By Ted Johnson , Dominic Patten
3rd UPDATE, 2:35 PM: “He’s going to kill me now,” Amber Heard told a Virginia jury today she thought to herself of an alleged late 2015 beating by Johnny Depp. “He’s going to kill me and he’s won’t’ even realize it.”
Along with those searing words and another story of an alleged sexual assault, Heard ended her second day of testimony in the $50 million defamation trial also reciting her version of a 2015 fight at the couple’s downtown LA apartment and her striking the Pirates of the Caribbean actor.
“In all of my relationship to date with Johnny, I hadn’t landed a blow,” Heard told the Virginia courtroom of her efforts to stop Depp from knocking her sister down a flight of stairs in the mid-2015 event. “I hit him, square in the face
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“Sure, I had tried to fight back …but never landed anything,” the Aquaman actress calmly said as her ex-husband sat nearby between his lawyers, scribbling at the table right front of him. “Johnny looked stunned and laughed at me … security pulled him away.”
In the closing minutes of Thursday’s session in the five week long that started on April 11, Heard’s words today were part of a big picture position by her legal team to take the air out of Depp’s repeatedly claims that he was the abused one in the high profile couple’s relationship and marriage, that end in 2016 amidst retaining orders and more.
Recalling that December 15, 2015 altercation, Heard detailed being head butted by Depp.
“Punching me, punching me repeatedly with his fist, I don’t even remember the pain, just the sound of Johnny’s voice .. I f*cking hate you, over and over,” Heard asserted as Depp, their respective lawyers, the jury and Fairfax County Judge Penny Azcarte looked on. “Pounding the back of the head I could just hear him saying he was going to kill me, he sounded like an animal in pain,” Heard continued in a softer than usual voice as her Run Diary co-star once again avoided eye contact with her in the relatively small courtroom.
A photo of the seemingly bruised and broken nosed Heard in the days after the alleged assault in question was displayed for the court. In fact, with broken lips and more, a number of photographs of Heard depicting injuries from Depp’s alleged beating were shown to the jury and everyone else. The first fight between the couple that was discussed this afternoon supposedly kicked off when Heard discovered texts on Depp’s iPad between the actor and a woman he had been involved with previously. To Heard, the correspondence implied that Depp and the woman were involved once again.
Depp has sought to tarnish “slut” Heard, as he called her on a number of occasions, with being unfaithful during their relationship. Such accusations when the couple were together occurred when the actor was often in a drug and booze induced rage.
Claiming he never abused anyone, Depp sued Heard in March 2019 over a late 2018 Washington Post op-ed that she wrote on being a survivor of domestic abuse. Though the piece never named Depp, the past Oscar nominee claims it “devastated” his career and reputation and cost him big pay checks for big movies. Failing to get the case dismissed, Heard countersued her former spouse for $100 million in the summer of 2020. Later that year, Depp very publicly lost a UK libel suit he instigated against The Sun tabloid for calling him a “wife-beater.”
Earlier, calling the relationship “toxic,” 36-year old Heard denied that she had written on a mirror amidst the wreckage of the Australian rented house the couple initially live in during the filming of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean flick in 2015. Depp’s team have sought to hang at least some of the destruction in the residence on Heard. “It seems significantly cleaned up,” Heard told her lawyer Elaine and the court of photos of the remnants of that “Australia incident.”
He asked if he had “killed it, meaning the relationship …is this done, is it over? Heard said of a call from Depp to her as the actress hurried the airport in Australia following the alleged violence there.
“My heart was broken .. I thought something might happen to him, like he might die, or kill himself,” Heard admitted of her thoughts of getting back in the relationship despite the alleged violence and sexual assaults. “I wanted to stay with the good Johnny that I loved ..so I decided to believe it would never happen again,” she told the court of making one more attempt at reconciliation in late 2015 for a Christmas family vacation at his private Bahamas island.
Not long after that trip began, a supposedly wine spilling Depp shoved Heard and threatened to “kill you” if she ever embarrassed him in front of his children again. Pausing for long stretches on the stand, Heard added, “he shoved his finger inside me through my bathing suit” while taunting her with “you think you are so tough?’ More violence seemingly followed, with Depp found “passed out” nearby the house the next morning
Finished now for day after going a bit longer than usual, the trial will not resume until May 16 because of a pre-scheduled conference the Judge has. Heard is expected to be subjected to cross examination soon after everyone returns to the court.
Before bringing the jury back in for the final portion of today’s trial, a time conscious Judge Azcarte asked the assembled lawyers if breaking traditional was alright with them and closing argument were held on May 27, a Friday – which is usually a dark day for the trial. Usually stating at 10 AM ET, the trial will now start at 9 AM ET when it returns.
Also, at the end of today’s court session, the judge told the lawyers that the plaintiff’s side had used up 35 hours and six minutes of their allotted time and the defense has used 36 hour and 31 minutes. Which leaves the Depp side with 26 hours and nine minutes remaining and the Heard side with 24 hours and 44 minutes left in case that is aiming to be done by Memorial Day. “Once your time is up, your time is up,” Judge Azcarte reminded the attorney and their respective Hollywood clients.
2nd UPDATE, 12:49 PM: “He told me he’d carve up my face,” Amber Heard told a Fairfax County jury that a broken bottle welding Johnny Depp said to her in a fight between the couple in Australia in March 2015.
Revealing that she herself smashed a bottle that her new and not all together sober husband supposedly taunted her with, Heard affirmed that Depp ripped her nightgown off, threw at least one goblet, and left her nakedly slipping on a floor of broken glass. She added that the Pirates of the Caribbean actor was screaming at her that “he f*cking hates me and I ruined his life” while punching the wall next to her. At another point, Heard said Depp was on top of her, screaming and “had me by the neck.”
“I’ll f*cking kill you, he said it over and over again,” Heard divulged Depp yelling at her as he allegedly penetrated her with a bottle “over and over again” during that time in Australia. Asking her lawyer Elaine Bredehoft not to pry too much, Heard expounded on the incident and bruises, bloody wounds and more she says she suffered.
Along with claims of physical, verbal and emotional abuse, Heard and her legal team have asserted that Depp sexually assaulted the actress repeatedly during their relationship. Depp has denied all such claims.
“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” the actress bellowed herself between sobs on the stand in front of Judge Penny Azcarte, the jury, Depp, lawyers and others of another clash between the couple. “I was trying to tell him he was really hurting me, I don’t think he knew what he was doing,” Heard said, before breaking down in the courtroom. “I couldn’t breathe.”
Waking up to a blood and blue and brown paint stain house, with a “incoherent” message and what she thought was her name, and smeared food everywhere, Heard on Thursday painted a now familiar portrait of destruction that the jurors have been exposed to since the trial started on April 11.
“He wasn’t there anymore, it wasn’t Johnny,” she said of the expression in her then spouse’s face that day as she “figured out” Depp was missing part of his finger.
Depp’s deeply wounded digit has long been an inflection of contention in the 2016 divorced couple’s relationship and this much-delayed trial. Both sides say the other was responsible to the injury that shut down production on Disney’s big budgeted fifth Pirates movie. On the stand, Heard said that after Depp pissed outside the dwelling to “send her more messages,” a nurse tried to give her drugs to calm her down.
“I just remember being scared …not knowing what the Hell was going on,” Heard went on to say, telling the court that she soon afterwards grabbed what ever she could and left Australia.
From the harrowing testimony from the Aquaman star this afternoon in the Virginia courtroom, the beginning of that time down under in March 2015 while Depp was working on the rocky filming of Dead Men Tell No Tales was a relentless round of fights between the couple. Strategically, Heard’s defense team are using their client’s testimony to try to diffuse Deep’s assertion that he was the abused one in the relationship by putting her actions and outbursts in a reactive pose.
Using language that the jury have heard before from the stand and on audio tapes, Heard claimed Depp insulted her as a “fat ass,” “whore” and saying no one in his circle liked her. Amongst all that, there seemed to be one violent physical confrontation after another with an apparently enraged and under the influence Deep choking Heard, pushing her up against walls, knocking her to the ground and “whacking me in the face.”
At one point, Heard exclaimed a “belligerent” and apparently fight seeking Depp screamed at her: “You wanna go, little girl!”
Heard also detailed an allegedly raging on the phone Depp telling n lawyer of Heard’s from Australia that “the only way out of this was death.” The past Oscar nominee made the ominous statement to a lawyer that Heard had hired to review documents around the couple’s recent marriage. On that same call, Depp fired Heard’s then attorney
“I was back on the chopping block,” Heard bluntly said.
Earlier on Thursday, for the first time since his ex-wife took the stand, a shaken Depp took off his sunglasses with a pursed look on his face as Heard broke down sobbing recollecting an allegedly violent incident in Tokyo around the time of the January 205 Mortdecai premiere.
However, Depp did look aside for a brief moment to flash a closed mouth smile off to his right where lawyer Ben Chew was seated. Soon after, as Heard detailed the couple’s private and semi-private 2015 wedding, an agitated Depp lifted up from writing on the table in front of him and leaned over to whisper to Chew. Later, as evidence of the debris and fallout of the March 2015 fight at the rented house in Australia was posted on the courtroom monitors, a gum chewing Depp conferred over and over with Chew, sometimes pointing at the screen directly in front of him
Sure to wrap up the last day of the trial until May 16, Heard will return for more testimony after the current break the court is on.
1st UPDATE, 10:10 AM: On the 15th day of Johnny Depp’s $50 million defamation trial against Amber Heard, the Aquaman star told the Virginia courtroom how things between herself and the Pirates of the Caribbean actor “really weren’t okay…I was just catering to his mood” during his 2014 detox from Oxycontin.
“I said something to him, he got so angry and slapped me across the face,” a sometimes crying and voice-cracking Heard said Thursday in her second day of testimony. “But it was so weird, he was crying…no women had embarrassed me like that,” the actress added, as a mainly downcast and scribbling Depp sat nearby with his lawyers.
Though at one point, as Heard described the events in the Bahamas eight years ago, Depp did become quite animated and leaned over to attorney Ben Chew. At another junction, as he had yesterday, Depp giggled and snickered like a schoolboy with Chew as Heard today detailed the increasing controlling behavior Depp displayed over her. Specifically, Heard described the criteria he demanded she meet to be in the 2015 released Magic Mike XXL
Recalling the Bahamas detox process Heard declared, “I deeply cared about this human’s well-being…it was very confusing and scary,” noting the praise that Depp gave her. “He told me all the time I save his life, he wouldn’t be doing this without me,” she said. Later, as Depp’s lawyers let loose with their constant battery of objections and “hearsay” calls, Heard’s lead lawyer Elaine Bredehoft introduced a post-detox text from Depp to Heard where the actor called his partner an ”angel” for helping him.
“He never had to deal with the clean-up…he never had to deal with my face the next day,” a tearful Heard told the court later in her testimony.
In her short stint on the stand so far, Heard has leveled a number of allegations of abuse, in many forms, against Depp – including sexual assault. The Black Mass actor’s drug and alcohol use sits at the heart of most of those allegations, with Depp turning into a self-described “monster” when under the influence. “I’m a f*cking savage,” Depp wrote Heard in a December 18, 2018 text.
That “was the language he used after a particularly violent episode,” Heard explained to Judge Penny Azcarte, the jury and others in the Fairfax County Courthouse. “Sometime I don’t think he understood how much he could hurt me physically,” she added, admitting that she “yelled at him, screaming at him…it was awful.”
“Nothing I did made him stop hitting me.”
Throughout the trial, which began on April 11, Depp and his various paid witnesses have denied the actor had serious problem with booze and drugs. Claiming cocaine and other such intake had little actual effect on him — which kind of undermines the point of taking it — Depp has copped to an opioid addiction, which he says he conquered. He also has admitted that Heard was by his side during his 2014 detox and he was thankful for that.
Still, from the moment he launched his March 2019 lawsuit against Heard over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed the actress wrote about being a survivor of domestic abuse, Depp has denied he abused Heard. Despite losing a 2020 UK libel suit against the tabloid The Sun for calling him a “wife-beater,” Depp continues to proclaim he is the victim of domestic abuse in the relationship with Heard – even though the couple’s very public and restraining order filled 2016 divorce indicated otherwise.
The court in on its lunch break now. Today is the last day the trial will be in session this week and it will pause all the next week for a pre-scheduled conference Judge Azcarte is attending. Testimony will pick up again on May 16.
PREVIOUSLY, 8:56 AM: Amber Heard alleged more instances of physical abuse by Johnny Depp today, painting a picture of a dream relationship turning into a nightmare as the actor descended into drug and alcohol binges.
Just before a morning break on Thursday, the jury listened to an audio recording that Heard said she took of Depp on a May 24, 2014 private flight from Boston, in which Depp is heard moaning. Heard said he had locked himself in the bathroom aand “started howling like an animal.”
Heard explained that she started recording because “in my experience, when Johnny was that inebriated, he would not remember what was done.”
Depp is suing Heard for $50 million over a Washington Post op ed she wrote in 2018, in which she said that she had become “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp denies her claims of domestic abuse.
Heard, who has countersued, took the stand on Wednesday, and has since been going through a narrative of their relationship, describing instances where Depp was emotionally a physically abusive to her.
On the May, 2014 flight, she said, Depp was upset that she was doing a movie with James Franco, whom he despised, and that she had a love scene with him. At one point on the flight, Heard alleged that Depp started throwing ice cubes and utensils at her, “talking about what an embarrassment I am.” She said that she tried to avoid engaging with him, but “Johnny came to me each time.”
“I was looking out the window and he slaps my face,” Heard said, looking at the jury most times as she testified.
She said that a friend was in close proximity, and although the slap “didn’t hurt me,” “I was just embarrassed that he would do that in front of people.”
Then, she said, as she went to move to the front of the plane, she turned away and “I feel this boot in my back. He just kicked me…I thought to myself. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ No one said anything. No one did anything. I felt so embarrassed that he could do that in front of people.”
Heard also described an incident earlier that month, when they both attended the Met Gala. She said that at the dinner, Depp thought she was “looking at this woman in a sexual way.”
In their hotel room afterward, she said, Depp shoved her and grabbed her by the area around her collar bone. She said that she then shoved him back, and “he threw a bottle at me. It missed me but broke the chandelier.” She said that they then had a struggle in the living room and he shoved her down on a sofa “and at some point he just whacks me in the face.”
“I suspected I had a broken nose. Other than that I was relatively unscathed,” Heard said. As it turned out, she said, her nose was discolored.
Depp again did not make eye contact with his ex-wife and instead looked down and appeared to be writing.
Heard described how, in August, 2013, when Depp proposed to her, and the joy she felt. “I looked into his eyes and saw my future and hope, like blind hope.”
“I thought if we were married, this is real, it’s not chaotic, this will change,” she said.
The next March, they held an engagement party and invited a large group of family and friends. They walked in together but Depp “disappeared upstairs almost the entire party.” He was sharing drugs with her dad, Heard said.
“My dad at the time was addicted to the same thing Johnny was,” she said. She said at one point her dad left with Depp’s security guard to get drugs in West Hollywood.
“I tried to get Johnny to come downstairs and he just snapped at me, verbally told me to shut the f— up,” Heard said. “I remember talking to my mom about the irony of it.”
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