“No, I never hit Amber!” On the second day of the trial of News Group Newspapers and the British tabloid ‘The Sun’, Johnny Depp (57) continues to shout out his innocence. He dismisses all claims of his ex Amber Heard (34) as nonsense. Strikingly, the ruffs are now also throwing questionable pictures into the fight to prove their right.
Is Depp a ‘wife beater’, as it said in the title of a piece in ‘The Sun’? Judge Andrew Nicol has to find an answer to that question, but the protagonists don’t make it easy for him.
For example, there is that photo from 2013 where Depp seems to be lying on the floor of the bedroom. Did excessive drinking perhaps play a role? “Nothing of it,” the actor replied. “I was sleeping, and my head was on a pillow.”
The above picture shows Depp lying on a hospital stretcher. According to the actor, that is proof that the roles had been reversed: he was the victim, Heard could not control her temperament.
“She threw two vodka bottles at my head,” he said. “I lost my fingertip because of the shards. And she also squeezed a cigarette on my cheek. It all happened on March 8, 2015, one of the days when I supposedly held her hostage. In other words, one of her morbid claims is not correct.”
According to Heard, however, the story was slightly different. They got into an argument on the phone, after which Depp, out of anger, threw his mobile phone against the glass on the wall. Result: fingertip lost. Now it’s up to the court to decide which of the two ex-lovers is telling the truth.
Puppy out the window
During the second day of the trial, more striking stories emerged. Lawyer Sasha Wass, representing The Sun, claims that Depp threatened Heard’s dog in a trance. “When you were in the car smoking, you opened the window,” she said. “You were angry and aggressive: the monster side of your personality. You grabbed Pistol (the dog, ed.) and held her out of the window, and then you started making whining noises.”
The actor replied: “I admit it’s a very moving image, but it’s absolutely untrue”. There were jokes about how they would put the little dog, a Yorkshire Terrier, into the microwave, although he nuanced: “I’m not going to claim that I invented that joke, and I certainly wasn’t the only one who talked about it”. And Depp also admitted that another dog had eaten some of their cannabis: “It certainly wasn’t an ‘ounce’ (about 28 grams, ed.)”, he responded to the lawyer’s suggestion. “But the puppy got a little ball of hash before I could intervene.”
Another explosive quarrel would have had to do with Depp’s famous tattoo: ‘Wino Forever’, which means as much as ‘boozer for life’. According to Wass, Amber Heard made a joke about it, which Depp would have punched her in the face. The actor says he can’t remember ever having a discussion with Heard about his tattoo or beating her, but admits that the drawing is a sensitive subject because he failed to stay sober.
James Franco
Actor James Franco was also discussed on this second trial day. Depp is said to have accused his wife, who starred in the movie ‘The Adderall Diaries’ with Franco, of adultery. During a flight on a private plane, Depp was said to have become so angry that he yelled at her that she was a whore, kicked a chair and hit Heard with it. “I’ve never seen anyone push an airplane seat so hard you can attack someone with it,” Depp denied. However, he admitted that he was concerned about Franco: “She told me a lot of negative things about him, that he tried to kiss her after the recording of ‘Pineapple Express’ and that he made sexual advances. She said he was a creep and a rapist.”
Depp further accused his ex-wife of using cocaine just like him, even laying out the lines for him – despite the opposition’s claims that Heard is very much against cocaine. “She poured whiskey for me, and it has happened regularly that Mrs. Heard prepared the cocaine for me so I could sniff a line,” he said. “Then she pressed her finger in and took it orally.”
He also disproves the claim that she had just encouraged him to get sober. “She insisted that I stop drinking and that I would stop taking drugs. But someone who wants to help an alcoholic, or someone who is probably addicted to drugs, would stop drinking and taking drugs in front of that person. That’s really supporting someone.” When Wass threw out that Heard was drinking two or three glasses of wine.
