Most explosive moments in the star-studded Johnny Depp v Amber Heard defamation trial

T he defamation trial opposing Johnny Depp and Amber Heard put the Hollywood heavyweights’ tumultuous relationship on full display inside a courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia . Depp sued Heard, his ex-wife, for alleged defamation over an op-ed she wrote in 2018 in The Washington Post , in which she describes herself as ‘a public figure representing domestic abuse’. Heard countersued her ex-husband, accusing him of allegedly orchestrating a ‘smear campaign’ against her and describing his own lawsuit as a continuation of ‘abuse and harassment.’ Depp asked for $50m in damages; Heard asked for $100m and immunity against Depp’s claims. On 1 June 2022, the jury returned a verdict in favour of Mr Depp and ordered Ms Heard to pay him $10m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages. Ms Heard won a single part out of three listed in her counterclaim and Mr Depp was in turn ordered to pay her $2m. Over six weeks of testimony, the jury heard from a string of witnesses including the couple’s former marriage counsellor, their friends, psychiatrists, surgeons and entertainment experts – as well as Depp and Heard themselves. The testimony painted a captivating and disturbing portrait of the actors’ doomed marriage, laying bare their violent fights, drug use and vicious words to each other. Here are some of the biggest moments: Heard’s attorney brings new sexual assault allegation During opening arguments on 12 April 2022, Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft alleged that Depp sexually assaulted Heard with a liquor bottle on one occasion. Depp shook his head in court as Bredehoft recounted the alleged incident. His attorney Camille Vasquez disputed the allegation of sexual assault in court. A spokesperson called the claims ‘fictitious’ in a statement to The Independent . Marriage counsellor describes ‘mutual abuse’ A video deposition of Heard and Depp’s former marriage counsellor Dr Laurel Anderson aired on 14 April in which she discussed her past sessions with the couple. Asked whether Heard had ever reported any physical violence by Depp to her, Dr Anderson said yes. Asked whether she had seen photos, she said she had but doesn’t remember when . Asked whether ‘there was violence from Depp toward Amber’, she said: ‘Yes, you’re right.’ ‘He had been well controlled for, I don’t know, 20, 30 years, and both were victims of abuse in their homes, but I thought he had been well-controlled for decades,’ she added. ‘And then with Heard he was triggered and they engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse.’ Depp’s friend ejected as witness Gina Deuters, who is married to a member of Depp’s staff and is herself a close friend of the actor’s, gave testimony in person on 14 April. She answered questions about Depp’s drugs and alcohol use, telling the court she had seen him use weed and cocaine occasionally, and that she had seen him drink alcohol . Deuters testified that she had never seen Depp be violent or angry after using any substances or drinking alcohol. At one point during her testimony, Heard’s legal team asked for permission to approach Judge Penney Azcarate. The judge conferred with the attorneys and then sent the jury out for a brief recess. Judge Azcarate then asked Deuters: ‘Have you been watching the trial this past week?’ Deuters replied: ‘I’ve seen clips of it online, yes.’ The judge then confirmed that Deuters had watched clips of witness testimony, after which she told Deuters she was excused and her testimony was stricken from the record. The metaphorical heat in the courtroom ramped up dramatically on 19 April, when Depp took the stand. He testified under questioning from his own lawyers for two days before facing cross-examination. Depp is ‘not embarrassed’ to testify on fall from ‘Cinderella to Quasimodo’ ‘I can’t say that I’m embarrassed because I know that I’m doing the right thing,’ Depp said after taking the witness stand on 19 April. The actor told the court that he did feel exposed by the litigation, insisting that despite his successful career, he had always been a private person who had tried to shield his two children from ‘hordes of paparazzi’ and that he did not want them to see their parents as ‘novelties’. But, he said he wanted to clear his name after it was smeared throughout the industry, saying: ‘It’s strange when you’re Cinderella, so to speak, and in 0.6 seconds you’re Quasimodo.’ Depp says Heard ‘grossly embellished’ substance abuse The star said from the witness stand that his drug and alcohol use had been ‘an easy target’ for the actress to hit after their marriage ultimately broke down. But Depp said he didn’t use for the sake of partying, but rather to dull the pain of past trauma . ‘It has never been for the party effect, it has been trying to numb the things inside that have, that can plague someone who has experienced trauma,’ he told the court in Virginia. ‘The characterisation of my substance, of my quote-unquote substance abuse that has been delivered by Heard is grossly embellished, and I am sorry to say, but a lot of it is just plainly false. ‘I think that it was easy, it was an easy target for her to hit. Because once you have trusted somebody for a certain amount of years and you have told them all the secrets of your life, that information can then, of course, be used against you.’ Depp describes his first kiss with Heard on set of The Rum Diary The actor said that he and Heard had locked lips in a scene in which she walked in on him in the shower. And he described how the pair continued the passion back in his trailer later in the day. ‘I think there was something in the kiss in the shower that was real,’ he added. ‘So that day after work, Heard had come to my trailer and I was sitting there listening to old blues stuff and we had a glass of wine and we kissed. ‘At that point, my trailer was the only trailer in the parking lot, she had the mind to stay in the trailer for a while with me but I did not think that was a good idea on any level as there were nine Teamsters outside waiting to move the trailer.’ Depp said mother’s abuse ‘tore up’ his family Depp also spoke at length about his difficult childhood, saying that his mother, Betty Sue Palmer, ‘had the ability to be as cruel as anyone can be’. Describing his mother’s violence, Depp said ‘an ashtray’ could be ‘flung at you’. He added that she would hit her children in the head and that she could use a ‘high-heeled shoe or a telephone or whatever was handy’ . He added that he started being able to see when his mother was about to ‘head into a situation where she was going to be riled up and somebody was going to get it. Generally, it was me’. Depp said the family learned to deal with the physical abuse but that the verbal and psychological abuse ‘tore us up’. He described his father as ‘kind’, ‘quiet’, and ‘shy’ who would ‘amazingly remain very stoic’ when Depp’s mother ‘delivered the pain’. ‘He swallowed it, he took it,’ Depp said, adding that he once saw his father punch a concrete wall, shattering his hand. ‘He remained a gentleman.’ Depp said his father leaving led his mother into a ‘deep, dark depression’ and he mimicked her stumbling around the home after taking a multitude ‘of pills to try to take herself out’. She survived after having her stomach pumped at a hospital. He said his mother seemed to ‘calm down’ after taking some ‘nerve pills’ and that he, at the age of 11, would take one as well because he wanted ‘to calm down’ but he ‘didn’t know how to’ and that he wanted to ‘escape feeling so much’. ‘That was the beginning – when I realized that nerve pills calm the nerves,’ he said, adding that he had taken all the drugs ‘he was aware of’ by the age of 15. Actor reveals that he never saw Pirates of the Caribbean The actor also said he had never seen one of his most successful films – Pirates of the Caribbean. Depp first appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow in 2003 in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The actor went on to also appear in several sequels, including Dead Man’s Chest , At World’s End, On Stranger Tides , and Dead Men Tell No Tales. ‘I thought that it had all the hallmarks of a Disney film – that is to say, a kind of a predictable three-act structure,’ he said about his first thought about the first script. ‘The character of Captain Jack was more like a swashbuckler type that would swing in shirtless and be the hero.’ He then revealed that he never saw the film . ‘I didn’t see it. But I believe that the film did pretty well, apparently, and they wanted to keep going, making more and I was fine to do that,’ he said. ‘It’s not like you become that person, but if you know that character to the degree that I did – because he was not what the writers wrote, so they really weren’t able to write for him… Once you know the character better than the writers, that’s when you have to be true to the character and add your words.’ Johnny Depp testifies at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on 25 April 2022 Depp likens relationship with Heard to his relationship with his mother On 20 April, Depp likened his marriage to Heard to his fraught relationship with his mother, calling it an ‘endless parade of insults’. He recalled how ‘demeaning name calling’, being ‘berated’ and ‘made a fool of’ by Heard would frequently escalate into full-scale arguments. ‘If there’s a dialogue between two people, both people need to speak. But there was no way to fit a word in. It was a sort of rapid-fire, endless parade of insults,’ he said, adding that he ‘was not allowed to be right and not allowed to have a voice’. ‘You start to slowly realise that you are in a relationship with your mother, in a sense. And I know that sounds perverse and obtuse, but the fact is, some people search for weaknesses in people,’ he said. Actor’s tattoos are discussed Depp was asked about Heard’s claims that the first time he struck her was in response to a comment about a tattoo. The actor said that the incident did not happen and reiterated that he never hit Heard or any other woman. He added that this specific allegation never made sense to him because he would have no reason to strike a woman for making fun of his ink. Probed further on whether Heard objected to any of his tattoos, he replied that he had ‘Winona forever’ – a reference to his previous relationship with actor Winona Ryder – changed to ‘Wino forever’. It wasn’t clear which iteration Heard objected to or if she influenced the change. Heard admits to hitting Depp in audio Heard could be heard admitting to hitting Depp on a recording played in court. Heard and Depp argued about the physical altercation on the recording, during which she said she hit Depp but she didn’t ‘deck’ him. She also told Depp to ‘grow up’, calling him a ‘baby’. ‘You told me to do it. You told me ‘go do that’,’ Heard said on the recording. ‘You punched me in the f***ing thing,’ Depp said. ‘You figured it all out,’ Heard responded. ‘I didn’t punch you by the way.’ ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t hit you across the face in a proper slap,’ she added. ‘I was hitting you, I was not punching you. You’re not punched.’ Depp describes finger injury Depp described in graphic detail a fight with Heard during which he claims she threw a vodka bottle at him, severing his finger. ‘She then grabbed that bottle and threw that at me,’ Depp said, demonstrating to the jury how he was sitting at the time. He said his fingers were resting on the edge of the bar and that the large vodka bottle ‘made contact and shattered everywhere’. ‘I felt no pain at first all,’ he said. ‘I felt heat and as if something was dripping down my hand.’ ‘I was looking directly at my bones sticking out,’ he added. ‘Blood was just pouring out.’ Depp explains why daughter Lily-Rose Depp didn’t attend wedding Depp was asked about his wedding to Heard on day two of his testimony. During his testimony, Depp said his daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, the eldest of his two children with Vanessa Paradis, did not attend his wedding to Heard in 2015. ‘Lily-Rose did not come to the wedding,’ he said. ‘She and Heard were not on particularly great terms for several reasons.’ Depp cringes as he describes seeing photo of faeces on his bed Depp described seeing a photo of faeces on his bed days after a fight with Heard. Depp said on that he didn’t see Heard between 22 April and 21 May 2016 as he had ‘received some news that was as absurd and grotesque and cruel, and then I was shown a picture of what the problem was’. He said he was shown a photo of ‘our bed and on my side of the bed was human faecal matter, so I understood why it wasn’t a good time to go down there’. Depp said his ‘initial response’ was to ‘laugh’. ‘It was so outside, it was so bizarre and so grotesque that I could only laugh,’ he added. Depp tells how his mother’s death made him realise he wanted a divorce from Heard Depp said his mother’s death in 2016 caused him to realise his marriage to Heard had to end. ‘When those you love leave, we’re the ones stuck with the pain, with the grieving. But I was glad that my kids got to see her and give her her send-off, I suppose. But it opened my eyes quite a lot to a number of things,’ he said. Depp added: ‘It opened my eyes to the fact that – yes, try, in relationships, whether friendships, whether courtships, whether marriage. Try your best. If it’s not going to work, it’s not going to work.’ Depp said he had then decided that he would call Heard and inform her of Palmer’s death, as well as his intention to file for divorce. Heard filed for divorce from Depp on 23 May 2016 after 15 months of marriage. Amber Heard talks to her attorneys in a courtroom at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on 25 April 2022 Depp asked about texts saying he wanted ‘burn and drown’ Heard during cross-examination Depp was asked about texts saying he wanted to ‘burn’ and ‘drown’ Heard. Mr Depp was asked if English actor Paul Bettany was ‘a good friend you’ve done drugs with’ – a question Depp said was strange, but he later confirmed both aspects. According to court documents, Depp texted Mr Bettany ‘Let’s burn Amber!!!’ on 11 June 2013. ‘Having thought it through, I don’t think we should burn Amber – she’s delightful company and easy on the eye, plus I’m not sure she