Why I am gripped by this eternal tale of love turned sour
FORGET Anatomy Of A Scandal, forget the new series of Sewing Bee. For me, there’s only been one show in town this week: the Amber and Johnny show. I’m talking, of course, about the drama unfolding in Fairfax County Circuit Court, Virginia, where Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard for $50million in respect of an article she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018 in which she described being a victim of domestic abuse.
She is countersuing for $100million, alleging that he physically and sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions during their brief marriage, often when off his head on drugs or alcohol. It is, quite honestly, the most gripping thing I’ve watched (it’s all being streamed online) for ages. First of all, just look at them both. Johnny, 58, in the witness box, still ruggedly handsome in a Mexican drug lord sort of a way. The sharp suit, three-piece, contrasting with the junky silver rings and tattoos, his still-thick hair (Dyed? Transplant? Who cares: it’s all there) tied up in a ponytail.
That gentle Southern drawl, those impeccable manners, the ‘yes sir, no sir, sorry sir’, the lowering of his blue-tinted reading glasses to examine a brief. That slow smile, the twinkle in the eye, the occasional arch of an eyebrow. This is Johnny being the best Johnny he can be, and it’s hard to tear your eyes away.
On the other side of the room, waiting her turn to testify, is Amber. She is exquisitely, almost impossibly beautiful, but there are faint bags beneath her eyes and her expression seems permanently pained, her perfect lips downturned as she sits there, shoulders down, back straight, listening to it all. She looks vulnerable, fragile, as though she were playing the grieving young Mafia widow in a 1970s Scorsese film. At any moment you feel she might just shatter into a million pieces.
It is an extraordinary thing to witness, the sight of these two demi-gods, two shining stars in the Hollywood firmament, sitting in this run-of-the-mill courtroom with its drab brown panelling, watching as their relationship is painstakingly dissected, all the passion and fury and frustration carefully picked over, examined under the microscope, every spit and toss laid bare.
It’s hard to know who to believe. Johnny, with his cruel childhood and adult demons, a difficult but fundamentally kind man driven out of his mind by his wife’s constant berating of him. Or Amber, a woman living in fear of her husband’s unpredictable mood swings and temper. The only thing that’s clear is how damaged they both are – and how much damage they managed to inflict on each other.
And at every turn, another bombshell. A recording of Amber arguing that she hadn’t ‘punched’ Johnny, merely hit him, and accusing him of being ‘a baby’ for getting so upset. An email from Johnny to, of all people, Elton John calling his ex-wife, Vanessa Paradis, a ‘French extortionist’. Johnny in a cowboy hat smashing up his kitchen; Amber supposedly defecating in their bed.
On and on it goes, like a Hollywood version of The Jeremy Kyle Show, proof that even beautiful people can behave in ugly ways. Behind the gloss and the glamour they’re just two people who were very bad for each other. Whatever love may have been there in the beginning quickly turned toxic. A toxicity that continues to eat away at them, draining their sanity and bank accounts. Because, fascinating as it is to watch, it’s clear that whatever the outcome in monetary terms, psychologically it’s just an act of self-harm.
It is, in that respect, an eternal tale of love turned sour, of how affection can become an obsession devoid of all reason. And of how, when all is said and done, there can be no winners in the Amber and Johnny show… save the lawyers.