Kate Moss testified by video for just three minutes on Wednesday in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial, dispelling a rumor that Depp had pushed her down a flight of steps when he was her boyfriend in the 1990s.
The 48-year-old supermodel, speaking from her English home in Gloucestershire, told the court in Virginia that she and Depp had been in a romantic relationship from 1994 to 1998.
Depp’s attorney Benjamin Chew asked Moss if anything had happened while they were on holiday at the GoldenEye resort in Jamaica.
“We were leaving the room, and Johnny left the room before I did, and there had been a rainstorm. As I left the room, I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back,” Moss told the court via the video feed.
“I screamed because I didn’t know what had happened to me and I was in pain. He came running back to help me and carried me to my room and got me medical attention,” she added.
Moss said Depp had not pushed her down the stairs. Asked if, at any point in their relationship, he had pushed her in that way, Moss said: “No.”
“He never pushed me, kicked me or threw me down any stairs, no,” Moss told the court.
Heard’s attorneys declined to cross-examine Moss, and she was told she was free to go.
Moss was called by Depp’s legal team, who appeared to celebrate when her name was mentioned by Heard during her testimony, when she revived the rumor that Depp had pushed her down a flight of stairs.
Depp himself later took the stand to reject aspects of Heard’s testimony earlier in the trial. Among those were Heard’s claim that Depp had taken a handful of ecstasy pills during a trip to Australia in 2015.
Depp testified he had taken the drug, also known as MDMA, six or seven times in his life. His attorney asked him directly if he had ever taken eight to 10 pills at once, as Heard testified.
“No. I’m pretty sure I’d be dead. I think one would die rather quickly,” he said.
Depp’s attorneys asked him how it had been to listen to Heard’s accusations against him during the trial.
“Insane,” Depp replied. “It’s insane to hear heinous accusations of violence, sexual violence, that she’s attributed to me and accused me of. I don’t think anyone enjoys having to split themselves open and tell the truth, but there are times when one simply has to, because it’s gotten out of control,” Depp said.
The accusations against him, he added, were “ridiculous, humiliating, ludicrous, painful, savage and unimaginably brutal, cruel and all false. All false.”
The actor also disputed a claim made by Heard that he had nothing to do with getting her a role in the superhero blockbuster Aquaman.
Depp said that after Heard auditioned for the role, he talked to the studio on her behalf. He was barred from discussing the details of his conversations when Heard’s lawyers objected, but said that “ultimately she did get the job, so hopefully, I suppose, I had curbed their worries to some degree.”
But Depp rejected a claim by Heard’s attorneys that he had reached out to Warner Bros executives to have her removed from the franchise after their marriage collapsed. “I had given my word to them, and I felt responsible that I had to tell them exactly what was going on and that it was going to end up ugly,” Depp said.
Throughout Depp’s testimony on Wednesday, he appeared more argumentative, rather than maintaining the movie star veneer he had displayed earlier in the trial. In one exchange, he suggested that Amber Heard’s attorney had fabricated negative text messages that he allegedly sent about his ex-wife.
One of the last witnesses to be called, former TMZ employee Morgan Tremaine, testified that Heard had tipped off the gossip site that she would be at court (to file a temporary restraining order) and “was going to stop and turn” so that paparazzi could photograph the bruise Heard claims that Depp gave her.
Tremaine sparred with Heard’s attorneys. Testifying in this case, said Elaine Bredehodt, “gets you your 15 minutes of fame, doesn’t it?” Tremaine shot back: “I could say the same thing about taking Amber Heard as a client, for you.”
The testimony came during the rebuttal phase of the long-running defamation case. Each side has sought to present the other as an abuser during their 15-month marriage.
Depp is suing Heard for $50m for libel in Fairfax county, Virginia, over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in the Washington Post, describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
His lawyers say he was defamed by the article, although it never mentioned his name.
Depp has denied he ever struck Heard and says she was the abuser in the relationship.
Heard has testified about more than a dozen instances of physical abuse she says she suffered at Depp’s hands, and has counter-sued her ex-husband for $100m.
In November, 2020, Depp lost a high-stakes libel action in the UK courts against the British tabloid the Sun after the newspaper described him as a “wife-beater”.
Moss’s testimony in the US court came in the final week of the jury trial, with closing arguments expected on Friday.
The case continues.
