Johnny Depp was back in front of the cameras on Tuesday, but not for a film project. Instead, he was testifying in the latest and perhaps most dramatic moment yet of a years-long saga involving competing allegations of abuse and defamation with his ex-wife, the actress Amber Heard.
“About six years ago, Ms. Heard made some quite heinous and disturbing [allegations of] criminal acts against me that were not based in any species of truth. It was a complete shock,” the 58-year-old actor said in Fairfax County, Virginia, Court as part of a $50 million defamation lawsuit he filed against Heard. “It just didn’t need to go in that direction, as nothing of that kind had ever happened.”
The testimony came on the seventh day of a civil trial in which Depp has alleged Heard “devastated” his career after she penned a 2018 Washington Post op-ed calling herself a domestic violence survivor. Heard denies the allegations and insists that the editorial, which does not name her ex-husband of one year, was simply about her experience more generally.
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“Truth is the only thing I’m interested in,” the actor added on the stand. “I’m obsessed with the truth. So today.... is the first opportunity I’ve been able to speak about this case in full.”
On Tuesday, Depp denied all allegations of abuse, stating that he has “never struck any woman” in his life and that he felt the need to stand up for himself after his ex-wife’s comments came out. Throughout the relationship, according to Depp, it was 35-year-old Heard who was abusive.
Heard has repeatedly shot down those claims, saying she only ever acted in self-defense and has since counter-sued Depp for defamation.
“Since I knew there was no truth to it whatsoever, I felt it my responsibility to stand up, not only for myself… but stand up for my children,” he added. “My goal is the truth, because it killed me that people that I had spoken with, that I had met with over the years… would think that I was a fraud.”
As Depp—wearing a gray suit and green suit with his hair pulled back—spoke slowly on the stand and denied all allegations of wrongdoing, Heard stared right at her ex-husband across the courtroom.
Christopher Melcher, a celebrity divorce attorney who represented Kayne West in his divorce proceedings with Kim Kardashian, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that his initial reaction to Depp’s testimony is that the actor “is trying to choose his words carefully.”
“First impressions are incredibly important here,” Melcher said. “Right now, I think the jury might have a hard time identifying with him because his manner of speech seems unnatural and slow and overly deliberate. Hopefully, as he continues to testify, his personality will show more.”
The celebrity attorney added that Depp made a pretty direct denial of all the allegations against him, even going as far to say he has never physically hit a woman in his life—and that Heard’s defense should take use of that opportunity to hit him with hard questions.
“If they do cross correctly, they are going to have to ask him very direct questions. He made big claims and now Amber Heard’s team needs to poke holes in them if they want the jury to believe their argument,” Melcher added.
Jurors will be tasked with deciding whether Heard acted with “actual malice” when she wrote the Post editorial—meaning that the actress knew what she had written in the piece was false—or that she published the piece with “reckless disregard” for the truth. The jury will also be asked to review some issues raised in Heard’s 2020 countersuit against Depp as well.
So far, witnesses in the civil trial have focused on one crucial question underlying the twin defamation claims: whether Depp abused Heard during their relationship. Depp’s witnesses have claimed that while the actor did have a drug problem, both he and Heard engaged in verbal or physical violence throughout the relationship.
The duo met on the set of the 2011 film The Rum Diaries, were married in 2015, and divorced by August 2016.
“They engaged in, what I saw as, mutual abuse,” Dr. Laurel Anderson, the couple’s former marriage counselor, testified on Depp’s behalf last week. “I know she led on more than one occasion and started it...Abandonment and having him leave was her worst nightmare. And I think he may have initiated it on occasions—but that I am less sure of.”
Depp also spoke about his initial relationship with Heard, stating that at the beginning of their relationship the actress “was too good to be true.”
“She was attentive, she was loving, she was smart, she was kind, she was funny, she was understanding,” he said.
Eventually, witnesses told jurors over the last week, the couple’s relationship began to degrade before the pair eventually split up in 2016.
In disturbing October 2016 text messages revealed in court last week, Depp called his ex-wife a “c--t” and said he hoped her “rotting corpse was decomposing in the fucking trunk of a Honda Civic.”
“That c--t ruined such a fucking cool life we had for a while,” Depp wrote to his friend and neighbor Isaac Baruch.
On Tuesday, Depp apologized for the text messages, saying he grew up watching Monty Python and reading Hunter S. Thompson—and the dark humor translated into his private messages to friends.
“I am embarrassed,” he said about the messages read aloud in court. “They expressed the heat of the pain I was feeling.”
At the crux of the Virginia case is the actress’ December 2018 op-ed, titled: “Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence —and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” Heard urges victims in the piece to speak out against their abusers, noting she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse” in 2016 after she sought a domestic violence restraining order against her ex-husband.
“I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” Heard wrote in the piece. “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real-time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”
Three months after the editorial was published, Depp filed the $50 million lawsuit against Heard, asserting that not only were his ex-wife’s allegations of abuse an “elaborate hoax” intended to hurt his career but that those claims were self-serving, turning her into a “darling of the #MeToo movement.”
The lawsuit also states that Depp’s “reputation and career were devastated” by Heard’s first allegation of domestic abuse in 2016, specifically noting that Disney dropped the actor from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise four days after the article was published.
In a motion to dismiss the charges a month later, Heard detailed years of alleged abuse she endured, referring to Depp as “the Monster.” Eventually, Heard countersued Depp for $100 million in August 2020 for defamation over the lawsuit’s claims. While a judge ultimately dropped some of Heard’s countersuit claims, the Virginia jury will hear Depp and Heard’s versions of how a celebrity romance descended into chaos.
“Johnny Depp regularly abused Amber Heard—both physically and emotionally—through much of their relationship,” Heard’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit stated. “After the ensuing media frenzy—in which Mr. Depp distorted the truth for public consumption—Ms. Heard resolved to fight for the victims of domestic violence, and to do everything in her power to fight back against the silencing of abuse victims.”
While Depp’s testimony on Tuesday may shed some light on the famous couple’s relationship, legal precedent is not on the Pirates of the Caribbean actor’s side. Depp filed a similar libel case in London against The Sun after the British tabloid called him a “wife beater.”
Judge Penney S. Azcarate has not decided whether any aspect of the London trial will be allowed as evidence in Virginia. But in November 2020, a London judge found that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Depp had assaulted Heard repeatedly throughout their marriage, and she was “in fear of her life.”
Defamation cases are traditionally more difficult to make in the United States than in the U.K., suggesting Depp faces an uphill battle.
