In 2019, Johnny Depp sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation, after Heard wrote an article published in the Washington Post in which she referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. In 2020, the actor lost a separate libel case in the UK against the Sun, which had called him a “wife beater” in print. The US defamation hearing took place in 2022 in Virginia, and the jury ruled that Depp had been defamed by Heard. It also decided that in one matter, Depp had defamed Heard, but the verdict was widely viewed as a victory for Depp and a loss for his ex-wife.
It was a sorry, gruesome spectacle that played out on social media, in no small part thanks to the decision of the judge to allow cameras in the courtroom. Channel 4’s documentary Depp v Heard is on hand to rehash it, remix it and serve it up again, under a thin veneer of commentary about how odd it was that a court case, which centred on whether domestic violence had taken place or not, proved to be catnip to a salivating audience.
It is essentially a curated collage of courtroom footage, video and audio evidence, old press junket interviews with Depp and Heard, news reports and a torrent of YouTube and TikTok clips, alongside a running commentary from fans, amateur reporters, legal commentators and podcast hosts. Its selling point is that it sorts proceedings into chronological order and offers a timeline of the relationship. In court, Depp and Heard gave their testimonies two weeks apart. Here, a question is posed by one of their lawyers, and the response of each is played, as if to invite viewers to compare them, side by side.
For those not in court, or those who did not watch the 200 hours or so of livestreamed footage, key aspects of the case would have appeared mostly in short clips and memes. Assembling it into some sort of order and giving it three hours’ worth of airtime is an attempt to be the adult in the room, trying to wrestle an uncontrolled and uncontrollable internet narrative into some sort of shape. Clearly, reducing legal arguments to the pithiest snippets and soundbites does not provide a complete or fair picture of the judicial process, nor of the lawsuit at the centre of this particular case.
The question is whether Depp v Heard, the documentary, can do better than the many sources from which it pulls the bulk of its material. Channel 4 provided only the first two episodes for review; perhaps the third will offer more depth or analysis. So far, I have been unable to shake the sense that it tries to have its cake and eat it. It attempts to distance itself from the social media version of the hearing. There are moments highlighted that remain jaw-dropping to this day, such as the cosmetics brand getting involved (it denies “taking a formal stance”) with a TikTok video, as if the evidence being heard was mere marketing fodder. The idea that the jury was instructed not to read about or engage with the case outside the courtroom is also absurd, given the ubiquity of the reporting and the circus of commentary around it.
There is no narrator tying it all together, only the clips and the testimonies, plus the news footage and the podcasters. This suggests a neutrality that the programme cannot deliver. It is only another way of repurposing the trial, in order to tell another version of the story. It pits Depp and Heard against each other in the court of public opinion again. By putting their testimonies side by side, surely it is asking viewers of this documentary to decide who it is that they believe. I found this to be profoundly depressing when the trial was taking place, and find it profoundly depressing now. Seeing people miming along to harrowing testimony on TikTok, whether you believe it or not, is bleak, and I was inclined to agree with the YouTuber here who calls it dystopian.
I understand that the trial was a spectacle, and there was an enormous appetite for discussing and dissecting every single aspect of it. One TikToker called it “a PR campaign disguised as a defamation case”. If you were fascinated by proceedings, I am sure you will recognise plenty of what you saw in it, and perhaps you will learn something new from its collection of voices.
But the idea that a case like this is normal and acceptable as entertainment fodder was bleak then, and remains bleak today. Depp v Heard tries to distance itself from the machine, occasionally hinting that there is something wrong, but in the end, it becomes only another cog, whirring away.
Depp v Heard is on Channel 4.
