Johnny Depp’s security guard says Amber Heard called faeces found in the couple’s bed a “practical joke gone wrong”, a court heard.
The former couple’s multi-million dollar defamation trial in Virginia has heard Mr Depp describe how he saw a photo of the faces in his bed days after a fight with the actress.
Mr Depp told a jury that in 2016, while Ms Heard was away, he had wanted to visit a Los Angeles penthouse where she was staying to collect some personal items.
He said he was shown a photo of “our bed and on my side of the bed was human faecal matter, so I understood why it wasn’t a good time to go down there”.
Mr Depp said his “initial response” was to “laugh”.
“It was so outside, it was so bizarre and so grotesque that I could only laugh,” he added.
On Thursday, Mr Depp’s security guard and chauffeur, Starling Jenkins, gave evidence to the high-profile trial via video.
In his testimony, Mr Jenkins said that he had found Ms Heard “pleasant” and “cordial.”
He described how he had driven Ms Heard to Coachella after her fight with Mr Depp, during which he says, she told him that the human faces in the bed was a “practical joke gone horribly wrong.”
“We had a conversation pertaining to the surprise she had left in the boss’s bed, prior to leaving the apartment” said Mr Jenkins.
Asked what he was referring to, he replied: “The defecation.”
When asked what Ms Heard had told him about it, he replied, “A horrible practical joke that had gone wrong.”
Mr Jenkins also testified that at Coachella, Ms Heard became sick from a combination of magic mushrooms and red wine on an empty stomach.
Ms Heard’s lawyer suggested under cross-examination that it was Ms Heard’s then-pregnant sister, Whitney, who was sick at Coachella despite being sober.
When questioned on re-direct, Mr Jenkins insisted he knew the difference between the sisters.“One is the boss’s wife, one is the boss’s sister-in-law,” he said.
The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard 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”.
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.
