On Wednesday, actor Johnny Depp returned to the witness stand in a Virginia courtroom, a day after he first testified against his ex-wife Amber Heard, whom he is suing for defamation after she accused him of domestic abuse for $50 million.
Depp described to the jury how he and Heard would get into protracted verbal arguments, saying she frequently condemned him as a horrible father and used a “rapid-fire, sort of endless barrage of accusations” against him when questioned by his lawyer.
Depp admitted, “I was suddenly absolutely incorrect – about everything.” Later, he said, “Ms. Heard couldn’t possibly be mistaken. It just didn’t work out.”
After they disagreed over what was stated, both of them began filming their disputes, he said. He accused Heard of “performing for the tape” in the recordings and of attempting to secretly record him, claiming that “something slightly foul” was going on in Denmark.
Depp denies abusing Heard yet again, and talks about narcotics.
Depp said he never physically harmed Tried, which is a significant aspect in the case, which is being heard in a Fairfax County courthouse.
He stated, “Violence was unneeded.” “Why would you smack someone in the face in order to persuade them to agree with you? It doesn’t seem to work for me.”
“Never did I myself reach the point of striking Ms. Heard in any way,” Depp said on Tuesday, “nor have I ever struck any woman in my life,” he said again on Wednesday.
Depp testified on both days about his early relationship with Heard, his drug usage, and his childhood. Depp also claimed on Wednesday that Heard drank heavily and used drugs including ecstasy (MDMA) and mushrooms.
Depp talked about his attempts to enter treatment and get clean of alcohol and drugs. He claimed, however, that when he urged Heard to stop drinking, she said no.
According to Depp, a fight over a post-nuptial agreement resulted in a bloody injury.
The couple didn’t have a prenuptial agreement in place when they married in early 2015, according to Depp.
He went on to say that his attempt to arrange a post-nuptial agreement with Heard irritated her, resulting in a series of fights in Australia, where Depp was filming the latest Pirates of the Caribbean picture. According to Depp, Heard arrived in Australia in March 2015.
“What struck me the most was the fact that she kept saying, ‘I’m not even in your will,'” he explained. “That struck me as an unusual thing to say.”
Depp claimed he locked himself in a restroom to avoid Heard, a story he reiterated throughout his testimony.
Depp then walked to the bar in the hotel where he was staying and poured himself a shot of vodka. Heard claimed that when she found him, she tossed the bottle at him. “It literally flew right passed my skull and crashed into the back of my head,” Depp explained.
He took out a second, larger bottle of vodka and poured himself another drink. He sat down again, and Heard grabbed the bottle and hurled it at him, hitting his hand, he said.
Depp said it took him a moment to realise his finger was badly wounded when positioning himself in court to mimic a scene in which his hand was sitting on the edge of the bar.
“The tip of my finger had been amputated, and I was looking directly at my bones sticking out,” Depp claimed after the bottle “made contact” and broke.
He claimed that blood began to come out. “Nothing made sense,” Depp remarked, describing the experience as the “closest he’d ever gotten to having a mental breakdown.”
“I began writing on the walls with my blood – my own blood. He believed the “little reminders from our past” indicated “falsehoods that I had caught her in.””
In 2015, Depp’s hand injury made headlines when it created a significant delay in filming the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film due to a “off-set incident,” according to the filmmakers.
Depp claimed that he lied to doctors in a local emergency room “because I didn’t want to report” what had occurred.
The lawsuit was initiated by Heard’s essay about domestic abuse.
Heard submitted an op-ed in The Washington Post in December 2018 expressing her support for the Violence Against Women Act. She drew on her own experiences as a sexual assault and domestic violence survivor to write it.
“The op-ed plainly was about Ms. Heard’s purported victimisation after she publicly accused her former husband, Johnny Depp, of domestic abuse in 2016, when she appeared in court with an apparently battered face and obtained a temporary restraining order against Mr. Depp,” his 2019 court complaint states.
Depp is suing Heard for defamation on three counts, citing her op-ed, which was published on the Washington Post website and in print, as well as Heard’s tweeting a link to the piece on Twitter.
Depp is seeking at least $50 million in compensatory damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs, as well as a punitive award of at least $350,000.
