Helena Bonham Carter has spoken out in favor of two of her closest — and contentious — co-workers: Johnny Depp and J.K. Rowling.
In a recent interview with The Times, Bonham Carter bashed "cancel culture," saying, "Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices? There would be millions of people who if you looked closely enough at their personal life you would disqualify them. You can't ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has become quite hysterical and there's a kind of witch hunt and a lack of understanding." As for specific Hollywood A-listers who fell victim to such ostracization, Bonham Carter said Depp "certainly went through it."
Per Bonham Carter, Depp — who has worked with her in several films and is the godfather to her two children with former partner Tim Burton — has been "completely vindicated" following his six-week-long bombshell defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard.
"I think he's fine now," Bonham Carter added. "Totally fine."
The Depp-Heard trial came to a dramatic end in June, after a seven-person jury determined that Heard had acted with "malice" in her 2018 op-ed published for The Washington Post. Per the jury, Heard's written accounts of domestic abuse were enough to qualify as defamation and subsequently tainted Depp's own career and reputation. Heard was ultimately awarded $2 million in compensatory damages for her counterclaim while Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages.
When asked if Depp's trial was the "pendulum of #MeToo swinging back," Bonham Carter claimed that it was actually Heard who "got on that pendulum."
"That's the problem with these things — that people will jump on the bandwagon because it's the trend and to be the poster girl for it," Bonham Carter continued.
Bonham Carter also criticized the ongoing controversy involving "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling and her string of transphobic remarks. Rowling has taken a TERF stance for years and came under fire for her inflammatory rhetoric in June 2020, when she called out a Devex op-ed for using the term "people who menstruate" instead of "women." The author continued to voice her beliefs in blog posts and even a 3,500-word essay, asserting that transgender rights essentially threatens the women's rights movement.
"It's horrendous, a load of bollocks. I think she has been hounded," Bonham Carter said of the backlash. "It's been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She's allowed her opinion, particularly if she's suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma, and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don't all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring. She's not meaning it aggressively, she's just saying something out of her own experience."
Bonham Carter starred as Bellatrix Lestrange in four "Harry Potter" films: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and the two-part "Deathly Hallows."
When asked about her fellow cast mates who have recently condemned Rowling's comments, Bonham Carter said, "Personally, I feel they should let her have her opinions, but I think they're very aware of protecting their own fan base and their generation.
"It's hard. One thing with the fame game is that there's an etiquette that comes with it; I don't agree with talking about other famous people."
