Depp trial told ex-wife threw a ‘haymaker’ punch at him when he was late for her party
JOHNNY Depp has finally finished giving evidence in his high-profile libel case against The Sun after around 20 hours in the witness box over five days.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean star claimed that allegations of domestic violence made by his ex-wife Amber Heard (34), “mirrored” her abuse towards him.
On the final day of his evidence at the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday, Mr Depp (57) said: “It seemed like everything she would accuse me of was something she had done to me.”
The actor also accused Ms Heard of throwing a “haymaker” punch at him during a row after her 30th birthday party, just hours after he had learned during a “bad” business meeting that he had lost $650m (£514m).
The High Court also heard that Mr Depp has a “remarkable” ability to not get drunk despite drinking “a lot of alcohol”, that cocaine simply “brought him to a normal level which normal people might operate at” and jokingly referred to himself as “Shatter” while playing The Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland.
Mr Depp is suing the tabloid’s publisher News Group Newspapers (NGN) and its executive editor Dan Wootton over an April 2018 article which labelled him a “wife beater”.
His barrister David Sherborne referred to a “secret recording” of the former couple in San Francisco in July 2016, after they had split and Ms Heard had obtained a restraining order against the actor.
In the recording, Ms Heard can be heard to say it was “unbelievable to imagine” that she had either been “in a secret fight club” or “plotting to do this for three years ... just saving it up for the right time” when she was not asking for any money, adding “no-one is going to believe that”.
Mr Depp described Ms Heard’s words as “a reverse confession”, adding: “It seemed like everything she would accuse me of was something that she had done to me, so I started to see this kind of pattern, a mirroring, and when she said that, I was real taken aback, for sure.”
Mr Sherborne said Mr Depp can also be heard to say “you f ****** haymakered me, man”
❝ I had made $650m and when I sacked my business managers, I was $100m in the hole
in the recording — which is said to refer to an incident after Ms Heard’s 30th birthday party at the couple’s LA penthouse on April 21 2016.
The actor is accused of throwing a bottle of champagne at Ms Heard, grabbing her by the hair, and pushing her during a row, after he arrived home late for the party. He denies the allegations.
The actor said that, at a business meeting on the day of Ms Heard’s party, he was “in the early stages” of finding out from a new business manager that “the former business managers had (taken) quite a lot of my money”.
Asked how much had been taken, Mr Depp said: “It was put to me this way, because I had no idea about money or amounts of money.
“Since Pirates (Of The Caribbean) 2 and 3, I had — and this is ludicrous to have to state, it’s quite embarrassing — apparently I had made 650 million US dollars and when I sacked them, for the right reasons, I had not only lost $650m, but I was $100m (£79m) in the hole because they (the previous business managers) had not paid the government my taxes for 17 years.”
Mr Depp was also shown a photograph, apparently taken by his ex-wife, which showed him in August 2014 with “ice cream spilled all over my leg” shortly before he was due to go to the Bahamas for a detox.
The actor said the picture was taken at a time when he had been working 17-hour days and was “very tired, falling asleep”.
The court also heard evidence from Mr Depp’s former personal assistant, Stephen Deuters, who alleged Ms Heard “was the abuser in the relationship”.
Mr Deuters, who is now European president of Mr Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, said that during the period in which Mr Depp is alleged to have been abusive towards Ms Heard, he saw her “on many occasions” and “at no point” did she “ever mention any physical abuse”. He
told that court that he was “extremely surprised and outraged” when it became public that she had filed for a restraining order.
Mr Deuters’ described the couple’s tempestuous relationship as “not great”, saying: “I think they were two people that were in love with each other that shouldn’t have been together.”
The front desk supervisor at Mr Depp’s LA penthouse building also gave evidence that she saw “no visible injuries whatsoever to Ms Heard’s face” three days after Mr Depp allegedly hit his ex-wife in the face with her own mobile phone on May 21, 2016.
Mr Depp is suing NGN and its executive editor Dan Wootton over the article on April 27, 2018 with the headline: “Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?” NGN is defending the article as true, and says Mr Depp was “controlling and verbally and physically abusive towards Ms Heard”.
The case continues today.