Amber Heard insists that she spoke “truth to power” throughout the high-profile defamation trial against her ex-husband Johnny Depp in a recent exclusive interview on NBC’s Today Show .
“The First Amendment protects speech ... it doesn’t protect lies that amount to defamation,” NBC host Savannah Guthrie put to the actor in her first interview since Mr Depp won his $50m defamation case against her. The jury also awarded Ms Heard a partial win in her countersuit, which was decided earlier this month.
“Free speech does not protect you if you go into a crowded theatre and you scream ‘fire’,” Ms Heard explained in a clip of the interview, which is scheduled to air in full at 8pm ET on Friday 17 June.
“My understanding of what that means is not just the freedom to speak, it’s a freedom to speak truth to power,” she added.
Ms Guthrie responded to the Aquaman actor’s description of free speech, and pointed out that “truth” was the exact point “that was the issue” in the weeks-long defamation trial.
Ms Heard took up that point and emphasised that the truth was exactlywhat she was after, and because of that, she “paid the price”.
“And that’s all I spoke. I spoke it to power, and I paid the price,” she said.
The case between the Hollywood actors was spawned from an opinion piece Ms Heard wrote in 2018 forThe Washington Post, where she outlined, without naming her ex-husband, how she’d become “a public figure representing domestic abuse”.
Mr Depp’s attorneys argued throughout the trial that though their client was not explicitly named, Ms Heard’s allegations caused the Pirates of the Caribbean actor financial duress as the article allegedly made it difficult for him to land movie roles after its publication.
In a separate clip aired by the network, Ms Heard tells Ms Guthrie that despite losing to her ex-husband, she stands by those claims made in the original op-ed, which Mr Depp has continued to vehemently deny.
“To my dying day, (I) will stand by every word of my testimony,” Ms Heard said.
Both Ms Heard and her attorneys have said that she intends to appeal the Fairfax court verdict reached earlier this month.
Mr Depp’s attorneys, however, have come out in recent interviews to state that the legal team would forego the $8.35m in damages that Ms Heard owes if she drops her appeal.
“We have to be careful what we say, but this was about Mr Depp’s reputation, that’s what it was about for him,” Ben Chew, one of Mr Depp’s lawyers, told Good Morning Americahost George Stephanopoulos recently.
