Johnny Depp apparently missed a part of his own libel trial against News Group Newspapers on Friday. As Depp’s concierge provided testimony in High Court regarding Amber Heard’s allegedly frequent late-night visits from Elon Musk, the actor himself was in a meeting to discuss a new film project, according to the Daily Mail.
Depp is suing NGN over a 2018 story that ran in The Sun and labeled him a “wife-beater” after allegations of domestic abuse from Heard. The publisher’s defense rests on 14 separate abuse allegations from Heard, which allegedly occurred between 2013 and 2016. Depp has denied all allegations of abuse, and has claimed in court that it was Heard who abused him—and fabricated evidence of her own abuse over the years in a meticulous, Gone Girl-like scheme.
Friday’s proceedings largely followed the same pattern established in previous days of the trial, with various witnesses connected to Depp denying that they’d ever seen Heard with bruises or marks on her skin despite photographs of Heard with injuries shown by defense attorney Sasha Wass. But at least one development stuck out, as a concierge from Depp’s Los Angeles home, Alejandro Romero, testified about Heard’s alleged multiple rendezvous with Tesla founder (and now proud father) Elon Musk.
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When Depp was away, Romero testified Friday, Musk stopped by between 11 p.m. and midnight “a few times a week,” the Daily Mail reports. Romero added that he “did not notice any bruises, cuts, swelling, red marks, or any other injuries of any kind to Ms. Heard’s face.”
Romero had written in his witness statement that the visits began in March 2015, the Daily Mail reports. “For his initial visits, I would receive a call from Ms. Heard, who would tell me to give Mr. Musk access to the garage for the building and then send him up to the penthouse,” Romero reportedly wrote. “After he had made a few visits, Ms. Heard provided Mr. Musk with his own garage remote and a fob to Mr. Depp’s penthouse. I believe he visited Ms. Heard a few times a week and he would always visit when Mr. Depp was not at home.”
Romero insisted that he remembered the date of the visits because the first occurred on the same day of the couple’s now-infamous, violent fight that ended with Depp’s finger being severed. (Heard claims that Depp injured himself when he smashed a phone against a wall after an attack that made her fear for her life; Depp claims the injury occurred when Heard hurled a vodka bottle at him.)
In a deposition last month, Heard’s best friend’s ex-husband Josh Drew alleged that Heard and Musk had engaged in a “three-way affair” with Cara Delevingne. Musk denied the claim in a statement to Page Six. “Cara and I are friends, but we’ve never been intimate,” Musk wrote. “She would confirm this. Also, I wish to confirm again that Amber and I only started going out about a month after her divorce filing. I don’t think I was ever even in the vicinity of Amber during their marriage!”
“Regarding this lawsuit, I would recommend that everyone involved bury the hatchet and move on,” Musk added. “Life is too short for such extended negativity. Nobody is going to say, after it’s all over, that they wished the court battle had lasted longer!”
On Friday Romero also testified that on May 25, 2016, four days after one of the alleged domestic violence incidents in which Heard claims Depp hit her, he stood “three feet away” from Heard as she asked for the key to her unit, and did not observe any injuries or markings on her face, the Daily Mail reports.
And one of Depp’s bodyguards, Travis McGivern, provided additional testimony Friday claiming that while he never witnessed Depp attacking Heard, he did see Heard abuse Depp. In March 2015, when Depp allegedly grabbed Heard by the hair and repeatedly hit her, the Daily Mail reports, McGivern claims that it was Heard who threw a full can of Red Bull at the actor’s back, punched him in the eye, and spat on and threw her purse at him from a balcony.
Responding to the ongoing trial, a representative for Heard told Vanity Fair, “Amber never asked for these proceedings to take place. Amber obtained a domestic-violence restraining order against Depp back in 2016 and has tried to move on with her life. It is Johnny Depp who brought these proceedings against a British newspaper and has dragged her to the U.K. courts to give evidence on some of the most distressing moments of her life.”
