Johnny Depp wrapped up his three and a half days of testimony by responding to a recording in which his ex-wife Amber Heard could be heard pushing him to “tell the world” that he’s a victim of domestic violence.
The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on Monday 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia following Mr Depp’s lawsuit against his ex-wife in March 2019.
Mr Depp is arguing that she defamed him in a December 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
In a recording played in court on Monday, Ms Heard told Mr Depp: “Tell them, I, Johnny Depp, I'm a victim of domestic abuse ... and see how many people believe or side with you.”
One of Mr Depp’s lawyers asked him what he said in response when he was asked if he was a victim of domestic abuse.
“I said, ‘Yes, I am,’” Mr Depp responded. That was the end of his testimony and he left the witness booth and once again sat down with his legal team.
In other recordings played to the court, the Pirates of the Caribbean star can be heard shouting obscenities at Ms Heard, calling her “fat a**”.
During his last day on the stand in the Virginia courtroom, however, Mr Depp claimed: “The only person that I have ever abused in my life is myself.”
Separately, the actor testified that Ms Heard disliked British actor Paul Bettany “mainly because we had become such close friends and, for her, he was a threat”.
Mr Depp said when they were in the Bahamas with Mr Bettany, his wife, actress Jennifer Connelly, and his four children, Ms Heard and Mr Bettany “got into some debate over lunch, and I just remember whenever Mr Bettany tried to make a point she would talk over him. Then it started to get quite rude. She got mean. And she got loud”.
“And then his, I believe it was his 18-year-old boy ... a very bright, brilliant kid, he entered the conversation because this was something to do with what he’d studied in school and he knew quite a lot about it,” Mr Depp added.
“And he voiced his opinion, and Ms Heard demeaned that young man to the point of where he burst into tears and walked away.”
Mr Depp also said that Ms Heard requested that he violate a temporary restraining order that she had filed against him so that they could meet in San Francisco.
“I was quite confused as to why I had been summoned to her at that point since all the news was just about the fact that I had allegedly done all these horrible things to her,” he said.
“So I was talked into going there, I went and met with her in hopes that she would retract her lies that the world had been fed. And in no way was she ready to do that. And I couldn’t understand why I was there — everything had been taken from me, my children couldn’t escape the fact that all this had gone down.”
In her 2018 op-ed, Ms Heard wrote that “like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim”.
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she added at the time.
While Mr Depp is not named in the piece, his legal team argues that it contains a “clear implication that Mr Depp is a domestic abuser”, which they say is “categorically and demonstrably false”. Mr Depp is seeking damages of “not less than $50m”.
Ms Heard has filed a $100m counterclaim against Mr Depp for nuisance and immunity from his allegations.
