Amber Heard told a court that she had left Johnny Depp’s private island with his daughter Lily-Rose after the actor angrily told her he “could kill her” during a heated argument.
Ms Heard testified in the couple’s multi-million dollar defamation trial that she had accompanied Mr Depp and his children to the Bahamas in July 2013 for a final trip on his yacht before he sold it to Harry Potter author JK Rowling.
But she said that Mr Depp, who was drinking on the trip and hiding alcohol in coffee cups, allegedly grew angry when his daughter began asking Ms Heard questions about her father’s drinking.
“Lily-Rose was crying, it became like a panic attack with rapid breathing, crying and lots of questions. I was holding her and comforting her and within a few seconds I realised that he had shifted his attention on me and seemed very angry.
“He asked Lily-Rose to leave, she left crying and Johnny starts accusing me of, like, telling on him and calling him a drunk in front of his kids. I hadn’t done that and had actually tried to protect Johnny, it was not my place to share that with anyone, especially his daughter.”
She told the jury that while they were on the boat, Mr Depp had slammed her up against the wall of a bedroom cabin by her neck and told her that “he could f***ing kill me” and said that she was “embarassing” herself in front of his family.
“He said I made him feel sick. I will never forget it. I was very much in love with his whole family and he was saying I was embarasing to him, that stuck more with me than ‘I could f***ing kill you.’ He hurt my feelings, it hurt.”
Ms Heard then says she returned to the island with Lily-Rose and left on a helicopter.
“I was literally holding Lily-Rose under my arm and she was crying as we were taking off,” she testified. “I felt bad about leaving, even though that had just happened.”
During his own testimony, Mr Depp said that his daughter, the eldest of his two children with Vanessa Paradis, did not attend his wedding to Ms Heard in 2015.
“Lily-Rose did not come to the wedding,” he said. “She and Ms Heard were not on particularly great terms for several reasons.”
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”.
While Mr Depp isn’t 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.
