Johnny Depp has spoken his final words in his defamation court battle with ex-wife Amber Heard, saying in rebuttal testimony Wednesday that “no matter what happens” in the case, he’s satisfied that after six years of “carrying it on [his] back,” he got to share his truth.
“It’s insane to hear heinous accusations of violence, sexual violence, that she’s attributed to me, that she’s accused me of,” Depp said when asked what it was like to sit through Heard’s court testimony.
“Horrible. Ridiculous, humiliating, ludicrous, painful, savage, unimaginably brutal, cruel, and all false,” he added a minute later. “All false.”
Depp has sued Heard for $50 million, alleging she defamed him in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed where she said she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and ... felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
Heard has countersued for $100 million, alleging defamation by Depp via three comments a former attorney made to the media. The trial is being held in Fairfax, Virginia — home to neither party — because the Post’s servers are located there.
After saying nobody is perfect — Depp has admitted to using alcohol and drugs and being addicted to an opiate — the actor stated, “I have never in my life committed sexual battery, physical abuse. All these outlandish, outrageous stories of me committing these things.”
Depp said he had been living with the abuse allegations for six years and had waited to tell his side of the story.
“This is not easy for any of us, I know that, but no matter what happens, I did get here and I did tell the truth and I have spoken up for what I’ve been carrying on my back, reluctantly, for six years,” he said.
His testimony also included comments on former sister-in-law Whitney Henriquez’s relationship with her sister, Heard.
“It was a kind of a strange combination of loving sister, trusted sister and friend, and then lackey,” Depp said. “Then either the punching bag or the dart board or the recipient of some rather demeaning and ugly words. Or she [Henriquez] would have wine thrown at her face.”
He added, “It was just constantly up and down. But I could sense it, I could feel it, Whitney was trying to please her sister, trying to be up to snuff, and it just seemed like she got shot down every time.”
Depp said he had seen Heard grab her sister or push her around, and said there were times he and others had to leave the room while the sisters fought “both physically and metaphorically.”
Henriquez has testified that Depp was the aggressor against Heard in a fight on a staircase. She is the lone witness testifying to seeing Depp commit violence against Heard.
During cross-examination, Heard’s team challenged Depp’s rebuttal testimony about a black eye he allegedly received from Heard during their honeymoon trip on the Orient Express. Depp said a photo Heard’s team had procured from the Orient Express Facebook page — which didn’t show the shiner — looked “like my eyes have been Photoshopped.”
After Depp said earlier Wednesday that he remembered no wall-mounted phone in the bar area of the Australia house where his finger was severely injured, Heard attorney Benjamin Rottenborn reminded Depp of testimony he gave in his U.K. defamation trial against the Sun. In that U.K. testimony, Depp admitted remembering a wall-mounted phone being present and ripping the phone off the wall.
Heard maintains that Depp sliced his own finger by repeatedly smashing a wall-mounted phone; Depp says Heard caused the injury by throwing a bottle at his hand while he sat at the bar in the Australia house.
As Rottenborn read Depp statements he had allegedly made about women and sex, the actor said the comments were “ludicrous” and that “there’s not enough hubris in me to say anything like that.” The attorney then presented text messages between Depp and his former assistant Stephen Deuters in 2017 that included the exact statements the actor said he never made.
The attorney also presented harsh, explicit text messages in which Depp disparaged Heard, including one in which he wrote, “She’s begging for total global humiliation” — and that she was going to get it.
“When you’re accused of horrific acts and things you have not done, it’s actually some very ugly things that are going out there into the world about you on a nonstop basis by Ms. Heard and her team, you have a tendency, as humans, to get very irate and angry,” Depp said when his attorney Camille Vasquez asked about him about those texts during redirect questioning.
“Not to the point where you go out and hurt someone, not to the point even where you assault a cabinet, but you do get irate. You do wonder why this person is doing this to me.”
The trial will continue through Friday, when each side will have two hours to present closing arguments. The trial is being broadcast and streamed live via CourtTV and other outlets.
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