2nd UPDATE, 12:18 PM PT: Even before the cross examination of Amber Heard by Johnny Depp’s lawyers has began in the former Pirates of the Caribbean star’s $50 million defamation trial against his ex-wife, things got very heated and messy today in Fairfax, Virginia.
“I tried to protect Johnny …and the secret I tried hard to keep for five years,” Heard loudly told the court of why she never filed charges or a LAPD report against her then husband. “Unfortunately, all of this is real,” the actress added Monday of her claims of psychical, emotional, verbal and sexual violence. “I narrowly survived it, but I survived it.”
Calling the public spectacle, of the media attention and the much delayed trial “torture,” Heard proclaimed “I want to move on, I want Johnny to move on.”
Other than that repeated sentiment, it was almost all about the money today as the high profile kicked off its fifth week. Specifically, Aquaman star Heard’s career and the $7 million settlement Heard received from Depp in the couple’s 2016 divorce.
During her testimony about her professional life had been harmed by the Depp controversary, Heard laid out the clauses of her three-picture Justice League contract with Warner Bros. The actress said that her pay for 2018’s Aquaman was $1 million plus “box office bonuses.” Heard also revealed that her check for the 2023 premiering sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom was $2 million – a film that she barely was able to remain with, she claimed today.
“I fought really hard to stay in the movie, they didn’t want me … in the film” Heard said of her Mera role in the James Wan helmed sequel. Subsequently, the as yet unreleased film had “a very pared down version of that role …they removed a bunch out.”
There have been whispers that Heard is actually in the DC flick very little. Rumors that Warner Bros has neither confirmed or denied.
The actress further detailed Monday how her lucrative contract with cosmetics company L’Oréal dried up after the statements by Depp confidant and former lawyer Adam Waldman were picked up by the Daily Mail and other media over the past couple of years Making $200,00 an episode for her stint on Paramount +’s 2020 adaptation of Steven King’s The Stand
In terms of the $7 million divorce settlement, how much of that settlement has actually been donated to the ACLU and LA’s Children’s Hospital as Heard promised six years ago was a major theme of today’s testimony. Often cited as credit to Heard’s character and a solid refutation to taints of her being a gold digger, the fact is Heard has not handed over the vast majority of the respective $3.5 million to either the ACLU or LA’s Children’s Hospital – as Deadline exclusively confirmed in January 6, 2021
Clearly trying to turn the tide on her lack of fulfilling her pledge, Heard told her lawyer Elaine Bredehoft that she “was receiving the installments over time” and paying them out over time for “tax benefits.” Declaring that she “fully intend” to pay the donations in full and detailing how her career was harmed after the couple’s divorce, Heard added she “would love him (Depp) to stop suing me so I can.”
In the exchange, Heard noted that she has paid out “over $6 million” in legal fees since Depp sued her in 2019 over a late 2018 Washington Post op-ed on domestic violence. Some of those fees may include Heard’s participation and testimony in Depp’s ultimately unsuccessful 2020 UK trial to sue Rupert Murdoch’s Central Recorder tabloid for calling him a “wife beater.”
Even though a joint statement on the couple’s 2016 divorce bluntly said there “never false claims for “financial gain” and “there was never intent of physical or emotional harm,” the often litigious Depp insists that he never abused Heard and in fact was the victim of abuse in the relationship. The fire Fantastic Beasts actor also said three years ago and repeatedly since that Heard’s ACLU drafted op-ed, which never mentioned him by name “devastated” his once high flying career.
Asked at length about the op-ed, which Heard retweeted at the time with a headline the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet later finessed, the actor stated “it’s not about Johnny, the only person who thinks it is about Johnny is Johnny.” On the verge of tears and with a breaking voice, she went on say: “It’s about me and what happened to me.”
Heard went on to say that she never first brought up the sexual assault allegations in her marriage. Explaining her summer of 2020 $100 million countersuit against Depp, Heard said that her ex-husband’s right hand man Waldman allegedly on behalf of the actor gave information of sexual assaults claims and more to the media to discredit the actress. Waldman is not a part of Depp’s legal team in the Virginia courtroom at the April 11 starting trial.
“All I have is my name, I come from nothing,” the Rum Diary actor plead to the courtroom earlier in the East Coast afternoon. “I was never interested in Johnny’s money,” she went on to say of the $7 million settlement the couple eventually agreed on to end their relationship. Heard made a point of telling the courtroom, she took the money simply to end the legal fighting and that she had initially offered much more.
Running the risk of losing the jury’s focus with a long examination, Bredehoft today immediately after the lunch break launched back into the couple’s 2016 divorce proceedings to capture their attention. Playing the court an audio tape of the duo on June 2016 discussing the hurdles that seemed to hinder their ability to move the separation, and amidst constant objections from Depp’s team, the defense heard Heard asking her then husband to agree to a “mutual gag order” as he complained about allegation of abuse and a temporary restraining order “throwing me under the bus.”
“I was trying to get Johnny to stop the smear campaign,” Heard said from the stand after the first portion of the tape was played. She told the Fairfax County Courthouse that Depp promised to “ruin my career” and “that I would be selling Depends.” As has been the case through most of his ex-spouse’s testimony, a sunglasses wearing Depp remained huddled over the table in front of him scribbling as the sometimes crying Heard spoke and as portions of the 2016 audio tape played
“I was begging Johnny to not make me prove what I have been sitting on the stand proving to you today,” Heard claimed on breaking the TRO to get “yes men” surrounded Depp to “back off.”
“I don’t want this,” the Aquaman actress added of the bitter and dirty laundry airing legal action Depp launched on March 2019. “I didn’t want to hurt him, I loved him so much … that’s why I didn’t file criminal charges, that’s why I didn’t file a police report even though it was beginning used against me …by your side.”
Heard will continue on the stand until the end of court today at around 5:30 PM ET and is expected back tomorrow
UPDATE, 10:28 AM PT: Amber Heard testified that fears for her own safety led her to file for divorce against Johnny Depp in 2016, and that she also sought a restraining order after an argument in which he struck her with a phone.
“I knew that if I didn’t I’d likely not literally survive,” Heard said on Monday, as she fought back tears. “I was so scared that it was going to end really badly for me, and I really didn’t want to leave him.”
She filed for divorce in the aftermath of a May 21, 2016 argument at their downtown Los Angeles penthouse, one that led to the police being called. Although Heard did not file a police report that evening, she later sought and obtained a restraining order against him.
“I wanted to change my locks, I wanted a good night sleep,” she said. “Security would always let him in the house no matter what I asked them.”
She added, “I was scared and very conflicted because the person I was scared of was also the person I was in love with.”
Depp has denied Heard’s allegations that he was physically violent, and filed a $50 million defamation case against her after she published a Washington Post op ed in which she wrote that he was “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
In her testimony on Monday, she went through the events of May 21.
At the time, she and Depp had been separated for about a month. But his mother had just died, and she and he made plans for him to come by the Eastern Columbia penthouse that day.
Heard said that when Depp arrived early that evening, she could tell that he was inebriated. He started talking about an incident from a month earlier, in which feces had been left on their bed. Heard contends that it was from one of their dogs, but Depp insisted that one of her friends had left it there as a prank.
“He just went on and on about it,” Heard said.
She got a male friend on the phone to explain why such a prank “was impossible,” Heard said, but Depp ended up screaming at him.
Heard said that Depp, after leaving and going up the stairs, then came back down and grabbed the phone and told the friend, “You can take her. You can have her.”
It was then, she said, that Depp “throws his arm back with the phone and throws it in my face.” She said it felt like her eye had been hit.
“I put my head in my hand and immediately started crying. I said, ‘Johnny, you hit me,’” Heard said.
She said that Depp started taunting her, saying, “Oh yeah, I hit you, huh?”
She said that he then “whacks me on top of my head” and grabbed her by her hair.
“I don’t know if he was intending to hit me around face, but he does this gesture around my face to try to expose my face to him,” she said. She said that Depp then told her, “Let me see how bad I hurt you this time.”
Heard said that her friend, Raquel, living in the next door apartment, came into the room and “managed to get in front, between he and I.” Heard said that she calmly told Depp, “No, Johnny, no.”
Her friend put her arms around her as she curled up around the couch, but “Johnny is just screaming at me to get the f— up.”
She said that two of Depp’s security guards then entered, with one of them saying to Depp, “Boss. boss.” She said that Depp then smashed things around the apartment and eventually left.
Heard said that she did not call 911, but she did call her lawyer, who referred her to a domestic relations attorney. Depp’s lawyers objected to Heard’s attempts to identify who called the police — it was a friend — but said that when the officers arrived she told them that she refused to cooperate on her attorney’s advice.
She also declined to file a report.
“I wanted to protect Johnny,” she said. “I didn’t want him to be arrested. I didn’t want him Ito be in trouble. I didn’t want the world to know.”
The jury was shown a series of pictures showing her with redness on the side of her face. Heard said that the photos were taken that evening by her friend. Another photo, which she said was taken the next day, showed some blackness around the eye and redness below.
Depp has acknowledged throwing a phone on the couch, but denies striking Heard. His case has focused in part on witnesses who said that they saw Heard in the days after their argument but did not notice bruises on her fact.
Heard’s legal team also presented text messages that Depp wrote to Heard on May 22, the day after their confrontation. “All my love and profound apologies,” he wrote that evening. Heard said that in a phone conversation with him, Depp “said he was sorry he reacted the way he did” and that “he didn’t man to hurt me.”
PREVIOUSLY, 8:24 AM PT: Amber Heard’s testimony resumed on Monday in Johnny Depp’s $50 million defamation trial against her, as the actress made further details of her ex-husband’s alleged abuse during their marriage.
The Fairfax, VA trial was on a one-week break as Judge Penney Azcarate attended a pre-scheduled judicial conference, but Heard picked up where she left off, with stories from their stormy marriage, presented along with audio of their arguments and photos of her alleged injuries.
One photo, from Dec. 15, 2015, showed her bruised temple. Heard testified that Depp caused the injury during one of their arguments.
“Johnny had his hand on part of my face, with my face down, and he was punching my head, repeatedly punching my in my head,” she said. “That is what caused that bruise in my temple.”
Depp has denied abusing Heard. He filed his lawsuit against her after she published a Washington Post op ed in December, 2018, in which she wrote that “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
In Monday’s testimony, Heard said that by January, 2016, Depp’s drug use had become so severe that he had been “hallucinating.” Depp’s attorney objected to that specific characterization, but Heard was allowed to describe other aspects his behavior.
“He was talking to people who weren’t there, meaning people who were not in the room,” she said. “He would comment on someone being in the room behind me who wasn’t there. It was terrifying.”
Heard also addressed a notorious incident from April, 2016, when they got in an argument after Depp missed her 30th birthday dinner. She said that their fight included a shoving match, and Depp throwing a bottle of champagne that went through a painting. She said that he then wrestled her down on their bed and grabbed her by her pubic area. He was taunting me: ‘look who is so tough. Want to be tough like a man now?’” Depp finally screamed at her, “Happy F—ing Birthday,” and then stormed out.
The next day, she said, a friend came over and they were to drive to the Coachella Music Festival. One of their dogs, Boo, had been on the bed, but had bowel control issues. Depp had testified earlier that fecal matter had been left in the bed, an incident that was the source of a Saturday Night Live skit last weekend.
But Heard denied committing any kind of prank. “I don’t think that is funny, period. I think that is disgusting,” she said.