Amber Heard has described the moment she met Elon Musk at the 2016 Met Gala after her then-husband Johnny Depp “stood me up” on the red carpet.
Ms Heard took the stand in the multi-million-dollar defamation trial in Fairfax, Virginia, on Monday where she said she got chatting to the Tesla founder at the red carpet event in New York City on 2 May 2016.
The Aquaman actor told the court that she and Mr Depp had been planning to go to the Met Gala together as guests of Ralph Lauren.
However the event came not long after her 30th birthday where she said she was “attacked” by her husband.
She claimed that she didn’t have a phone at the time because Mr Depp had thrown it out of the window and so she was unable to find out if he would still be joining her at the event.
“I wasn’t sure what was going on or when he would show up or if he would show up,” she said.
“I had no way of knowing,” she added.
Ms Heard told the court that she walked the red carpet by herself and “sat next to an empty place setting for Johnny” after he “effectively stood me up on the carpet”.
It was while she was walking the red carpet alone that she said she met Mr Musk, who she described as “a gentleman” and said was at the event with his mother.
“I was standing in line right in front of a gentleman. It was Elon,” she said.
“I didn’t recognise him at first. We started talking and he had reminded me that we had met once before.”
Ms Heard said that they developed a friendship after that meeting.
“He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice,” she said.
“He sat at a nearby table and we got to speaking that night and then eventually became friends.”
Ms Heard was then asked about testimony from her former nurse Erin Falati, saying that the address had “reported using illict drugs, mushrooms and MDMA on 5/9/2016 at home with a high-profile male acquaintance”.
Ms Falati said that Ms Heard said her husband was “not aware of her male visitor or her illict drug use”.
Ms Heard refuted Ms Falati’s statements, saying she didn’t believe she even in LA at that time.
Ms Heard and Mr Musk are believed to have dated on and off between 2016 and 2018 and the SpaceX boss was named on her witness list for the trial.
During opening statements, Ms Heard’s lawyers said that Mr Depp had been “obsessed” with Mr Musk.
The former spouses’ agent Christian Carino previously testified at the trial that Ms Heard was dating Mr Musk at around the same time as she was trying to reconcile with her husband.
Ms Heard took the stand on Monday for a third day of testimony as the trial resumed after a one-week break.
Mr Depp is suing his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed she penned for The Washington Post where she described herself as a “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
The Pirates of the Caribbean actor is not named in the article, which is titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
However Mr Depp claims that it falsely implies that he is a domestic abuser – something that he strongly denies – and that it has left him struggling to land roles in Hollywood. He is suing for $50m.
Ms Heard is countersuing for $100m, accusing Mr Depp of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment”.
The trial began on 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia, with explosive testimony playing out inside the courtroom.
