Johnny Depp’s security guard says Amber Heard called faeces found in the couple’s bed a ‘prank gone wrong’, a court has heard.
The former couple’s multimillion-dollar libel trial in Virginia saw Mr. Depp describe how he saw a photo of the faces on his bed days after a fight with the actress.
Depp told a jury that in 2016, while Heard was away, he wanted to visit a Los Angeles penthouse where she was staying to pick up some personal items.
He said he was shown a photo of “our bed and there was human fecal matter on my side of the bed, so I understood why it wasn’t a good time to come down.”
Depp said his “initial response” was to “laugh”.
“It was so outside, it was so weird and so grotesque that I could only laugh,” he added.
On Thursday, Depp’s driver and security guard, Starling Jenkins, gave testimony at the high-profile trial via video.
In his testimony, Mr. Jenkins said that he found Ms. Heard “pleasant” and “friendly.”
He described how he had taken Ms Heard to Coachella after her fight with Mr Depp, during which he says she told him the human faces in bed were a “joke gone terribly wrong”.
“We had a conversation about the surprise he had left on the boss’s bed, before he left the apartment,” Jenkins said.
When asked what he meant, he replied: “Defecation.”
When asked what Ms. Heard had told him about it, he replied: “A horrible practical joke gone wrong.”
Mr. Jenkins also testified that at Coachella, Ms. Heard got sick from a combination of magic mushrooms and red wine on an empty stomach.
Ms. Heard’s attorney suggested during cross-examination that it was Ms. Heard’s pregnant sister, Whitney, who was ill at Coachella despite being sober.
When asked about the redirection, Jenkins insisted that he knew the difference between the sisters. “One is the boss’s wife, the other is the boss’s sister-in-law,” she said.
The defamation trial between Depp and Heard began on Monday, April 11, in Fairfax, Virginia, following Depp’s lawsuit against his ex-wife in March 2019. Depp argues that she defamed him in a December 2018 op-ed published on washington post titled “I spoke out against sexual violence — and faced the wrath of our culture. That has to change.”
While Mr. Depp is not mentioned in the article, his legal team argues that it contains a “clear implication that Mr. Depp is a domestic abuser”, which they say is “categorically and demonstrably false”.
Mr. Depp is seeking compensation of “not less than $50 million”. Ms. Heard has filed a $100 million counterclaim against Mr. Depp for nuisance and immunity from prosecution against her.