Amber Heard’s op-ed about being a victim of domestic violence was “catastrophic” for Johnny Depp’s career, the latter actor’s agent told the jury in the couple’s defamation trial.
The trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on 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 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.
Entertainment manager and agent Jack Whigham testified via video link from Los Angeles on Monday and said that Ms Heard’s op-ed was different from other articles that had been written about Mr Depp in that it was a first-person account. He said it was “impactful” and “catastrophic” for him.
Mr Whigham said Mr Depp’s pay was reduced to “save the movie” Minamata, an independent film. He added that “it became clear” in early 2019 that Disney was “going in a different direction” in terms of the sixth Pirates of the Caribbean film.
He said he became aware of a “Pirates project” that Margot Robbie was set to appear in. After that, Mr Whigham said he contacted Pirates producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Sean Bailey at Disney “a lot”.
“I successfully made contact with them but I was not successful in rescuing Pirates for Johnny,” he said, adding that it was “impossible” to get Mr Depp into a studio film after the op-ed was published.
Mr Whigham was then asked by Heard lawyer Elaine Bredehoft about his earlier comments that a deal had been reached for Mr Depp to appear as Captain Jack Sparrow in the sixth Pirates film. Ms Bredehoft asked why there are no documents to back this up.
The agent said he had worked on many agreements that were “verbal in nature” and that the conversations concerning the sixth film in the franchise were “consistent with a lot of the conversations I would have on behalf of big stars”.
The court was told that by the fall of 2018, before the op-ed was published, that Mr Bruckheimer wanted Mr Depp in the film but that Mr Bailey was “non-committal”.
Mr Whigham said the op-ed “reads like a victim statement”.
“It became, yes, a bit of a death knell, catastrophic thing for Mr Depp in the Hollywood community,” he added.
Ms Bredehoft said there were “quite a few things going on earlier in 2018” that could have impacted Mr Depp’s reputation.
She brought up the April 2018 article in The Sun referring to Mr Depp as a “wife-beater”, prompting a June 2018 lawsuit from Mr Depp, months before the publication of the op-ed.
Mr Whigham said Mr Depp hasn’t made a film since the UK trial, which took place in the summer of 2020.
