Amber Heard said she has received thousands of death threats during her libel battle with Johnny Depp as she told jurors in her final evidence session: “I am a human being”.
The Aquamanstar, 36, said she has been “harassed, humiliated and threatened” during the titanic legal tussle, and revealed one threat to harm her new baby.
Heard is being sued for $50 million by Depp, 58, over a Washington Post op-ed on domestic abuse, while the actress is countersuing for $100 million after being accused of lying about violence in their marriage.
Returning to the witness stand on the penultimate day of the trial, Heard described the seven-week legal battle as “agonising, painful and humiliating”.
She said she and her friends now live by a “set of rules” to ensure she does not suffer from panic attacks following her “trauma”.
“I am harassed, humiliated, threatened every single day”, she said. “Even just coming into this courtroom sitting here in front of the world having the worst parts of my life, things that I have lived through, used to humiliate me.
“People want to kill me, they tell me so... they want to put my baby in the microwave and they tell me that.”
In an apparent reference to repeated incidents where Depp broke out laughing during evidence, Heard told the jury: “I’m not sitting in this courtroom snickering, I’m not sitting in this courtroom laughing. I’m not smiling and making snide jokes.
“I’m not. This is horrible. This is painful and this is humiliating for any human being to go through.And perhaps it’s easy to forget that, but I am a human being.”
Friends, family, staff, associate, and acquaintances of Depp and Heard have all given evidence as the court in Fairfax County, Virginia, has picked through incidents in the former couple’s volatile marriage.
Audio and video recordings have been publicly aired, featuring arguments and the aftermath of drunken and drug-fuelled nights, while Depp’s texts after the collapse of their marriage have also featured.
In one of them from 2016, when the abuse claims were first aired, he claimed: “She’s begging for global humiliation” and added: “She’s gonna get it.” In her evidence yesterday Heard told the court: “Even though Johnny promised I deserve this, I do not deserve this. I want to move on.”
She accused some witnesses of “coming out of the woodwork to be part of the Johnny Depp show”, and repeatedly denied lying or misleading the jury.
“I know how many people will come out and say whatever for him”, she added. “That’s his power. That’s why I wrote the op-ed.” In his own second round of questioning, Depp decried the “outlandish, outrageous” allegations of abuse.
Heard’s 2018 op-ed did not mention Depp by name, but he says it lost him roles in future Pirates of the Caribbean and Fantastic Beasts movies. Heard said claims that her abuse allegations are a “hoax” cost her her part in the Aquaman series.
