After losing an intensely public civil defamation case against Johnny Depp, Amber Heard says she doesn’t blame the jury that sided with her ex-husband in the courtroom drama of the year.
The actress will speak out about her empathy for the jurors in her first interview since the end of the case, which divided the Internet into passionate warring factions and raised questions about the treatment of people who say they are victims of domestic violence.
“I don’t blame them,” Heard will say in a sit-down interview on NBC’s Today show set to air Tuesday and Wednesday before being shown Friday night on Dateline (8 p.m. ET). “I actually understand. He’s a beloved character and people feel they know him. He’s a fantastic actor,” she says of Depp.
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The interview is with NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie—who last week revealed her husband had done consulting work with Depp's legal team.
The Aquaman star will also comment on the staggering scrutiny of her six-week trial—and the attendant landslide of support for Depp on social media. The hashtag “Justice for Amber Heard” garnered 27 million views on TikTok, compared with one for Depp which hit 20 billion views.
“I don’t care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors,” Heard says in a preview of the interview. “I don’t presume the average person should know those things. And so I don’t take it personally. But even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation,” she added. “You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”
The furious legal case that captivated America this spring began with an op-ed Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Ex-husband Johnny Depp sued Heard for $50 million as a result of the piece—which did not name him as an abuser—arguing that it was defamatory through references to allegations Heard made against him throughout their divorce in 2016.
Heard then countersued Depp for $100 million, based on statements made by Depp’s former lawyer, Adam Waldman, in which Waldman described Heard’s abuse allegations as a “hoax.”
The matter landed in a Virginia courtroom in 2022. Weeks of candid star-studded testimony concerning Depp and Heard’s tumultuous private lives created endless intrigue from a watchful public and, on June 1, a verdict in favor of Depp. The Pirates of the Caribbean actor was ultimately awarded $10.4 million in damages by the court for the harm Heard’s defamatory comments had caused Depp’s career. Heard’s lawyer has previously said Heard cannot afford to pay the damages and intends to appeal the case.
“Johnny Depp’s legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television, and Depp himself did the same on social media,” a spokesperson for Heard told The Daily Beast of her upcoming interview. “Ms. Heard simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week; she did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand.”
