Johnny Depp suggested that Amber Heard’s attorney had fabricated negative text messages that he allegedly sent about his ex-wife as he returned to the witness stand.
During a heated cross-examination on Wednesday, Heard lawyer Ben Rottenborn asked Me Depp if he had said “that if you want to be with a woman sexually that she is rightfully yours”.
“That’s ludicrous,” Mr Depp responded.
“You’ve also said that with respect to women you want to be with, you’ve remarked ‘I need, I want, I take,’ haven’t you?” Mr Rottenborn asked.
“Equally as ludicrous – no,” Mr Depp said.
Mr Rottenborn then asked that an exhibit be pulled up.
“You can pull what you like, I’ve never said those words. There’s not enough hubris in me to say anything like that,” Mr Depp told the lawyer.
Mr Rottenborn said the texts in the exhibit were sent from Mr Depp to film producer Stephen Deuters on 22 February 2017.
“This looks nothing like me, you might have mistaken,” Mr Depp said before adding that the texts in the exhibit might have been “screwed with”.
About some of the texts shared in court supposedly sent by Mr Depp, the actor said, “I don’t know nothing about any of these ... Honestly if someone else had borrowed my phone and made this text to Stephen, possibly ... I don’t write like that”.
The defamation 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.
