Both Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard arrived at London’s High Court of Justice on Tuesday morning with their faces covered. This day has been a long time coming—not just because the ins and outs of the case have been made very public over the past few years, but also because the pandemic briefly threatened the case’s ability to go to trial at all. Depp’s lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun is one of the first cases that the court will hear in person since the coronavirus lockdown. It’s slated to continue over three weeks and across several different courtrooms to accommodate social distancing regulations.
Depp is suing the newspaper’s publisher, News Group Newspapers, for libel; Heard is not on trial but she will testify in support of The Sun. The tabloid referred to him as a “wife beater” in a 2018 article with the headline, “Potty – How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?” The gist of The Sun’s defense is that it can’t be libel if the label fits.
Depp and Heard, who married in 2015 and finalized their divorce in January 2017, have both accused each other of abuse, and vehemently denied each others’ claims. Tuesday’s testimonies in London dredged up a lot of these accusations, which have circulated in publications like the Daily Mail and The Mirror in the past few years. Depp’s lawyer David Sherborne told the court on Tuesday that Depp is simply trying to clear his name. “This is not a case about money,” Sherborne said. “It is about vindication.”
A spokesperson for Heard told Vanity Fair, “Amber never asked for these proceedings to take place. Amber obtained a domestic violence restraining order against Depp back in 2016 and has tried to move on with her life. It is Johnny Depp who brought these proceedings against a British newspaper and has dragged her to the U.K. courts to give evidence on some of the most distressing moments of her life.”
Depp’s written statement to the court lays out his version of their turbulent relationship. He described her as “a calculating, diagnosed borderline personality; she is sociopathic; she is a narcissist; and she is completely emotionally dishonest.” And he describes himself as a de-escalator who bore the brunt of Heard’s attacks. He alleges several incidents of violence, including at least one on a plane. “Rage-filled violent incidents on planes were common with Amber,” he wrote, after claiming he had to spend a private flight in the bathroom to get away from her hitting him.
Heard, meanwhile, has alleged 14 incidents of alleged abuse from Depp. They remember one 2015 incident very differently. According to Heard, Depp went into a drug-and-alcohol-fueled jealous rage about Heard’s London Fields costar Billy Bob Thornton, cut off the tip of his own finger accidentally, and then wrote “Easy Amber” on the wall in his blood. Depp maintained in court that Heard is responsible for the missing tip, after she threw a vodka bottle at him.
In an attempt to argue that Heard was the aggressor, during Tuesday’s hearing, Sherborne read aloud a tape from another 2015 incident in which she calls him “a fucking baby” and says, “You got hit…but I did not punch you. I did not fucking deck you. I fucking was hitting you.” (Heard said that she recorded fights because Depp would not remember what he did or deny it, and Depp, too, confirmed he taped interactions.)