Fire up your browsers and suspend your disbelief — Court TV is broadcasting the gory, inglorious showdown between actor Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. We are into week three of the trial from Fairfax county court,Virginia; the unedifying drama that has unfolded could easily have been scripted for Netflix.
That is, if the rather scatological details cleared the executives. Depp is suing Heard for defamation to the tune of $50 million over a piece she wrote in the Washington Post in December 2018, accusing him of domestic abuse. She is counter-suing for $100 million. In fact, the circus of a trial is, at least partly, a post-mortem on a beyond toxic marriage, one that has featured severed fingers (Johnny’s); drug binges (Johnny’s); alcoholic rages (both’s); and turds in beds (Amber’s, allegedly).
Both appear to have behaved despicably at different points, and to differing degrees. It’s technically round two after their face-off at the High Court, when Depp sued the Sun for calling him a “wife-beater” (he lost).
But I suppose if anyone were to turn justice into a “franchise”, it would be America. Each “episode” of the live-stream casts Heard and Depp as reality TV stars, their names up in lights, the evidence another twist in the plot. Meanwhile, court reporters recount surreal scenes as screaming fans clamour for seats, which is both mesmerising and horrible. In response to all this, viewers “take to Twitter” to live-blog hot takes, like it’s a particularly incendiary episode of prime time (one current theory reads that Heard is dressing like Depp to try and freak him out; so far, so Selling Sunset).
Heard is yet to take the stand (she is expected to any day now), so the trial has been mostly Depp’s show thus far, the 58-year old performing his “Southern gentleman” character, drawling his “sirs” and “sorrys” as the court is shown pictures of him passed out with ice cream dribbling down his leg, or explaining away text messages recommending to his actor friend Paul Bettany that they drown, burn and brutalise Heard’s body. The performance seems a bit like an audition piece, his bid to return to Hollywood after #MeToo put an end to his career as its go-to tattooed, charmingly-troubled troubador.
Still, old habits die hard: even as he apologises for his behaviour, he seems hell bent on mythologising it. He calls intoxicated rampages the behaviour of the “monster”; he recounts his reliance on the painkiller Roxicodone as though it is the bridge in a country song and signed off texts to Amber’s mother with “your son outlaw”. But in reality TV, the personal brand matters, and he’s got one eye on that prize.
A face-off between Hollywood stars would never have been anything less, of course — there’s nothing more intoxicating than the messy details of other people’s lives, except
if those other people are famous. Still, scripted trash lands better than watching these two trash each other — I’d really rather look away.
Just like Emma, I’m fairly unmanageable
Emma Raducanu has split with her tennis coach, Torben Beltz; his successor will be her fourth coach in a year. When Kanye West split with his last manager in 2018, he tweeted, “I no longer have a manager. I can’t be managed”; is Raducanu, as one colleague joked, the Kanye West of tennis?
I sympathise. As tennis players go, I’m fairly unmanageable. I drove one coach insane with my inconsistency (strictly, there was no inconsistency — I just can’t play when I’m hungover, which was the case one in every three Saturday morning lessons).
Meanwhile my brother, my tennis buddy, regularly goes on strike: I fling racquets (at myself); swear (at myself); and celebrate good serves with distracting exclamations like, “wow, how did I do that?” Coaching isn’t for everyone.
Of course, Raducanu, a 19-year-old who won the US Open shortly after her A-levels, may simply have high standards. I wonder if she’ll coach me?
