DEPP ‘ WANTED WITCH AMBER SET ON FIRE’
Libel trial continues:
JOHNNY DEPP joked about ‘ burning and drowning’ his ex-wife Amber Heard, London’s High Court libel trial was told yesterday.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean star is suing the publisher of The Sun newspaper over an article that referred to him as a ‘wife beater’.
On the second day of the case, Depp confessed to branding his wife ‘a witch’, admitting it was ‘not the most respectful way of speaking about Ms Heard’.
The comments had come up in a text exchange with his pal, Avengers star Paul Bettany.
London-born Bettany said: ‘ I’m not sure we should burn Amber. She is delightful company and pleasing on the eye.
‘We could, of course, do the English course of action and perform a drowning test. Thoughts? PS: I have a pool.’
Depp allegedly replied: ‘Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.’
Bettany, 49, is said to have replied: ‘My thoughts entirely. Let’s be certain before we pronounce her a witch.’
Depp was accused of slapping Heard, 34, and hurling ice at her during a flight when he accused her of being a ‘slut and whore’ over her closeness to costar James Franco.
He told the court: ‘I suspected that Ms Heard was having an affair with Mr Franco and it has since been confirmed that she was.
‘She told me many things that were very, very negative about Mr Franco and that he had tried to kiss her and made sexual advances towards her on a previous film. She said he was a creep and that he was a rapist.’
Asked by The Sun’s lawyer Sasha Wass QC to clarify the accusation, he changed his description from ‘rapist’ to ‘rapey’, adding that Heard said Franco was ‘quite aggressive in his advances’.
Asked if his memory was affected by drugs and booze, Depp, 57, admitted: ‘For someone who has been quite self-destructive... I ended up pretty lucky in that my brain still works quite well.’
Ms Wass also asked about an incident in which Heard’s dog ‘ had eaten some hash, some cannabis – quite a lot’. Depp said: ‘The puppy got a hold of a little ball of hashish and just scooped it up before I could get to it.’
The court also heard the actor joked about microwaving another of Heard’s dogs, and he denied an accusation that he once dangled a dog from a car window.
Depp also denied Ms Wass’s accusation that he referred to his bisexual ex-wife as a ‘lesbian camp counsellor’. When the barrister then read the words from one of his texts, he said: ‘Yes, I used those words… in a text. But the words were never uttered.’ A day after telling the court he ended their two-year marriage when he found faeces in his bed, Depp admitted breaking a trailer fitting in a jealous row when he found his wife in there with another woman.
He said: ‘I was very upset at being, yet again, treated as the – pardon the expression – turd in the punchbowl.’
Depp was also accused of taking drugs with Marilyn Manson after dropping his daughter Lily-Rose at school. He said: ‘Manson and I did take my daughter to school... Mr Manson and I were together probably a couple of hours after that at his house.’
The Sun has defended the accuracy of its story and the case continues.