Drugs, booze and bust-ups on hell flight
It’s a cheap shot to assume I’d taken Peruvian marching powder but yes, I had on this occasion, Depp tells court
‘I asked for oxygen n just as a lark’
A STRANGE guttural wailing noise filled the courtroom yesterday afternoon, and after that things changed.
Up to that point, Johnny Depp had been confidently talking the judge through a private jet flight he and his wife Amber Heard had taken from Boston to Los Angeles.
Yes, he may have had a welcome drink on board before settling down to doodle some drawings in his sketch book, he said.
Was there any pre-flight cocaine? Depp gave it some thought, but said not that he recalled, and anyway just because he occasionally dabbled in ‘Peruvian marching powder’, it was a cheap shot ‘just to assume naturally I was doing drugs’.
What about the claims by Miss Heard that he was blind drunk, pumped up with drugs, hurling ice cubes and vulgar obscenities at her, accusing her of ‘****ing’ US actor James Franco on the set of her latest movie, slapping her and kicking her in the back ‘like a raging monster’, before passing out in the aeroplane’s toilet and later throwing up?
Depp told the court: ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ It was, he insisted, Miss Heard who had been the aggressor on the May 24, 2014, flight, ‘berating, screaming at me, getting physical’. He said: ‘I did get up, went to the bathroom, grabbed a pillow and slept on the bathroom floor.’
Sasha Wass QC, for The Sun, un, crossshe crossexamining Depp, told the judge she would like to play an audio recording.
There was some debate between en the lawyers, with Depp’s barrister ter David Sherborne suggesting it was important to have a transcript pt of the recording first.
Quite what a transcript would uld have achieved is anyone’s guess ess because when Mr Justice Nichol hol ordered the audio be played, it sounded like this: ‘Ahhhhhh, hh, arrrrrrrrrrrrrr, arrrrrrrrrrrrr, rr, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, arrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrr euwerrr, arrrrrrr...’
‘Do you agree that is your voice, ce, Mr Depp?’ asked Miss Wass.
The actor cocked his head. ‘I find nd it difficult to recognise. It sounds to me like it could be anyone’s voice. ce. I’ve never heard the recording ng before. I would say it sounds like ke almost like some animal in pain.’
Miss Wass replied: ‘Yes, I’m going to suggest you are that animal.’
By the end of the afternoon, Depp was apologising to the judge for his initial ‘incorrect’ characterisation of the flight. On reflection, he said, it was ‘very likely’ he had consumed pills, whisky, two bottles of champagne, cocaine, marijuana and Roxicodone painkillers before and during it.
Miss Wass told Depp he had behaved atrociously on the flight, and his staff had done nothing to curb his abuse of his wife.
She said he had kicked a swivel chair which hit her, adding: ‘You were in a blind rage, demanding to know how much she enjoyed getting off with James Franco and you were so angry you slapped her across the face in front of everybody and you called her a gogetter slut and a whore.’
Depp said: ‘I did not get in a rage and scream at her in front of all those people.’ He claimed he had been concerned about Franco because Miss Heard had described him as ‘creepy and rapey’ when they starred together in comedy movie Pineapple Express.
Miss Wass went on: ‘And you were demanding alcohol and oxygen from the flight attendant.’
Depp conceded: ‘The oxygen tank, I did ask for – just as a lark.’
Asked what was so funny about it, he told Mr Justice Nichol: ‘When you put the mask on, and hit the nozzle, you are hit by pure oxygen.’ When Miss Heard tried to walk away, the actor allegedly kicked her in the back, the court heard. ‘Not true,’ Depp insisted.
‘You eventually went to the toilet and you passed out,’ said Miss Wass. Depp said he had sometimes ‘fallen asleep’ in bathrooms, but ‘never passed out’.
After the plane landed in LA, Miss Heard left on her own, but Depp’s assistant Stephen Deuters, who was on the flight, updated her in a series of texts, the court heard. He told her: ‘He’s been sick... We’re gonna get him straight to bed. He doesn’t remember much, but we took him through all that happened. He’s sorry. Very sorry. He was appalled. When I told him he kicked you, he cried.’
Miss Wass read out a text Depp had sent his wife, saying: ‘Once again I find myself in a place of shame and regret. I don’t know why or what happened but I will never do it again... My illness somehow crept up and grabbed me.’
Why, the barrister asked the actor, was he apologising to her, if it was she and not he who had behaved badly on the plane? He said: ‘When words are being hurled at you, you hurl them back, and there are times when you feel regret at having done that.’ Depp explained the texts from Mr Deuters by saying he had instructed him to placate his wife. ‘She will calm down if she’s heard that she’s right,’ he told the court.
Then came a text Depp had sent to British actor Paul Bettany, which Miss Wass suggested was about the flight. Depp wrote: ‘I’m going to properly stop the booze thing, darling. Drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA. Ugly mate. No food for days. Powders. Half a bottle of whisky. A thousand red bull and vodkas, pills, 2 bottles of champers on plane and what do you get?’
He said he had blacked out ‘screaming obscenities and insulting any **** who got near’.
Depp told the judge: ‘It sounds like I overdid it. I was incorrect in my statement that I had not taken cocaine and things of that nature. I can only say my apologies to the court in terms of that. But I didn’t remember that entire flight being such a nightmare.’