Elon Musk weighed in on the contentious trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, saying that “I hope they both move on. At their best, they are each incredible”.
Closing arguments in the defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard took place on Friday. The jury will return on Tuesday for deliberations.
The proceedings 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”.
Mr Musk was initially thought to be a witness in the trial, among other celebrities. But in the end, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO didn’t take the stand.
On the stand, Ms Heard described the moment she met Mr Musk at the 2016 Met Gala after her Mr Depp “stood me up” on the red carpet.
Mr Musk responded to a tweet by Lex Fridman who listed his takeaways from the trial.
The Aquaman actor told the court that she and Mr Depp had been planning to go to the Met Gala together as guests of Ralph Lauren.
However the event came not long after her 30th birthday when she claimed she was “attacked” by her husband.
She claimed that she didn’t have a phone at the time because Mr Depp had thrown it out of the window and so she was unable to find out if he would still be joining her at the event.
“I wasn’t sure what was going on or when he would show up or if he would show up,” she said.
“I had no way of knowing,” she added.
Ms Heard told the court that she walked the red carpet by herself and “sat next to an empty place setting for Johnny” after he “effectively stood me up on the carpet”.
It was while she was walking the red carpet alone that she said she met Mr Musk, who she described as “a gentleman” and said was at the event with his mother.
“I was standing in line right in front of a gentleman. It was Elon,” she said.
“I didn’t recognise him at first. We started talking and he had reminded me that we had met once before.”
Ms Heard and Mr Musk are believed to have dated on and off between 2016 and 2018 and the SpaceX boss was named on her witness list for the trial.
During opening statements, Ms Heard’s lawyers said that Mr Depp had been “obsessed” with Mr Musk.
The former spouses’ agent Christian Carino previously testified at the trial that Ms Heard was dating Mr Musk at around the same time as she was trying to reconcile with her husband.
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 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.
