While dragging his ex-wife Amber Heard to justice, Johnny Depp finds himself in the box of the accused.
We expected sordid revelations, we were not disappointed. At the end of April 2016, Hilda Vargas, Johnny Depp’s maid, finds a memory on his bed that she identifies at first glance: excrement. She is so stunned that she snaps a photo and sends it to the actor through one of his bodyguards. Discovering it on his phone, Johnny begins to laugh. But as, shortly before, he had a big argument with Amber, his wife for a few more months, he soon suspected that this was revenge. Which, suddenly, makes him furious. “Miss Heard wanted me to believe that it was the dogs who had done this, but it could not have come from them”, he declared under oath, last week, at the bar of the court. .
Read also: Rape, beatings and insults: Amber Heard recounts three days of hell in Australia with Johnny Depp
« I know my dogs, » he said. They are tiny Yorkies weighing 2 kilos each. I have often picked up their droppings, they are not like that. “Would Amber Heard be a monster capable of defiling the marital bed out of pure hysteria? This is the thesis defended by the actor. She denies. Faced with this major debate, the Web is inflamed. Last week, the hashtag #Amberturd (« Amber poo ») surfaced on Twitter, as did another, #MePoo, a subtle pun between the #MeToo movement and the term « poo », which means poo in English. … And this is just the beginning, since the defamation lawsuit between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife is scheduled to last six weeks!
Suddenly, the public finds itself in the bedroom of the couple. No detail is spared.
At the heart of the debates, a column, published by the actress on December 18, 2018 in the “Washington Post”, entitled: “I spoke up against sexual violence and I was punished for it by society. This must change. Amber Heard is a feminist activist, ambassador for women’s rights for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), to which she has contributed since her adolescence. His article is harmless. Johnny Depp agrees with the statement. Except that he feels targeted, even if his name does not appear in the text. And that displeases him. As soon as it was published, it unleashed the heavy artillery. “I want to clear my honor, he explained last week. To be presented as a husband who beats his wife is too unfair for me and for my children, who do not have to bear such infamy. In the United States, where trials can be filmed, Amber wanted to ban cameras. Johnny insisted they were there. As a result, the Court TV and Law and Crime Network judicial channels are having a blast: seven hours of programming per day on cable, live, and a guaranteed audience!
Johnny Depp, 58, is sworn in (inset) on April 19. The next day, he mimes a blow that Amber would have given him and how he would have protected himself from it.
© Evelyn Hockstein/AP/SIPA
We are in Fairfax, Virginia, where the printing presses of the « Washington Post » are located, the newspaper which published Amber’s rant. Libel laws are harsher in this state, which is why Depp’s attorneys chose him. It’s a far cry from Hollywood, but the sound and visuals are excellent, and the protagonists are one (Johnny Depp) wearing makeup and botoxed, the other (Amber Heard) stylish and hip. The production is worthy of a Macron-Le Pen debate: the alternate editing works wonderfully. During the pleading of Elaine Bredehoft, lawyer for Amber Heard, Johnny Depp is framed tight: we see him laughing when the tenor of the bar evokes the « étrongate » (in reference to Watergate) and the « problems » posed by dogs. Ditto when Camille Vasquez, who defends Johnny Depp, speaks. The lawyer calls Amber « a liar who published her article at the time of the release of ‘Aquaman’, this successful film which gives her the first major role of her career ». So Amber, sitting right behind her, sends her furious, disgusted looks.
According to Me Vasquez, Amber Heard would be essentially « motivated by her personal interest » and « obsessed with her public image » (says her assistant, Kate James, who agreed to testify against her). She would have « invented from scratch a fable in which she would be a victim like MeToo and Johnny Depp a monster »… According to the lawyer, the real victim is Johnny. Throughout the marriage, the « rabid » would have never stopped making domestic scenes and humiliating him, going so far as to accuse him of not really « being a guy » because, to his taste, he did not defend her enough…
Suddenly, the public finds itself in the bedroom of the couple. No detail is spared. Initially, everything is fine. But between them (and this is the only point on which the two parties agree) it is more incandescent than among normal people. The first kiss took place in 2009 on the set of “Rhum Express”. At the time, Johnny Depp was at the height of his glory. Thanks to « Pirates of the Caribbean », he earns 40 million dollars per film, which makes him one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood; Amber, she starts. He is twice his age. The two live as a couple, he with Vanessa Paradis, of whom he has two children, she with the photographer Tasya van Ree for eleven years. But when they kiss on set for the purposes of a sequence, something electric happens. According to Johnny, it is she who pursues him: “We found ourselves in my dressing room after the scene. She wanted to stay. I told him that was not a good idea. “According to her, it is he who insists: “He offers her a guitar, which she returns to him”, assures Elaine Bredehoft.
Amber Heard, 36, in court. She is best known for playing a CIA agent in “3 Days to Kill”. Inset, with his lawyers, April 18.
© Steve Helber/AP/SIPA
It doesn’t matter who went to whom… In 2012, he left Vanessa, she left her girlfriend, and here they are together. For Johnny, who until then has mostly lived with stars, it’s a new beginning. The difference in age and status doesn’t matter. “She was almost too good to be true,” he says. Both great readers of novels, they have the same literary and musical tastes. The first year, they spin the perfect love, but with “strange details”. Like the habit she has, when he comes back from work, of pouring him a glass of wine and taking off his boots. “It was new for me, testifies Johnny. I liked it, at first. But one day when I came home and she was on the phone, I took my boots off myself and she didn’t like it. « That’s my job, » she told me reproachfully. »
When Johnny speaks, in a deep and pasty voice, it’s like being at the shrink
The relationship quickly became explosive. According to her lawyer, Amber was struck for the first time during a conversation about one of Johnny’s tattoos, « Wino Forever », first dedicated to one of his exes, Winona Ryder, and altered since their breakup to give “Drunkard Forever”. According to his version, Amber finds it funny, but Johnny, drunk and under the influence of drugs, would have taken it badly and would have slapped him twice. She is flabbergasted. Realizing that he slipped up, he then allegedly got down on his knees to apologize. She would then have « taken on it, out of love » because he seemed sincere: « I’m sorry, I thought I had definitely twisted my demons’ necks », he would have told her. Except that, at the bar, he refutes this thesis: « I have never hit any woman », he assures. According to Amber, there are two Johnnys: the one who, sober, is funny, generous, kind, charming; and the one who, drunk and drugged, is “a monster”. What the interested party retorts: “With her, I always had the impression of being wrong. She was jealous and practiced suicide blackmail, like my mother with my father, which made me stay to help her. She spent her time insulting me, lowering me, contradicting me. I didn’t deserve this. »
According to Johnny, she’s the one knocking. In February 2015, to please her, he married her despite everything, on her Caribbean island. « She did everything to hasten the process, » accuses Depp’s lawyer. A month later, in Australia, where he is filming “Pirates of the Caribbean 5”, it is “the accident”. Johnny must be repatriated urgently to Los Angeles, because he has just lost a piece of finger. Because, he swears, of one of Amber’s new fits of rage: « She threw a bottle of vodka at me which shattered into a thousand pieces, reaching and cutting my finger », testifies. he at the bar, in front of a dumbfounded courtroom. In Amber’s camp, on the contrary, he is accused of having self-harmed, « as he used to do when he was drunk or under the influence of drugs » (ecstasy, among others ). He would have gone completely crazy for three days, taking his wife hostage, who was trying to calm him down, and going so far as to penetrate her with a bottle of alcohol… Which Johnny, of course, firmly denies. He acknowledges addiction issues but claims that Amber has « exaggerated » them greatly. Amber, she admits to having hit him – but “once only”, after having surprised him in the act of adultery with a woman whose naked photos and text messages she had found.
Who is telling the truth? The audiences follow one another.
When Johnny speaks, in a deep, pasty voice, you’d think you were at the shrink. The charges against him are very serious. They are often supported by compromising text messages, coming from his cell phone or those of his relatives. Photos, very embarrassing videos show him in particular attacking kitchen cupboards, before serving himself a large glass of red wine. Amber is filming it with her iPad. When he realizes this, he wants to snatch the device from her. The video then begins to vibrate… Broadcast in front of the court, it has the worst effect. The jury, made up of seven members, must decide whether or not Amber Heard has defamed Johnny Depp without naming him, by proclaiming himself in his gallery a victim of domestic violence. In the courtroom, the unease is palpable. He becomes even more so when Johnny attacks his ex-wife and calls her hysterical.
We will probably not have the end of the story on the mystery of the poop. But the actor, in November 2020, already lost a defamation lawsuit against a British tabloid which called him a « wife beater ». Unless the situation turns around, it will probably have a hard time restoring its image.