Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s Fight Left Home Damaged, Witness Says
The property manager at an Australian home where Johnny Depp and Amber Heard stayed in 2015 during their tempestuous marriage testified on Monday about the damage he surveyed after one of their most fractious clashes.
The manager, Ben King, described touring the place after the fight and finding a scene of broken glass, blood drippings, a damaged bar top and a collapsed Ping-Pong table.
It was the aftermath of an episode that is emblematic of the dueling accusations that have filled the defamation case filed by Mr. Depp against Ms. Heard. Mr. Depp has said that during that fight Ms. Heard hurled a vodka bottle at him that shattered and severed his fingertip. She has countered that he severed it himself when he smashed a phone against a wall.
Mr. King testified that he found Mr. Depp’s fingertip in a “scrunched up” piece of paper amid the wreckage.
The property manager’s testimony came after Mr. Depp finished a fourth and final day on the stand in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. During his testimony, Mr. Depp has described how his relationship with Ms. Heard dissolved, sometimes using florid descriptions or pantomiming blows he said she had aimed at him and suggesting he had been “broken” by the experience.
“That’s psychologically, emotionally where I was,” he testified on Monday while being questioned by one of his lawyers. “I was at the end.”
In court papers, Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp of repeatedly abusing her throughout their relationship, alleging that he slapped her, kicked her, head-butted her and tore clumps of hair out of her scalp. In 2018, she wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post, describing how her career had been negatively affected by becoming a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”
The piece did not name Mr. Depp, but he has argued that it clearly was alluding to him and harmed his career and reputation.
Mr. Depp previously sued The Sun newspaper in England for printing a headline that called him a “wife beater.” He lost that case in 2020.
Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard met when Ms. Heard was cast as Mr. Depp’s love interest in the 2011 film “The Rum Diary.” They were married in 2015 and divorced in 2017.
Testifying on Monday, Mr. Depp said he learned in a published interview with a Disney executive, dated two days after Ms. Heard’s opinion piece came out, that he would not be returning to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise for a potential sixth film. Mr. Depp testified that he said he had wanted the characters in the films — including his character, Captain Jack Sparrow — to have a “proper goodbye.”
Mr. Depp appeared to be referring to a 2018 Hollywood Reporter interview with Sean Bailey, a Disney executive, in which the reporter asked, “Can Pirates survive without Johnny Depp?” Mr. Bailey responded that he wanted to bring in “a new energy and vitality” to a possible “Pirates” reboot.
“Suddenly I was guilty until proven innocent,” Mr. Depp said.
During cross-examination of Mr. Depp on Monday, Ms. Heard’s lawyers argued that the actor’s reputation had been in decline well before the 2018 article, citing a 2017 Hollywood Reporter article calling him a “star in crisis” and another describing the “diminishing returns of Johnny Depp.”
Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber Heard
In the courtroom. A defamation trial involving the formerly married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is currently underway in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. Here is what to know about the case:
The case. Mr. Depp brought a defamation case against Ms. Heard in an effort to clear his name from domestic abuse allegations that she has made against him and that he denies. The jury is also considering a countersuit from Ms. Heard, who claims that Mr. Depp defamed her when his former lawyer said her domestic abuse claims were a “hoax.”
Ms. Heard’s op-ed. Mr. Depp’s suit was filed in response to an op-ed Ms. Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Though she did not mention her former husband’s name, he and his lawyers have argued that she was clearly referring to their relationship.
The end of their marriage. Ms. Heard filed for divorce in 2017, just over a year after the pair had married. She also obtained a temporary restraining order against the actor after accusing him of hitting her. She later withdrew that claim, and in January 2017, the couple agreed to a $7 million divorce settlement.
An earlier defamation case. The trial follows another case Mr. Depp brought in London in 2020 against The Sun newspaper, which called him a “wife beater” in a headline. In that trial, a judge found that there was “overwhelming evidence” that he had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly during their marriage.
The domestic abuse claims. In the 2020 trial, Ms. Heard accused her former husband of assaulting her first in 2013, after they began dating, and detailed other instances in which he slapped her, head-butted her and threw her to the ground. Mr. Depp has since accused her of punching him, kicking him and throwing objects at him.
“It’s a stack of hit pieces generated by Ms. Heard’s publicity team,” Mr. Depp responded.
Mr. Depp has testified that he never hit Ms. Heard — nor any woman — and that she was the aggressor in the relationship, insulting him using demeaning language that escalated into physical violence. Ms. Heard has denied hitting Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister.
There can be little doubt that the atmosphere between the two was sometimes incendiary.
Mr. Depp was confronted during cross-examination with text messages to others in which he referred to Ms. Heard using vulgar insults; in response to a particularly graphic and violent text message about Ms. Heard, Mr. Depp said on Monday, “It’s irreverent and abstract humor.”
In his testimony, Mr. King said that he had worked at a residence belonging to Mr. Depp in London and also at the house in Australia, where Mr. Depp stayed while filming one of the “Pirates” films.
He testified that he had seen and heard many arguments between Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard. Those tended to follow a pattern, Mr. King added, in which Mr. Depp would leave a room and Ms. Heard would follow. Mr. King said one dispute in London began when Ms. Heard asked Mr. Depp why he had taken his hand away from her, adding that he thought she had sounded like a “spoiled teenage child.”
Mr. King testified that he was called to the house after Mr. Depp’s finger had been severed, and he recalled Ms. Heard was sobbing as he entered. The premises were in disarray, he said. A chunk had been broken out of a marble staircase. Blood had stained the carpet and streaked several walls.
In a lower level of the home, Mr. King said, there was a smell of alcohol and cans strewn near a bar. He began looking in that area and said he soon found the fingertip, “nested” in a blood-streaked piece of paper. Mr. King then placed it into a plastic bag so that it could be rushed to a hospital, he added.
Mr. Depp’s finger was later surgically repaired.
