Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Photo-Illustration: The Cut. Photos: Getty Images After two days of deliberation, a jury returned its verdict in the defamation trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp on June 1: Heard defamed Depp three times in her 2018 Washington Post op-ed, while attorney Adam Waldman — acting on Depp’s behalf — defamed her once in his 2020 Daily Mail article.
Heard also declined spousal support from Depp, emphasizing that, contrary to what his lawyers suggested in the media, the case wasn’t about money for her. And while certain tabloid reports seemed to suggest Heard had faked her facial injuries, her friend, photographer and writer iO Tillett Wright, came out with an emphatic defense. “BULLS–T,” he wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread. “I’ve had enough. I saw the bruises. Many times. And the fat lip. And the cut head.
In his ruling, the judge agreed that on multiple occasions, Depp seemed to have placed Heard in “fear for her life.” That decision also highlighted some depraved texts from the actor to other members of the industry. To Heard’s former agent, he once wrote that she was “begging for total global humiliation.
In any case, Heard filed to dismiss Depp’s case April 2019, offering new and horrific details about the alleged abuse in the process: Heard alleged that Depp, often under the influence of drugs and alcohol — “We called that version of Johnny ‘the Monster,’” she said in the filing — would beat her, choke her, and at times ripped chunks of her scalp from her head while pulling her hair.
In opening statements, Depp’s lawyers said that Heard wrongfully “presented herself as the face of the Me Too movement — the virtuous representative of innocent women across the country and the world who have truly suffered abuse,” and that her “false allegations had a significant impact on Mr. Depp’s family and his ability to work in the profession he loved.
On April 18, Johnny Depp’s security guard Sean Bett testified in court. He recounted overhearing fights between the couple but said he never witnessed any physical abuse save for one instance when Heard allegedly threw a plastic cup or water bottle at Depp. Bett provided the court with photos of Depp from December 2015 that appear to show injuries on the actor’s face.
Additionally, Depp talked about his path to acting, and the mental and emotional toll fame took on his psyche. Acknowledging the extreme, violent texts he had sent about Heard — that he hoped her “rotting corpse was decomposing in the fucking trunk of a Honda Civic,” for example — he said he was “ashamed of some of the references made,” adding that “pain has to be dealt with humor, something dark, very dark humor.
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