Amber Heard has alleged that Johnny Depp once subjected her to “disgusting” and violent questioning about a sex scene he had filmed with James Franco.
Ms. Heard returned to the witness stand for a second day on Thursday (May 5) as part of the libel case opposing her and Mr. Depp in Fairfax, Virginia.
She was asked about an incident that she claimed occurred on a private flight in 2014. At the time, Ms. Heard had been cast to star alongside Mr. Franco in the Adderall Diaries, a thriller that was finally released in 2016.
“He was mad at me for taking the job with James Franco,” Heard said. “He hated, he hated James Franco and he was already accusing me of secretly having a thing with him in my past as we had. [the 2008 movie Pineapple Express] together.”
The alleged incident occurred in May 2014 on a flight between Boston and Los Angeles.
She told the court that Depp sent a plane to pick her up and that she boarded first. She said that when Mr. Depp arrived, he had a feeling that he was not sober.
“I didn’t realize at the time that I had already become very sensitive to these little changes, because my life changed depending on what he was taking,” she said. “He got on the plane and I knew, every cell in my body, that something was wrong.”
Ms Heard said Mr Depp came “straight at me”. “He doesn’t say anything to me, but he looks at me. He has his glasses on and he takes them off in such an aggressive way,” she said.
According to Heard, Depp sat across from her, which was not his usual place on the plane.
“We go out and at some point he asks me what’s wrong, if I have something to say to him. ‘You want to talk to me about your day yesterday,’” she said.
“I know he’s drunk, I know he’s drugged. He reeks of weed and alcohol. His breath smells so bad. He could anticipate that there was a no-win situation here. I didn’t talk myself out of this or talk him out of it.”
Amber Heard at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on May 5, 2022
(JIM LO SCALZO / POOL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Heard said Depp started asking him questions.
“I was educated. I made sure to answer the minimum amount I could. I moved slowly. I was trying to be polite but not get involved, because there was no way to win,” she said.
“And he kept going, he kept asking me. Eventually, she went from ‘Do you have something to tell me?’ to ‘Do you want to tell me how much you liked it? Tell me, did your tongue slip? She got worse and worse.
“He went from asking me how my kissing scene went or how the sex scene went, to asking me what James Franco had done in the scene, to being really explicit about my body. He was talking about me… he was saying really disgusting things about my body, about how I liked it, how he responded. And then he started making fun of me directly. I know you liked him. He called me a hustler. He called me a whore.”
Heard said the scene took place in front of some of Depp’s staff.
“I remember feeling, struggling to be able to tell you how embarrassed I was, that he was talking to me in front of people like this,” he said, alleging that Depp used “sexually explicit descriptions of what he accused.” I to want or deserve”.
At some point, Ms. Heard said she got up to go to the front of the plane.
“I remember getting up so slowly. I didn’t want to irritate him. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to pounce on him. I didn’t want to disturb him. I didn’t want him to flip a switch and get worse,” she said.
When he moved in, Heard said Depp started “throwing things at me: ice cubes, utensils. He is calling me ambitious and shameful, talking about how shameful I am.”
Ms. Heard said she remembers moving more than once, “and Johnny came to me every time. Not the other way.”
“He sits across from me at one point, and since I don’t answer him, he was looking out the window and he slaps me,” she said. “Her friend of hers is close to us. He didn’t hurt my face, I was just embarrassed that he did that to me in front of people. It was the first time something like this had happened in front of someone.”
Johnny Depp at the Fairfax County Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on May 5, 2022
(JIM LO SCALZO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Heard said Depp taunted her, yelled and insulted her.
“I get up, slowly again, and just decided to sit the rest of the time in the front of the plane. And when I get up, it kicks the swivel chair on my hip. I look at him and he asks me: ‘What? What are you going to do about it?’” she said.
Ms Heard said she stared at Mr Depp but “felt like there was a darkness in his eyes”.
“I wanted him to see me,” he said. “It didn’t even feel like him.”
Ms Heard said she walked away slowly, being “very deliberate” with her movements.
“I wasn’t saying anything, I wasn’t participating. I’m walking away from him slowly and he’s like, ‘Hurry up. Hurry up,’” he said. “And I just look at it one more time wanting to penetrate the monster to see the man I loved underneath it.”
Ms Heard said Mr Depp told her to hurry up again and she walked away, her back to him.
“I feel this boot on my back. He just kicked me. In the back,” she said.
“I fell on the floor, I got stuck on the floor and I felt like I was looking at the floor of the plane for a long time. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe, did he just kick me?’
“Nobody said anything. Nobody did anything. You could hear a pin drop on that plane. You could feel the tension. But nobody did anything. And I just remember feeling so embarrassed that he could kick me to the ground in front of people. And more embarrassing, he didn’t know what to do about it. I got up and walked to the front of the plane. I sat and looked out the window.”
Mr Depp sued Ms Heard for alleged defamation over an op-ed he wrote in 2018 for washington Post, in which she does not name him but describes herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp has asked for 50 million dollars in damages. Ms. Heard filed a counterclaim, seeking $100 million in damages and immunity from Mr. Depp’s claims.