Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have both filed notices of appeal
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.
Throughout Depp’s testimony on April 20, his attorneys played confused clips from squabbles one of them had recorded. The court reviewed photos of bruises and scratches he says he sustained during “confrontations” with Heard, including one encounter where Depp claimed he tried to stop Heard from pushing into the bathroom, only to have her kick the door into his head.
“I’m gonna properly stop the booze thing, darling, drank all night before I picked Amber up,” Depp is said to have texted Bettany in May 2014 following a particularly turbulent flight from Boston to Los Angeles. Depp then catalogued the substances he’d apparently consumed, including but not limited to “half a bottle of whiskey,” cocaine, “1,000 red bull and vodkas,” pills, “two bottles of champers on plane,” all — allegedly — on an empty stomach.
Depp’s cross-examination ended Monday morning, shortly after Heard’s lawyer played more audio recordings in the courtroom from the former couple’s altercations. In one, Heard tells him to “put his cigarettes out on someone else,” and he retorts with, “Shut up, fat ass.” Depp denied putting his cigarette out on Heard and called the recording a “grossly exaggerated moment of Ms. Heard.
She said that Heard also showed symptoms of borderline personality disorder, which falls under the same cluster of disorders as HPD and is characterized by fear of rejection, uncontrollable emotional reactions, and self-harm . Curry asserted that people with personality disorders can be “assaultive as partners” and tend to “make threats using the legal system, threaten to file for a restraining order, claim abuse.
An ACLU representative spoke on Heard’s settlement and the op-ed. On April 28, Terence Dougherty, chief operating officer of the ACLU, testified to the donation Heard was supposed to send the organization from her settlement: So far, $1.3 million of $3.5 million has been paid on her behalf. Though the ACLU believes she has run into “financial difficulties,” Dougherty also said he was not “aware” of any change in Heard’s intention to pay the remainder eventually.
Depp’s team wrapped up its defense on May 2. Depp’s legal team called its last few witnesses to the stand on May 2, including his former bodyguard and manager. The bodyguard, Travis McGivern, said on a live video feed that he had seen Heard punch Depp in the face and, in a separate incident, had seen her spit on Depp and throw a can of Red Bull at him.
Heard loses bid to dismiss the case. After Depp’s attorneys finished presenting their case this week, Heard’s team attempted to have the case dismissed entirely. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the motion to dismiss was standard operating procedure, and the outcome was expected. Judge Azcarate reportedly denied the motion on Tuesday, May 3, and Heard’s attorneys began presenting her defense.
Hughes’s main findings were that Heard had been subjected to intimate partner violence, and that she “demonstrated very clear psychological and traumatic effects.” During cross-examination the next day, Depp’s attorneys prodded Hughes on her conclusion that “Heard’s reporting is consistent with what we know of intimate partner violence.
Heard told the court about the first time Depp allegedly hit her: She said they were sitting on the couch “having a normal conversation, there was no fighting, no argument.” Depp, she said, was drinking and potentially also on cocaine; Heard asked him about the “Wino Forever” tattoo on his arm. “To me it just looked like black marks. I didn’t know what it said,” she explained. “He says, ‘It says wino.’ I thought he was joking, because it didn’t look like it said that at all, and I laughed.
Heard says Depp tried to kill her. On day two of Heard’s testimony, she painted a picture of an increasingly turbulent relationship. Heard said the numerous fights she and Depp had often started when Depp accused her of cheating on him with various castmates. Leading up to the flight from Boston to L.A., she told the court, Depp had been upset about a scene she did with James Franco.
She loved him, she said, and with doctors enlisted to help treat his dependencies, she believed things could improve. But by December 2014, “I would try to stand up for myself,” she told the court. “I would push back, I would push him off of me. … I would yell at him and scream at him, I would call him ugly names.” Adding that she was ashamed of that behavior, she said: “It felt like nothing I could do would change his sobriety patterns … nothing I did made him stop hitting me.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life, it was black, I couldn’t see him,” she stated. “I was trying to say in some way that it was me … trying to get through to him,” but he kept smashing her head into the bar. “The next thing I remember, I was bent over backwards on the bar,” she continued, explaining that she felt a pressure on her pubic bone and could see his arm moving back and forth. “I thought he was punching me,” she said, but she realized he was penetrating her with a bottle.
After a weeklong recess, Heard resumed her testimony for a third day — again saying she had thought Depp would accidentally kill her during a fight on their honeymoon in 2015. “He was squeezing my neck against the railway car for what felt like a very long time,” she said, recalling that she woke up the next morning with his shirt tied around her neck, which he’d ripped off the night before.
Depp’s attorney tries to undermine Heard’s credibility. Heard’s cross-examination began late Monday afternoon and picked up again on Tuesday morning. Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez attempted to undermine Heard’s credibility by pointing to purported inconsistencies in her story. The court listened to audio in which the couple taunt and belittle one another at length, mocking each other’s film and TV roles. Heard invited Depp repeatedly to “suck my dick,” and he called her a “spoiled fucking brat.” Vazquez asked Heard, “Mr. Depp got you that role in Aquaman, didn’t he?” Heard denied it. Depp’s attorney showed a photo taken during the couple’s honeymoon — when, Heard previously testified, Depp had wrapped his shirt around her neck — that shows Depp’s bruised face.
Pennington’s former fiancé, Josh Drew, also appeared via pretaped deposition, saying he often saw Depp drunk and, on the occasion when Depp allegedly berated Heard and Pennington in the penthouse, experienced his rage firsthand. Drew said that while he never saw Depp hit Heard, he saw her with bruises and heard their arguments from the neighboring penthouse.
Ellen Barkin characterized Depp as “jealous,” “controlling,” and “demanding.” On May 19, jurors heard from former associates of the couple who testified to Depp’s volatile behavior, including his former friend Bruce Witkin, his former agent Tracey Jacobs, and his former business manager Joel Mandel. All described increasingly concerning behavior from Depp — Jacobs recalled being “yelled at” and said that Depp’s “star had dimmed” after he started acting “unprofessional” on sets.
Arnold also spoke to the effect these legal battles have had on Heard’s career trajectory. Whereas Aquaman should’ve been her “A Star Is Born moment,” its impact has been mitigated by the ceaseless “negativity campaign” on social media. Heard was taken off big press events for the movie, while L’Oreal paused her cosmetics contract. Her role in Aquaman 2 was slimmed down considerably.
Depp also returned to the stand for his rebuttal, unilaterally denying Heard’s “insane,” “heinous” claims of abuse in general and the bottle incident in particular. “No human being is perfect, certainly not — none of us,” he said.
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