JOHNNY & AMBER
Explosive showdown
Warring exes Johnny Depp and Amber Heard settled their divorce in 2016 but continue to battle it out on two fronts. Depp sued UK tabloid The Sun in 2018 for libel over a story that called the actor a “wife-beater”, claiming it cost him his starring role as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The actor is also suing Heard in the US in an $85 million defamation case after she wrote a Washington Post article about her experience as a victim of domestic violence, which didn’t name him, but, he says, clearly implies he was the perpetrator. Depp vehemently denies abusing Heard, claiming she was the “aggressor”.
The former couple’s two-week libel trial was due to begin in London this week but was adjourned due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier, The Sun’s lawyer Adam Wolanski QC read out a text message that Depp, 56, had sent to his friend Christian Carino in 2016. “She is begging for global humiliation,” Depp allegedly wrote. “She sucked Mollusk’s crooked d--k and he gave her some s--tty lawyers.” Wolanski told the court “Mollusk” was a reference to Heard’s ex, billionaire Elon Musk. “I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I thought was love for this gold-digging, low-level, dimea-dozen, mushy, pointless, dangling, overused flappy fish market,” Depp’s message continued. “I’m so happy she wants to go to fight this out. She will hit the wall hard. And I cannot wait to have this waste of a c-- guzzler out of my life.” During the trials, a series of leaked tapes
and texts have painted a shocking – and confusing – picture of the pair’s toxic marriage. One contested issue revolves around how Depp severed his finger in a March 2015 incident. Depp had claimed Heard, 33, had shattered his right middle finger by throwing a bottle of vodka at him during a violent altercation. “She went berserk,” read the filing. “The bottle struck the marble countertop, where my hand was resting and exploded. The projectile’s impact shattered the bone in my finger and entirely severed the tip of my finger.” He also added, “To cover for Ms. Heard, I told the emergency room doctor that it happened in ‘an accident’. The doctor knew better.”
In her defamation lawsuit response, Heard countered that Depp sliced off his finger at the end of a three-day drug bender. “Johnny shoved me into a ping pong table that collapsed underneath me,” alleged Heard in papers first published by The New York Post. “He tore the nightgown off, and at some point, I was naked and barefoot, covered in alcohol and glass.” She claimed Depp cut his finger after smashing his phone to “smithereens” against the wall while “continuing to hit me with the back of one closed hand”.
Two more tapes show Heard appearing to apologise for violent outbursts against the actor. In one exchange, published online by The Daily Mail, Heard admits to ‘hitting’ the Oscar nominee and pelting him with pots, pans and vases. In another, she taunts Depp for trying to flee a physical confrontation: “You are such a baby. Grow the f--k up Johnny,” she is heard to say. A third recording has Heard admitting that she had “clocked” Depp in the face. “I just reacted and I’m sorry. It’s below me,” she says. Depp is heard saying: “I’d just been hit in the head with a f--king corner of the door. And then I stood up and then you f--king clock me.”
In addition to legal declarations of support written by Depp’s exes Winona Ryder and Penelope Cruz, who both claimed they had never seen him violent, Vanessa Paradis – the mother of his two children – submitted a declaration on behalf of her ex. “I have known Johnny Depp for more than 25 years,” Paradis wrote in the court documents, which were first reported by The Blast. “Through all these years I’ve known Johnny to be a kind, attentive, generous, and non-violent person and father. I am aware of the allegations which Amber Heard has publicly accused Johnny of,” she continued. “This is nothing like the true Johnny I have known.” •