Christina Ricci has opened up about a childhood memory, which involved Johnny Depp explaining to her “what homosexuality was”.
The Yellowjackets actor was nine when she co-starred alongside Depp’s then-girlfriend Winona Ryder in 1990 romance drama Mermaids.
“There was something going on on set and someone was not being nice to someone else. And they were like, ‘Oh, well, he might be homophobic,’” Ricci explained to Andy Cohen during a recent appearance on his SiriusXM radio show.
“And then I was like, ‘Well, I don’t understand what that is,’” she continued. “And I was in Winona’s trailer and she was like, ‘I don’t know how [to explain].’
“So she put me on the phone with Johnny, and Johnny explained it to me,” she remembered.
Ricci described Depp’s explanation as being given “very matter-of-factly”.
“He was like, ‘It’s when a man wants to have sex with a man and when a woman wants to have sex with a woman.’ And I was like, ‘Ah, okay,’” she said.
The Emmy-nominated actor went on to star alongside Depp in multiple films, including 1998 comedy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1999 horror Sleepy Hollow, and 2000 romance The Man Who Cried.
Depp was recently involved in a high-profile court case with his ex-wife Amber Heard. He claimed she had defamed him in an op-ed published in The Washington Post, in which she described herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Heard filed a counter-suit in November 2020, asking to be granted immunity against Depp’s claims.
On 1 June, a jury overwhelmingly found in Depp’s favour that his ex-wife Amber Heard had defamed him in three statements. Jurors also found that an attorney for Depp defamed Heard in one of three statements highlighted in her counter-suit. Depp was awarded $10.35m in damages, while Heard was awarded $2m.
As part of the release of pretrial documents relating to the case, Depp’s former girlfriend Ellen Barkin testified that Depp gave her a drug before they had sex for the first time.
