Amber Heard said she “instantly” thought “of Kate Moss and stairs” when she recounted a fight with Johnny Depp involving her sister Whitney.
On the stand on Thursday in the defamation trial between the two actors, Ms Heard walked through one of many fights between herself and Mr Depp, with this one taking place in March 2015.
Ms Heard said she threw a can of Red Bull towards Mr Depp, which struck him in the back, adding that she called him a “f****** p****”. She said he became enraged and followed her up a staircase.
Ms Heard said he grabbed her, at which point her sister Whitney intervened.
“She threw herself in the line of fire,” Ms Heard said. “She was trying to get Johnny to stop. Her back was to the staircase, and Johnny swings at her ... I don’t hesitate and wait, I instantly think of Kate Moss and stairs.”
She said the thought led her to take action.
“I, for the first time, hit him, square in the face. And he didn’t push my sister down the stairs. Up to that point in our relationship, I hadn’t even landed one on Johnny,” she said.
“Johnny looked stunned and then laughed at me, and then lunges at me again,” she added, at which point security staff stepped in between them, according to Ms Heard.
In the summer of 2020, Ms Heard claimed that Mr Depp pushed model Kate Moss down a staircase while they dated in the 1990s.
During the 2020 UK libel trial between Mr Depp and The Sun newspaper, Ms Heard said, “He pushed Kate Moss down the stairs, I heard this from two people, and this was fresh in my mind”.
“I reacted in defence of my sister. I had for years been Johnny’s punch bag but for years I never hit him. It was the first time after all these years that I struck him back,” she added at the time.
The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia following Mr Depp’s lawsuit against his ex-wife in March 2019. Mr Depp is arguing that she defamed him in a December 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post titled “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.
In her 2018 op-ed, Ms Heard wrote that “like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim”.
“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she added at the time.
While Mr Depp isn’t named in the piece, 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 damages of “not less than $50m”.
Ms Heard has filed a $100m counterclaim against Mr Depp for nuisance and immunity from his allegations.
