AMBER 'RUSE' ON 'BRUISE'
Depp pal testifies no facial marks on Heard after 'attack'
After more than a week of embarrassing courtroom revelations about Johnny Depp, it was Amber Heard’s turn to take the heat on Friday — as one witness withdrew her support for the actress and another claimed he never saw bruises on her face.
Along with being discredited by her own friends, the “Aquaman” actress was lambasted by a childhood pal of Depp’s who called widely published photos of Heard’s bruised face “phony baloney” and accused her of lying about domestic abuse.
During the ninth day of Depp’s explosive libel trial against the
Sun newspaper in London’s High Court, Heard was rebuffed by her own longtime friend Amanda de Cadenet, who refused to testify on her behalf and said the actress had “misled” her.
De Cadenet, a 48-year-old British TV host and #MeToo activist, said she had planned to give evidence in support of Heard but had a change of heart in June after hearing a series of disturbing audio recordings, according to the Daily Mail, which cited a legal declaration from a different case.
In the recordings, Heard allegedly admitted to punching Depp in the jaw and verbally abusing him. De Cadenet later said she was “appalled and shocked to hear how Amber was speaking to Johnny.”
On Friday, Depp’s lawyer, David Sherborne, told a judge that de Cadenet would no longer give evidence on Heard’s behalf because she believes “she has been misled by Ms. Heard.”
Depp’s childhood friend Isaac Baruch also slammed Heard during his own testimony in court on Friday, calling claims of domestic violence “fraudulent” and photos of her bruised face “phony-baloney pictures.”
Baruch said that he saw Heard on May 22, 2016 — a day after she says Depp chucked a cellphone at her face — and that there was no sign of bruising or redness.
“She wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup, and there was nothing on her face,” said Baruch, who added that he saw her in strong lighting.
The Sun’s lawyer, Sasha Wass, showed Baruch a photo taken on May 21, 2016, of Heard’s alleged injury and asked him if he had observed the bruising on her right cheek on May 22, 2016. “Absolutely not,” Baruch said. He later added that he had seen Tesla founder Elon Musk — with whom Heard is accused of cheating — outside her Los Angeles pad at least twice the year before Depp and Heard split up.
Meanwhile, a private nurse who worked for the Hollywood couple told the court that she once had to restrain them when “all hell had broken loose” during a fight.
Debbie Lloyd said she was at the
couple’s LA penthouse during a violent blowout in March 2015 over whether Depp was cheating on Heard with ex-girlfriend Rochelle Hathaway, according to The Sun.
After the fight, Lloyd sent a text message to Depp’s security guard Travis McGivern saying she had to step in to keep the couple from hurting each other, according to the paper.
“Bad night last night. they got into it and it got violent again. I had to separate them,” she wrote. “All hell had broken loose.”
It wasn’t clear why she had been summoned to the penthouse. But her text message was dated March 23, 2015 — the day Depp is accused of turning “extremely violent” during a fight in which Heard discovered text messages from Hathaway and accused him of cheating.
Meanwhile, a #MeToo activist who has alleged that she was targeted by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein also testified, saying she never claimed Depp was violent in the article that’s at the center of the libel case.
Actress Katherine Kendall — who was quoted by The Sun in the 2018 story that labeled Depp a “wife beater” — said that she had been “misquoted” in the piece and that her “words were taken out of context” to depict the actor as an abuser.
Kendall went on to say that she never accused the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star of “hurting” his ex-wife and that she has “no firsthand knowledge” of him being abusive.
Instead, Kendall said, she actually sent a reporter for the paper a text message that read, “I have heard several times that she in fact was abusive to him.”
She added in the text: “I felt like I was misquoted, or that my words were taken out of context.
“I never meant to be in an article that called Johnny Depp a ‘wife beater’. I told you that I didn’t know that to be true at all!”
In a witness statement, Kendall said, “In my brief interview, I had actually said many of the opposite things that The Sun had falsely quoted me as saying.”
Kendall — who says she was harassed and chased around her apartment by Weinstein in 1993 — added that she felt the paper used the #MeToo movement for its own “purposes.”
The actress, best known for her role in the 1996 movie “Swingers,” also told the court that she considers herself a “survivor of abuse” and that she takes allegations about it seriously.
In the libel trial, Depp is suing The Sun for branding him a “wife beater” in a April 2018 article based on Heard’s allegations.
The trial will resume on Monday, with Heard expected to testify for the first time since the bombshell case began.