The court in the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has been shown messages and “reminders” Mr Depp scrawled in blood and paint after severing his finger in a fight during which he claims Ms Heard threw two vodka bottles at him.
The actor recounted the ordeal in court on Wednesday on the second day of his testimony in his defamation trial against Ms Heard in Fairfax, Virginia. He filed his lawsuit in March 2019 accusing Ms Heard of defaming 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”.
Among the pillars of Mr Depp’s case is his claim that he was a victim of abuse by Ms Heard.
Of the March 2015 incident in Australia which left him with a grisly finger injury, he told the court: “It was all getting too crazy.”
Mr Depp said, “I was a mess, I was a wreck, I was shaking” as he tried to avoid Ms Heard.
He recalled pouring himself two or three “stiff shots of vodka”, adding that it was the “first taste of alcohol I had had for a long time”.
The actor said Ms Heard yelled “oh, you’re drinking again” when she found him.
“She walked up to me, grabbed the bottle of vodka and then just stood back and hurled it at me,” he said. “It just went right past my head and smashed behind me.”
Mr Depp testified that he grabbed another, larger bottle of vodka and poured himself another shot as Ms Heard was “flinging insults left, right, and centre”.
“She then grabbed that bottle and threw that at me,” Mr Depp said, demonstrating to the jury how he was sitting at the time. He said his fingers were resting on the edge of the bar and that the large vodka bottle “made contact and shattered everywhere”.
“I felt no pain at first all,” he said. “I felt heat and as if something was dripping down my hand.”
“I was looking directly at my bones sticking out,” he added. “Blood was just pouring out.”
“I don’t know what a nervous breakdown feels like, but that’s probably the closest that I’ve ever been,” he said. “Nothing made sense and I knew in my mind and in my heart that this is not life.”
“No one should have to go through this,” he added.
Being in the middle of something like a nervous breakdown, Mr Depp said he started “to write in my own blood on the walls”.
“Little reminders from our past that essentially represented lies that she had told me and lies that I had caught her in,” he said, adding that he hid in a bathroom and texted his doctor to come over.
Showing the finger that was injured to the court, Mr Depp said the bones were “crushed” and that it looked like “Vesuvius”, referring to the Italian volcano.
Mr Depp said he couldn’t recall what Ms Heard said after seeing his injury.
“It was almost like white noise, just someone yelling,” he said. “It was just a high pitched constant attack of insults, it was just jumbled words to me in a very high frequency and I was in a bit of shock.”
On Thursday, as Mr Depp was questioned by Ms Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn, he said there was “quite a bit of damage to the house during the entire incident” in Australia.
He added that there was “a coffee cup stuck into the screen” of the TV.
Mr Rottenborn said a window was broken and that Mr Depp drew “a penis” on a painting, and that there were messages written in blood and paint all over the walls and furniture.
Mr Depp suggested that Ms Heard could have drawn the penis, saying that doing so was not “on top” of his mind.
Mr Rottenborn quoted Mr Depp from his UK trial against The Sun, during which he said that “I recall painting on a lampshade, on a wall, on a mirror. I remember dunking my finger into paint thinner and using paint when I had run out of blood to paint with, and I could have defaced the painting I suppose, but I do not remember a painting specifically”.
Ms Heard came to Australia after filming London Fields with Billy Bob Thornton. Mr Rottenborn said Mr Depp wrote, “starring Billy Bob” and “Easy Amber” in one of the messages.
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.
