has gone largely unsung, Wendy Murdoch’s actions immediately became a sensation on the Internet, where some people posting on Twitter coined a new verb — “I’ll Wendi you!” — and others sought more information about “the woman behind the punch”.

Nova has been in her post for only a short time. Rupert Murdoch wrote in a company email announcing her promotion on June 20 that she “has handled a number of major acquisitions for the company over the past several years, in addition to managing our corporate reporting and governance matters.”