Audio recordings offered new details into the short-lived marriage between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard on Monday, including the allegation that the actor put out a cigarette on his actress ex-wife as their relationship descended into chaos.
“Go put your fucking cigarettes out on someone else!” Heard, 35, was heard saying in one audio recording played to jurors in Fairfax County, Virginia, court. “You fucking have consequences for your actions!”
In response, Depp could be heard telling Heard to “shut up, fat ass.”
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In court on Monday, an attorney for Heard noted that Depp did not deny putting out the cigarette on his ex-wife in the audio. He did, however, deny the allegation on the stand.
“There’s no way under the sun I would flick a cigarette at her or burn her.... That’s ludicrous,” Depp later said about the audio while being questioned by his own lawyers.
The recording was one of several played so far during Depp’s fourth day on the stand as part of a $50 million civil defamation suit he brought against Heard. In the lawsuit, Depp has alleged she “devastated” his career by penning a 2018 Washington Post op-ed calling herself a domestic violence survivor. Heard has since counter-sued Depp for $100 million, claiming his lawsuit defamed her.
The Virginia trial has become a forum for competing allegations of abuse—many of them longstanding—between the former couple.
On Monday, Heard’s lawyers sought to poke holes in the Pirates of the Caribbean star’s allegations that it was his ex-wife who was the abuser in their relationship and questioned whether it was the op-ed—rather than his own conduct—that damaged his rep.
As revealed by several audio recordings and text messages, Depp yelled at Heard, slammed his ex-wife in private conversations with his doctors, and spoke about his struggles with drugs and alcohol. (In one audio clip, Depp was heard saying he will never “get clean and sober.”)
“You’re a fucking c**t,” Depp was heard saying in another recording played Monday.
Benjamin Rottenborn, one of Heard’s lawyers, grilled Depp about the “numerous negative news stories that were written about” him prior to the 2018 op-ed. Depp insisted that the articles presented to him in court detailing his struggles with substance misuse were simply “a stack of hit pieces.”
“This is hearsay… your favorite word,” Depp quipped to Rottenborn about the articles presented in court, earning laughter from the packed courtroom.
Jurors must ultimately decide whether Heard acted with “actual malice” when she wrote the Post op-ed—meaning that the actress knew what she had written in the piece was false—or else that she published it with “reckless disregard” for the truth. The jury will also be asked to review some issues raised in Heard’s 2020 countersuit against Depp.
Depp said Monday that he made the decision to file his hefty defamation suit against Heard—and not the Post—because “she was the one making the statement.”
“I had the opportunity to fight back,” he said.
The actor added that when he initially saw Heard’s op-ed, he experienced “blinding hurt,” adding that it felt like “somebody hit me in the back of the head with a 2x4.”
Heard has long insisted Depp was the abuser in the relationship, including one occasion where he allegedly broke her nose after head-butting her. Depp has likewise denied all allegations of wrongdoing, claiming last Thursday that Heard broke her nose after their heads collided—and that it was an accident.
The “the only person that I have ever abused in my life is myself,” Depp insisted on Monday. Before stepping down from the stand, Depp also insisted that he was a victim of domestic violence—a declaration that earned a pat on the back from one of his lawyers when he returned back to his seat.
As part of his attempt to portray himself as the victim, Depp last week revisited his claim that Heard hurled a bottle of vodka at him during an argument in Australia, leading to the top of his finger being severed.
Ben King, house manager for the Australian rental property Depp and Heard stayed at in 2015, told jurors on Monday that he was the one who actually found the actor’s finger tip under a marble bar after about an hour of searching. Near the damaged bar was a smashed vodka bottle and a damaged mirror—which he later had to clean up, he said.
“I gathered it up in that kitchen paper and took it upstairs... got a little plastic bag and put the finger tip in there and set it on top of some ice,” King, who previously worked at Buckingham Palace, testified.
On Thursday, jurors were shown a message and heard audio suggesting that the actor may have actually chopped off his own finger.
“I have chopped off my left middle finger as a reminder that I should never cut my finger off again!!” Depp wrote in an email to his doctor shown in court. In a separate audio recording played to jurors, Depp appeared to say, “I chopped off my finger.”
When testifying, Depp insisted to the court that he in fact heard himself saying, “I got my finger chopped off.” Heard has long alleged that Depp cut his own finger during a three-day bender.
After the injury, Depp admitted, he dipped his finger in paint and wrote messages about Amber on walls and mirrors. In one photo shown in court of the messages, Depp wrote “Starring Billy Bob and Easy Amber,” in reference to the 2018 film London Fields, which Heard filmed with Billy Bob Thornton.
