Amber Heard has revealed she still “loves” ex-husband Johnny Depp even in the aftermath of their bitter defamation trial as viewers were shown old footage of the former couple’s engagement reveal in her first interview since the jury’s verdict.
“Absolutely. I love him. I loved him with all my heart,” she told Savannah Guthrie in a clip of the interview airing on the NBC Today show on Wednesday morning.
“I have no bad feelings or ill will toward him at all.”
Ms Guthrie then played a 2014 clip Mr Depp confirming the couple’s engagement in an interview with the host on the Today show, revealing the smiling Pirates of the Caribbean actor showing off a diamond engagement ring.
When asked by the host if he was excited, Mr Depp replied: “Yes, she’s a wonderful girl.”
“She’s sharp as a tag, you know, wonderful, a southern belle, sweet as can be and very good for me.”
When the clip ended, Ms Guthrie – whose husband works as a consultant for Mr Depp’s legal team – questioned Ms Heard over a statement released on day one of their six-week trial in April where she said she still loved him.
“On the first day of the trial, you issued a statement. And part of the statement said, ‘I still have love for Johnny’. Is that still true? After everything?” she asked.
Two months on, Ms Heard doubled down on those feelings, saying she “tried her best” at their “deeply broken” marriage and has no “bad feelings” towards her ex-husband.
“I tried the best I could to make a deeply broken relationship work. And I couldn’t. I have no bad feelings or ill will towards him at all,” said the Aquaman actress.
“I know that might be hard to understand, or it might be really easy to understand.
“If you’ve just ever loved anyone, it should be easy.”
Ms Heard’s sitdown with Ms Guthrie marks the first time the actor has given an interview since she lost the defamation case with her ex-husband and was ordered to pay him $8.35m in damages.
Mr Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post where she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse and spoke of feeling “the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”.
Following an explosive six-week trial, a jury of seven determined that Ms Heard had defamed him on all three counts.
Jurors awarded Mr Depp $10m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages, before Fairfax County Circuit Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the latter to the state’s legal limit of $350,000.
Ms Heard won one of her three counterclaims against her ex-husband, with the jury finding that Mr Depp – via his lawyer Adam Waldman – defamed her by branding her abuse allegations “fake” and a “sexual violence hoax”.
She was awarded $2m in compensatory damages but $0 in punitive damages, leaving the Aquaman actor $8.35m out of pocket.
Ms Heard described the verdict as “a setback” for women who speak up with allegations of abuse.
Her attorney has said she plans to appeal and claimed that Ms Heard does not have the funds to pay the damages.
