Actress Amber Heard has ripped a new interview with Johnny Depp in British GQ in which he sought to deny, dismiss, and belittle allegations that he physically abused his ex-wife.
In the piece, Depp played the victim and said the allegations against him were false and have turned him from “Cinderella to Quasimodo” in Hollywood.
Heard, who famously appeared at a Los Angeles courthouse with a bruise under her cheek that she said was caused by Depp throwing a phone at her (Depp’s team denied the claim), has now issued a statement attacking the actor and GQ for the piece, with an attorney saying it represented continued “psychological abuse” of Heard, who split with Depp in 2016. The two settled their divorce in 2017, with Depp agreeing to pay $7 million in a settlement that Heard donated to charity (although Heard has previously accused Depp of not paying up).
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A statement from the actress’ attorney in response to the new Depp interview claimed: “It is outrageous that GQ never spoke to any of the multiple witnesses to Mr. Depp’s physical abuse of Ms. Heard prior to publishing its article. If GQ had done even a basic investigation into Mr. Depp’s claims, it would have quickly realized that his statements are entirely untrue. Mr. Depp has blatantly disregarded the parties’ confidentiality agreement and yet has refused to allow Ms. Heard to respond to his baseless allegations, despite repeated requests that she be allowed to do so.”
The statement added, “Mr. Depp is shamefully continuing his psychological abuse of Ms. Heard, who has attempted to put a very painful part of her life firmly in her past. One need only look at the physical evidence to draw the proper conclusion.”
In the GQ piece, Depp is quoted as saying: “The thing that hurt me is being presented as something that you’re really as far away from as you could possibly get. To harm someone you love? No, it didn’t, it couldn’t even sound like me. So, initially, I just kept my mouth shut, you know?… I ain’t going to get into a pissing contest with someone about it. Spit out what you need to spit out and, you know, my attorneys will take care of the rest. I never went out and spoke about the shit.”
Depp specifically talked about the alleged phone-throwing incident, attacking Heard’s account on multiple fronts, taking issue with the fact that she did not file a police report at the time.
Depp told British GQ: “Why didn’t that person speak to the police? I mean, they spoke to the police, but the police saw nothing and they offered her an emergency medical technician. She said no. Police see nothing on her. Police see nothing broken in the place, no marks, and then they offer her an EMT to have a look at her and she says no and I don’t know if it was the next day or a couple of days later, but then there was a bruise. There was a red mark and then there was a brown bruise.”
He also claimed in the interview: “She was at a party the next day. Her eye wasn’t closed. She had her hair over her eye, but you could see the eye wasn’t shut. Twenty-five feet away from her, how the fuck am I going to hit her? Which, by the way, is the last thing I would’ve done. I might look stupid, but I ain’t fucking stupid.”
There is, however, a wealth of material supporting Heard’s claims.
For example, Heard’s friend, the LGBT activist iO Tillett Wright, who called the police after he overheard Depp attacking Heard while on the phone with her, wrote a powerful piece about his perception of the abuse Heard suffered. He described Depp as a “195-pound man throwing the full weight of his body into head-butting his 120-pound wife in the face in a fit of rage.”
Tillett wrote: “She described an all-out assault and she woke up with her pillow covered in blood. I know this because I went to their house. I saw the pillow with my own eyes. I saw the busted lip and the clumps of hair on the floor. I got the phone call immediately after it happened, her screaming and crying, a stoic woman reduced to sobs.”
TMZ posted a leaked video of a raging, drunken Depp purportedly smashing a wine bottle and there was a report that Depp, while drunk and high, sliced off the top of his finger and wrote abusive messages against Heard in blood and blue paint on the walls of a villa while on a Pirates of the Caribbean shoot.
The piece’s author, Jonathan Heaf, who described Depp as “aggrieved, aggressive, and vulnerable by turns,” wrote in the magazine: “This isn’t a piece claiming to know with any authority about what happened between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in May 2016 or at any other time between the pair in private. All I wanted to do was come to Depp and ask him to give his side of the story, which up until now has not been properly heard.”
An attorney for Depp told Page Six: “In his GQ interview, Mr. Depp is simply defending himself against Ms. Heard’s lingering false abuse accusations.”
At the time of their divorce, the couple issued a joint statement saying, “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm."
