Johnny Depp’s private nurse Debbie Lloyd said during his defamation trial against his former wife Amber Heard that she would try to “instigate” Mr Depp by following him “from room to room and not give him his space”.
The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on Monday 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”.
Ms Lloyd said she witnessed similar incidents on several occasions during her deposition on 8 March. The footage was played in court on Monday.
She said Ms Heard used the word “mania” to describe Mr Depp’s behaviour. Her notes from the time state that Mr Depp was “upset at this label” and that she “processed” his feelings with him and that he was “able to see” Ms Heard’s “negative behaviour”.
Ms Lloyed said during her deposition that Ms Heard would try to “instigate” Mr Depp. She said she witnessed this personally more than once.
“He was going from room to room trying to remove himself from a situation and she would just follow him from room to room and not give him his space,” she said.
She confirmed seeing similar behaviour from Ms Heard on other occasions. She added that she wasn’t aware of any of the arguments becoming physical.
Ms Lloyd said she remembered Mr Depp and Ms Heard having a fight on a plane, which she described as “another instance where he was sitting at a table and not wanting to talk and she wouldn’t leave the table”.
“She wouldn’t leave the table and he was saying ‘please, just go away’,” she said.
Earlier in her testimony, the nurse said she remembered “one night, trying to leave the penthouse and Amber standing in the elevator and not letting us leave” because “she didn’t want him to leave”.
Ms Lloyd said she had been concerned for Mr Depp when he was in arguments with Ms Heard because “their arguments were a trigger for him emotionally”. She added that the arguments would “cause him to be upset” and “add stress”.
In her 2018 op-ed, Ms Heard partly 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”.
