Johnny Depp’s $50m defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard

[MsDark]

There are no winners in this stupid case. I'll be happy if I never hear either of their names again.

[no1novice]

Grey also told Barrymore that she was engaged to Depp and Matthew Broderick at different times during the same month in 1988. After she and Broderick broke it off, Grey met Depp through her agent and they got engaged two weeks 🚩 after they started dating.


“It was really a sign that there was trouble afoot on my part,” Grey told Barrymore about being engaged to two men in the same month. “I just thought it was God rescuing me from one bad situation and just lovingly plopping me into a Johnny Depp souffle.”

Grey included an entry from a journal she kept shortly after meeting Depp in new memoir, “Out of the Corner.”

“On August 12, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m in love,🚩 pretty sure for the first time in my life … He’s kind, funny, smart, moral, thoughtful, respectful,'” she wrote.

The couple had a dog named Lulu. “She was our practice baby 🚩 and someone to keep me company when Johnny was out of town,” she wrote.

But according to Grey, the relationship was short-lived in part because of Depp’s behavior.

“He’d started missing his flights 🚩 home to LA having overslept or, when he did come home, he’d be crazy jealous 🚩 and paranoid 🚩 about what I’d been up to while he was gone,” she wrote.

In the book, she said she ended the engagement with a note she left in Depp’s hotel room one day after he left for a meeting one morning and failed to come back 🚩 or try to contact her.

[chaz]

"...crazy jealous and paranoid..." yep that's abusive.

[constancespry]

May 15, 2022 16:46:12 GMT no1novice said:

Grey also told Barrymore that she was engaged to Depp and Matthew Broderick at different times during the same month in 1988. After she and Broderick broke it off, Grey met Depp through her agent and they got engaged two weeks 🚩 after they started dating.


“It was really a sign that there was trouble afoot on my part,” Grey told Barrymore about being engaged to two men in the same month. “I just thought it was God rescuing me from one bad situation and just lovingly plopping me into a Johnny Depp souffle.”

Grey included an entry from a journal she kept shortly after meeting Depp in new memoir, “Out of the Corner.”

“On August 12, I wrote in my journal, ‘I’m in love,🚩 pretty sure for the first time in my life … He’s kind, funny, smart, moral, thoughtful, respectful,'” she wrote.

The couple had a dog named Lulu. “She was our practice baby 🚩 and someone to keep me company when Johnny was out of town,” she wrote.

But according to Grey, the relationship was short-lived in part because of Depp’s behavior.

“He’d started missing his flights 🚩 home to LA having overslept or, when he did come home, he’d be crazy jealous 🚩 and paranoid 🚩 about what I’d been up to while he was gone,” she wrote.

In the book, she said she ended the engagement with a note she left in Depp’s hotel room one day after he left for a meeting one morning and failed to come back 🚩 or try to contact her.

I want to know what happened to Lulu!

[trixie]

OPINION

MICHELLE GOLDBERG



Amber Heard and the Death of #MeToo

May 18, 2022, 4:02 p.m. ET


There are ambiguities in the sordid conflict between the divorced actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but some things are clear.



Depp texted a friend that he wanted to kill Heard and then have sex with “her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.” There is a video of Depp smashing kitchen cabinets while Heard tries to calm him, saying, at one point, “All I did was say ‘sorry’!” In an audio recording, she tells him to go put his “cigarettes out on someone else,” and he responded, “Shut up, fat ass.”



He admitted to head-butting her, though he said it was an accident. When Heard went to court to get a domestic violence restraining order against Depp, she had a bruise on her cheekbone from where she said he threw a phone at her.



In 2018, The Sun, a British newspaper, called Depp a “wife beater,” and he sued for libel. Proving libel is much easier in Britain than in the United States, because there the burden of proof rests with the defendant. Depp lost his case. A judge, evaluating 14 incidents of Depp’s alleged abuse of Heard, found that 12 of them had occurred and concluded that The Sun’s words were “substantially true.”


Now Depp is suing Heard in Virginia for $50 million, saying that she defamed him when she described herself, in a Washington Post opinion essay that didn’t mention Depp, as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” His case seems absurd, since even if he were entirely innocent, the British verdict was well known, and Heard was referring to what she symbolized, not what she allegedly endured. (She is countersuing for $100 million.)



If Depp somehow prevails, one can expect similar lawsuits against other women who say they’ve survived abuse. Already, the singer Marilyn Manson has filed a defamation suit against his ex-fiancée Evan Rachel Wood, one of several women who have accused him of sexual violence.


But Depp needn’t succeed in court to achieve his ends. In a 2016 email to his former agent, Christian Carino, Depp wrote that Heard was “begging for total global humiliation.” Now this televised trial has resulted in an explosion of hatred and derision directed at her. The volatile actress — who at times was violent toward Depp, and who never made good on a promise to donate her entire divorce settlement to charity — is very far from a perfect victim. That made her the perfect object of a #MeToo backlash.



Online, there’s a level of industrial-scale bullying directed at Heard that puts all previous social media pile-ons to shame. Countless videos skewer Heard on TikTok; the ’NSync member Lance Bass joined in the trend of mockingly re-enacting her testimony. A makeup brand even took part in the anti-Heard melee, posting a TikTok video meant to contradict her lawyer’s description of how she covered up bruises. Meanwhile, every platform appears to be full of adoring pro-Depp memes. “Why Does It Seem Like the Entire Internet Is Team Johnny Depp?” said a Vice headline.



But it’s not just the internet. “Believe all women, except Amber Heard,” Chris Rock joked recently. A “Saturday Night Live” sketch last weekend turned one of Depp’s wildest accusations against Heard into a skit, treating her as a figure of ridicule and him as a charming scamp.


This doesn’t mean that the case is entirely straightforward. Heard has admitted hitting Depp, and has been recorded insulting and belittling him. The couple’s marital counselor testified that they engaged in “mutual abuse,” saying of Heard, “It was a point of pride to her, if she felt disrespected, to initiate a fight.”



Some domestic violence experts consider mutual abuse a myth, arguing that while both partners in a toxic relationship can behave terribly, one usually exercises power over the other. But even if you believe that Heard acted inexcusably, the idea that she was the primary aggressor — against a larger man with far more resources who was recorded cursing at her for daring to speak in an “authoritative” way — defies logic.



Indeed, one of the most salacious details from the trial — the one that’s been used to jeer at Heard across every form of media — might just as easily fit into a story of her victimization. Depp, you may know by now, accused Heard or one of her friends of defecating in her bed as an act of revenge, and his bodyguard said she’d confessed to a prank gone wrong. Heard testified that one of their dogs, incontinent since eating Depp’s weed as a puppy, defiled the bed. “It was not really a jovial time, and I don’t think that’s funny, period,” she said. “That’s disgusting.”



If she’s telling the truth, one has to marvel at how thoroughly Depp and his team have sullied her name. When Depp testified, the hashtags #AmberTurd and #MePoo shot across the internet. The image of Heard, a woman whose brand is bombshell blond glamour, is now linked, perhaps permanently, to excrement. If she’s not a psychopath, she’s the casualty of a truly sadistic reputational hit job.



It’s worth noting that in 2020, Bot Sentinel, a group that tracks online disinformation and harassment, was hired by Heard’s lawyers to analyze the social media campaign against her. “Everyone thinks that any activity against them is bots or whatever,” the group’s founder, Chris Bouzy, told me. But in this case, some of it was — Bouzy estimated that there were 340 “inauthentic” Twitter accounts devoted to defaming Heard and amplifying petitions calling for her to be fired from acting and modeling gigs. “A small number of accounts can drive conversations on Twitter,” he said.



Yet even if trolls and bots helped juice anti-Heard mania, there are obviously plenty of real people participating in it. Some of them are obsessive Depp fans; as Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in The Atlantic, there’s a history of online communities fixating “on theories that the male objects of their fandom were being manipulated and tortured by less-famous, female romantic partners.”



There seems, however, to be a broader misogynist frenzy at work, one characteristic of the deeply reactionary moment we’re living through. “She will hit the wall hard!!!” Depp wrote in the email to Carino. Looks like he knew his audience.
www.nytimes.com/2022/05/18/opinion/amber-heard-metoo.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

[trixie]

Of course, team Johnny still knocking her on twitter, and her witnesses "they were all grifters living free thanks to Depp" well that's probably partially true but one would think they'd want to keep these two together to keep the gravy train going. Instead, three of the witnesses are no longer friends with Amber--Rocky, her former BFF, Rocky's ex, and the makeup artist who said she could no longer deal with the drama. Yet they all still testified for Amber, not Johnny who was paying the bills.

The online reaction to this trial continues to sicken me.

[chaz]

I really hate depp at this point

[Sarzy]

One of Amber Heard’s former co-stars is standing with her.

In a series of posts on his Instagram Story, actor David Krumholtz spoke out about the ongoing trial involving Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp, whom she has accused of physical and sexual abuse.

“Controversial opinion…” Krumholtz began. “Amber Heard is a victim of abuse by Johnny Depp. Don’t ya just love his work? Isn’t he handsome? Heard he’s a sweetheart! Captain Jack Sparrow!!!”

He continued, “Drugs and alcohol turn men into monsters. I believe Amber Heard.”

Krumholtz added of Heard, “She is not innocent. But she IS a victim. Johnny Depp’s smugness during the trial is sickening.”

The actor also hit back at Depp’s claims that he lost work due to a 2018 op-ed in which Heard insinuated he abused her.

“The reason Johnny Depp lost career opportunities is because he was a total mess,” Krumholtz alleged. “Disney etc… doesn’t care what Amber accused him of. He ruined his public image by being a severe drug abuser and drunk.”

Finally, the actor vouched for Heard’s character and called out Depp for not dealing with his own personal issues.

“I worked with Amber Heard. She is not psychotic. She is brilliant and strong and got caught up in bulls**t. She made a mistake,” Krumholtz said. “Why is Johnny suing her? Because he has not owned up to his raging addiction issues.”

Krumholtz, who is known for roles in movies like “The Santa Clause” and “This Is the End”, starred with Heard in the cancelled 2007 TV series “The Playboy Club”.

etcanada.com/news/897809/david-krumholtz-shares-support-for-amber-heard-she-is-a-victim/

[waterslide]

People who have never heard of David Krumholtz in their entire lives are now convening on Twitter to poke their noses into the furthest reaches of his existence so they can cancel him. He's a brave man.

[no1novice]

Eva Green: ‘Wonderful’ Johnny Depp will ‘emerge’ victorious in Amber Heard trial.

Eva Green is the latest star to publicly show her support for Johnny Depp amid his ongoing defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard.

The French actress, who starred with Depp in the 2012 fantasy “Dark Shadows,” posted a photo on Instagram Thursday of her and her former co-star posing together on a red carpet to promote their movie.

“I have no doubt Johnny will emerge with his good name and wonderful heart revealed to the world, and life will be better than it ever was for him and his family 🕊,” she captioned it.

The post received nearly 200,000 likes as of Thursday afternoon.


Fans who also support Depp commented, “He’ll get the justice he deserves and we know that!!!!” and “Thank you for your support to Johnny ❤️.”

Green and Depp’s film, “Dark Shadows,” premiered in 2012 – the same year he began dating Heard, 36.

A decade later, the “Edward Scissorhands” star, 58, is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, in which she called herself a victim of sexual violence and abuse.

Aside from Green, a handful of other stars have spoken out in support of Depp, including Chris Rock, Joe Rogan and Ireland Baldwin.

Heard has received some support as well, from radio legend Howard Stern, Julia Fox and Depp’s ex-girlfriend, Ellen Barkin, who actually testified for the defense in court.

Depp is seeking $50 million and Heard has countersued for $100 million.

[no1novice]

Ellen Barkin says Depp threw wine bottle at her
Actress Ellen Barkin recalled Johnny Depp throwing a wine bottle at her during a fight in the 1990s.

In recorded testimony from 2019, Barkin described an incident in Depp's hotel room while the pair were filming "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."


Ellen Barkin
REUTERS

"He was mad at his friends or his assistant in the room," she said.

Barkin, who could not remember if the bottle was full or empty, stated that the bottle did not hit her.

The pair's sexual relationship ended shortly thereafter.

By Olivia Land

Ellen Barkin: Depp was 'always drunk' during our fling
By tlapinnyp
Actress Ellen Barkin testified that Johnny Depp was "drunk all the time" during their brief "sexual" relationship in the 1990s.

Barkin, in a recorded deposition played in court, confirmed that the couple were romantically linked in 1994 when she relocated to Los Angeles.

"We had a romantic relationship," she said. "Actually, can we change that to 'sexual'?"


Johnny Depp and Ellen Barkin
WireImage


Johnny Depp and Ellen Barkin
Ron Galella Collection via Getty
When asked about Depp's demeanor during their relationship, Barkin stated that the actor was "drunk all the time."

"He was always drinking, smoking a joint," she said in the 2019 deposition.

Barkin testified that Depp partook in illegal substances, including cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogens.

By Olivia Land

[trixie]

May 19, 2022 20:11:32 GMT waterslide said:

People who have never heard of David Krumholtz in their entire lives are now convening on Twitter to poke their noses into the furthest reaches of his existence so they can cancel him. He's a brave man.

Yeah, so that makes two people speaking out for Amber--this guy and Howard Stern. Pathetic.

I don't get the people saying "well no one actually saw him hit her!" as if abusers do this in front of witnesses. NO.

I should probably stop watching (but I won't) because this case is kinda making me nuts.

Depp destroyed his own fucking career, dammit.

[waterslide]

That's OK because I did search David Krumholtz's name on Twitter and it's as horrible as I imagined. I have only watched clips of the trial, but my problem is I have to stop looking at what they're saying about it on the bird app.

This one is really a winner.  

I don't know how to copy/paste or embed twitter stuff, but you can just imagine.   That was easier than I thought it would be.

[chaz]

Social media that allows total idiocy needs to be canceled.

[trixie]

Ha, I'm a total nobody on twitter and I'm not saying a word. I don't want the Depp beehive after me. It's frickin' insane.