Amber Heard Doesn’t Blame the Jury for Johnny Depp Verdict

[ad_1]

Amber Heard sits down for her first interview since her defamation trial wrapped. Photo: NBC News/TODAY

In the week since a Virginia jury awarded Johnny Depp a $10 million victory in his defamation suit against Amber Heard, he has capitalized on the public goodwill. The actor took a bow on TikTok, thanking his fans for doing the right thing together, while his attorneys defended the proceedings on the Today show. Heard has kept a lower profile. For her, the trial brought six weeks of public ridicule and shaming, even before the jury decided she had not been truthful about her allegations of Depps physical, emotional, and verbal abuse, and that she had defamed him in an op-ed that didnt name him or even discuss any of that. Now, she is speaking publicly about the ordeal for the first time, in an interview with NBCs Savannah Guthrie.

The full interview will air Friday on Dateline, but, seizing on the widespread thirst for content surrounding the trial, NBC will be releasing teasers throughout the week. In a clip aired on Monday, Guthrie (whose husband, you may remember from last weeks sit-down with Depps lawyers, has also done consulting for Depps legal team) asked Heard if she blamed the jury for the decision. Heard said no: I don’t blame them; I actually understand. He is a beloved character, and people feel they know him. Hes a fantastic actor.

Guthrie reminded Heard that jurors are supposed to set aside their personal beliefs and only consider the evidence. They were given instructions at the end of each day not to talk about the case and to ignore media coverage. But at the same time, the jury in Depp v. Heard composed of five men and two women was not sequestered. The wall-to-wall memes, almost all of which demeaned and discredited Heard, were impossible for anyone with a smartphone to escape. Speaking to Guthrie the day after the verdict came in, Heards attorney Elaine Bredehoft said she believed that a lopsided narrative online absolutely influenced the outcome. Jurors went home every night, she observed. They have families. The families are on social media. We had a ten-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference.

Whether or not the jury adhered to the judges after-hours instructions, Heard told Guthrie she felt it was almost inevitable that they decided in Depps favor. How could they not, she asked, after listening to three and a half weeks of testimony about how I was a non-credible person, and not to believe a word that came out of my mouth? Depp, Heard noted, put his paid employees on the stand. He called in a parade of people seemingly unrelated to the case, including the owner of a trailer park where the couple once stayed and a former TMZ employee. In the end, all the tangents felt like a deliberate distraction from the central issue of the trial. Bredehoft has said that an enormous amount of evidence involved in a nearly identical lawsuit in the UK, which Depp lost, was suppressed in the US Heard plans to appeal.

I dont care what one thinks about me, she told Guthrie, or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors. I dont presume the average person should know those things, so I dont take it personally. But even someone who is sure I am deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that Im lying, you still couldnt look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media theres been a fair representation. You cannot tell me that you think this has been fair.

A second and longer preview, released Tuesday, saw a seemingly disbelieving Guthrie question Heard about the truthfulness of her testimony. To my dying day, I stand by every word of my testimony, Heard said. Guthrie asked if Heard understood why some people were frankly disgusted by the whole thing, and didnt have much sympathy for either party? Absolutely, she replied. I would not blame the average person for looking at this and how its been covered and not think that it is Hollywood brats at their worst. But what people dont understand is its actually so much bigger than that. This is not only about our First Amendment rights to speak. Guthrie countered that free speech doesnt protect lies that amount to defamation, and Heard agreed. Its a freedom to speak truth to power, she said, and thats all I spoke. I spoke it to power and I paid the price.

Guthrie read from transcripts of audio recordings played in court, suggesting that Heard had in fact instigated physical violence and saying the evidence was there in black and white. What you would hear in those clips are not evidence of what was happening. It was evidence of a negotiation of how to talk about that with your abuser, Heard explained, describing her admissions to hitting Depp and to calling him horrible names as a response to living in violence. As for tapes in which she appeared to taunt Depp, Heard acknowledged as she did in court that she felt remorse for her ugly behavior. We were awful to each other, you know? I made a lot of mistakes, she said. A lot of mistakes. But as I tested on the stand, she said, when your life is at risk, not only will you take the blame for things that you shouldn’t take the blame for, but when youre in an abusive dynamic psychologically, emotionally, and physically, you dont have the resources that, say, you or I do with the luxury of saying, Hey, this is black and white. Because its anything but when youre living in it. Asked if Depp had lied when he said he never hit Heard, she said yes.

In response to Depps attorneys allegation (and one repeated widely online) that Heard had given the performance of her lifetime on the stand, Heard replied: Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers? Im the performer? I had listened to weeks of testimony insinuating or saying quite directly that Im a terrible actress, so Im a bit confused how I could be both. Heard called the trial the most humiliating and horrible thing she had ever been through. Ive never felt more removed from my own humanity, she said. I felt less than human.

This article has been updated.

Psst! The Cut andNew YorkMagazine are conducting a survey about dating. We want to know all about your swipes, IRL hookups, bad dates, and everything in between. Interested? Clickhere.

Stay in touch.

Get the Cut newsletter delivered daily

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

[ad_2]