WARNING: This article contains allegations of physical and sexual violence that some readers may find distressing.
Amber Heard spent several days on the witness stand in the defamation trial brought against her by ex-husband Johnny Depp, telling jurors of the abuse she claims to have suffered at his hands.
She began on 4 May by providing background how they met and they fell in love, before sharing several allegations of physical abuse and sexual assault across three more days on the stand.
Mr Depp sued Ms Heard for alleged defamation over an op-ed she wrote in 2018 for The Washington Post, in which she doesn’t name him but describes herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. He has asked for $50m in damages.
Ms Heard, in turn, has filed a $100m counterclaim against Mr Depp, accusing him of allegedly orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his own lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment. She has asked for immunity from the actor’s allegations.
Here’s what we learned from Ms Heard’s testimony:
Wednesday 4 May
Heard describes ‘painful’ legal proceedings
Ms Heard began her testimony on 4 May by telling the court: “I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote.”
“How do you feel about that?” her attorney Elaine Bredehoft asked.
“I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is,” Ms Heard replied.
“This is horrible for me, to sit here for weeks and relive everything – hear people that I knew, some well, some not, my ex-husband with whom I shared a life, speak about our lives in the way that they have. This is the most painful and difficult thing I have ever gone through, for sure.”
Ms Bredehoft then asked Ms Heard to describe her experience testifying as a witness in the 2020 trial in which Mr Depp sued The Sun in the UK for libel.
“I had to write – I think I gave seven witness statements under oath,” Ms Heard replied. “I sat on the stand for four days, under mostly cross-examination. And up until this point, it was the hardest I’d ever had to do.”
A judge in the UK case ruled against Mr Depp in November 2020.
Heard alleges Depp made her feel ‘dirty’ about her acting career
Elsewhere in her testimony, Ms Heard described how she says Mr Depp wooed her and her family early in their relationship. She says Mr Depp lavished her with gifts and attention and got along with her parents, to the point that “I think my dad would have married him himself if I hadn’t”.
Mr Depp, she alleged, had a pattern of disappearing and returning “different”. She said she felt compelled to stop talking about auditions she attended as an actor “because it would change the mood so dramatically”.
“It felt really dirty to be an actor. Nevermind that he was one. It was dirty that I wanted to do this job that I wanted to do and I was doing the job of an actress,” she told the court.
Heard recounts alleged physical and verbal violence:
Ms Heard alleged Mr Depp would make comments about her wardrobe, and recounted what she described as “a blow-up”.
“At first, it was just he’d throw something, smash some things,” she said. “He loves to smash up a place, an apartment, furniture. That’s what it started with, a glass. He threw a glass at me. I remember, it was summer. And he just threw this glass across the kitchen. It didn’t hit me. It shattered behind me, and I remember thinking that it very easily could have hit me.”
Ms Heard alleged Mr Depp would use disparaging language with her, calling her a “whore”, adding: “It didn’t start with using the ‘whore’ word, it was just comments, until it would escalate”.
She recalled what she described as a “pattern of escalation, where he’d throw a glass or turn over a table, then he would hit the wall and he would hit the wall really close to my head.”
“You know, like, when I’m standing there, you know, just hit the wall, screaming at me,” she added.
“Then he would disappear and get clean and sober, and he’d come back and tell me that he was done drinking, he was over it, it was done, he’d cleaned himself up, he had done it before and he would do it again. And then he would go back to this wonderful, almost unreal – real, but unbelievably nice, sensitive, kind, warm, generous, interesting, funny man that I loved.
“And he would make me feel so loved. I would feel so distant from that thing that was so scary that I would not even recognise it. That was how our relationship kind of started developing that first year.”
Asked to recount the first time Mr Depp allegedly hit her, Ms Heard said: “It’s seemingly so stupid, so insignificant. I will never forget it. It changed my life.”
She alleged she and Mr Depp were “sitting on the couch... talking ... having a normal conversation.
“There was no fighting, no argument, nothing,” she said. “He was drinking and I didn’t realise at the time but I think he was using cocaine because there was a jar – a jar of cocaine on the table.”
She said she asked Mr Depp about a tattoo on his arm.
“And to me, it just looked like black marks,” she said. “I didn’t know what it said. It just looked like a muddled, faded tattoo that was hard to read.”
Ms Heard said Mr Depp told her the tattoo said “wino”.
“I thought he was joking, because it didn’t look like it said that at all. And I laughed. It was that simple. I just laughed, because I thought he was joking. And he slapped me across the face,” she said.
“And I laughed. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought, ‘This must be a joke. This must be a joke.’ I didn’t know what was going on. I just stared at him, kind of laughing still, thinking that he was going to start laughing too, to tell me it was a joke, but he didn’t. He said, ‘You think it’s so funny? You think it’s funny, b****? You think you’re a funny b****?’ And he slapped me again. I was clear it wasn’t a joke anymore.”
Heard alleges Depp sexually assaulted her while looking for his drugs
Ms Heard alleged that Mr Depp once sexually assaulted her while searching for his drugs, after accusing her of hiding his cocaine.
“He starts patting me down or saying he’s patting me down, I can’t recall – but he ripped my dress, the strap top part of my dress,” she told the court. “I had just dyed this thing myself, pink ... He’s grabbing my breasts, he’s touching my thighs, he rips my underwear off and he proceeds to do a cavity search. He said he was looking for his drugs, his cocaine. His coke.”
Ms Heard added: “I was wondering how somebody who didn’t do cocaine and was against it – that was in and of itself causing problems in our relationship. How could I hide, why would I hide his drugs? He was insinuating that I was doing it, or something? It made no sense. And he was telling me, ‘We’re gonna conduct a cavity search.’ He just shoved his fingers inside me. And I just stood there staring at the stupid light. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there while he did that, he twisted his fingers around.”
Thursday 5 May
Heard sobs as she recounts fight where Depp allegedly sexually assaulted her
Ms Heard sobbed as she recounted a fight in Australia during which she alleges Mr Depp sexually assaulted her with a bottle.
Ms Heard said her memories of the night came to her as “flashes”. Eventually, she said, Mr Depp was throwing bottles in her direction and she could “feel glass breaking behind [her]” and one bottle going past her head, which left her “terrified”.
She said Mr Depp ripped her nightgown off her chest and that the nightgown was eventually ripped off completely, leaving her naked.
She alleged that Mr Depp started punching the wall next to her head and holding her by the neck. At some point, she said Mr Depp ended up “on top of [her]”, telling her she’d “ruined [his] f****** life”.
“I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t get through to him, I couldn’t get up,” she said. “I don’t know how that ended. I don’t know how – I don’t know what happened next.” Ms Heard sobbed as she continued: “The next thing I remember, I was bent over backwards on the bar, meaning my chest was up. I was staring at the blue light. My back is on the countertop and I thought he was punching me. I felt this pressure on my pubic bone. I thought he was punching me. I could feel his arm moving and it looked like he was punching me. But I could just feel this pressure.”
Ms Heard said she remembered being still, not wanting to move, looking around the room, and seeing broken bottles and broken glass. “I remember not wanting to move because I didn’t know of it was broken – I didn’t know if the bottle that he had inside me was broken,” she said. “I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel pain. I didn’t feel anything. ... I looked around and I saw so much broken glass. ... I just remember thinking ‘Please God, please. I hope it’s not broken.’”
Heard tells court she thought Depp was going to kill her
Ms Heard said that she thought Mr Depp was going to kill her “without realising it” at one point.
Ms Heard said Mr Depp was “punching me, punching me repeatedly with his fist”.
“I don’t even remember feeling the pain, I just remember hearing the sound of Johnny’s voice,” she said from the witness stand.
“He got next to my face and he was screaming over and over and over again, each time it sounded louder and more desperate, ‘I f***ing hate you, I f***ing hate you, I f***ing hate you’ over and over. ‘F***ing hate you.’
“Then pounding the back of my head, pounding it with his fist, and I don’t even remember feeling pain, I just could hear myself scream until I couldn’t hear myself any more.
“I could just hear him say that he was going to kill me and that he sounded like an animal in pain when he was saying that he ‘f***ing hated’ me.
“He sounded like he was almost crying, or something in his voice was different, he sounded different, he sounded like he was in agony, it was high-pitched and loud.”
She added: “I don’t know how many times, he just hit me over and over and over again and I got really still, and it felt in my body like quiet.
“And I thought, ‘This is how I die, he’s going to kill me now. He’s going to kill me and he won’t even have realized it.’ I couldn’t breathe. I remember trying to scream and I couldn’t scream.”
Heard says Depp’s jealousy made her give up film roles with sex scenes and revealing outfits
Mr Heard said Mr Depp’s jealousy allegedly made her give up film roles involving sex scenes and revealing outfits.
She spoke of feeling like she had to negotiate with Mr Depp when she received a job offer.
“I’ve always been really independent. I couldn’t imagine not working,” she told the jury on Thursday. “I never imagined myself having to explain or justify my job.”
“I had to bargain ... every time I got a script,” she added.
She said Mr Depp told her, “you don’t have to work kid, I will take care of you, my woman doesn’t have to work”.
Ms Heard noted this may appear to have been kind, but she said she felt it was controlling. She added that she soon grew hesitant about what roles to accept to avoid angering Mr Depp.
She said she was thinking about “how I was dressing, what kind of behaviour would I have, did I have a sex scene” in any film role she was considering.
Ms Heard testified that she started “minimising kissing scenes” and that she would “change the wardrobe”.
“I couldn’t have a sex scene,” she added. “It didn’t happen all at once of course, it was little by little.”
She said she began only taking roles that asked for “minimal make up” and didn’t include intimate scenes, adding that it was a “constant battle and negotiation” with Mr Depp.
When she saw sex scenes in scripts she was offered, she said, “I’d look at it and I’d feel my gut tighten”.
She added that she would send the scripts to Mr Depp, as well as images of the wardrobe for a role, and share information with Mr Depp’s staff.
Heard says Depp subjected her to ‘disgusting’ and violent grilling about sex scene with James Franco
Ms Heard said Mr Depp once subjected her to a “disgusting” and violent grilling about a sex scene she had filmed with actor James Franco.
She was asked about an incident she alleges occurred on a private flight in 2014. At the time, Ms Heard had been cast to star alongside Mr Franco in The Adderall Diaries, a thriller that was ultimately released in 2016.
“He was mad at me for taking the job with James Franco,” Ms Heard said. “He hated, hated James Franco and was already accusing me of secretly having a thing with him in my past, since we had done [the 2008 movie] Pineapple Express together.”
Ms Heard recalled an alleged altercation on a plane, during which she said Mr Depp started questioning her.
“I was polite. I made sure to answer the minimal amount that I could. I moved slowly. I was trying to be polite but not engage, because there was no win,” she said.
“And he kept going, he kept asking me. Eventually, he went from ‘Do you have something to tell me?’ to ‘You wanna tell me how much you liked it? Tell me, did he slip the tongue?’ It got worse and worse.
“It went from asking me about how my kissing scene went or how the sex scene went to asking me what James Franco had done in the scene, to being really explicit about my body ... he was saying really disgusting things about my body, about how I liked it, how I responded. And then he started just straight-up taunting me. ‘I know you liked it’. He called me a go-getter. He called me a slut.”
Ms Heard said the scene unfolded in front of some members of Mr Depp’s staff.
“I remember I felt – I struggle to be able to tell you how embarrassed I was, because he was speaking to me in front of people in this way,” she said, alleging that Mr Depp used “sexually explicit descriptions of what he accused me of wanting or deserving”.
She said the fight continued, with Mr Depp slapping her in the face. At one point, she said she she walked away, her back to Mr Depp.
“I feel this boot in my back. He just kicked me. In the back,” she said. “I fell to the floor, I caught myself on the floor and I just felt like I was looking at the floor of the plane for a long time. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe – did he just kick me?’
“No one said anything. No one did anything. You could hear a pin drop on that plane. You could feel the tension. But no one did anything. And I just remember feeling so embarrassed that he could kick me to the ground in front of people. And more embarrassing, I didn’t know what to do about it. I got up and I walked to the front of the plane. I sat down and I just looked out of the window.”
Monday 16 May
Heard says Depp physically attacked her over London Fields sex scene
Ms Heard alleged that Mr Depp physically attacked her over a sex scene in the movie London Fields.
“There was another film I had coming out that I had previous shot, called London Fields,” she added on Monday. “It was a source of a lot of fighting between us because of the sexuality in the role. It was a constant negotiation between myself and the filmmakers.”
Mr Depp, she said, became “unhappy” with some of what he had heard about the movie.
“He was unhappy with me having done a sex scene in it that he claimed I didn’t tell him about,” she said. “I did not actually film the scene he was speaking of. He demanded that we watch a screener of it, which is like a version of the film before it’s released. We got one sent to where we were at the time, Johnny’s chateau in France.”
Ms Heard said the film contained a sex scene with someone who “looked like [her]”.
“They had used a body double,” she told the court. “Unbeknownst to me, without my permission, they used a body double to do a sex scene. So I have an incredibly jealous man who already is upset with me for breaking the rule that I had a sex scene, on top of that I’m telling him, ‘It wasn’t me, I didn’t shoot that scene.’”
According to Ms Heard’s testimony, Mr Depp became “upset” and “irate”, and called her “a liar, a whore, among other things.”
“That, combined with the fact that I had even entertained doing this job that involved James Franco, was a pressure cooker,” Ms Heard said.
“I called it a week of hell later. Johnny at one point slapped me in the face in our bedroom in the chateau that we were staying in. At another moment he punched me across the jaw. At one point he either pushed or threw, it’s hard to describe to you which of those two it is because I can’t tell you, I went flying into this old church furniture. I later thought I had a concussion. It was the first time I thought I had sustained a concussion.”
Heard explains photos of herself with scars on the red carpet after Depp vodka bottle fight
The court was shown photos of Ms Heard’s scarred arm at a 2015 red carpet event.
“Those are scars that I obtained as Johnny was strangling and assaulting me on a countertop in Australia,” Ms Heard told the court.
Other photos from a second red carpet event were shown to the court, revealing several scars on Ms Heard’s left arm as she brushes her hair from her face.
Ms Heard said that she had tried to cover the scars with makeup but they were “a bit harder to cover as they’re rather fresh”.
Heard says her 2018 op-ed on domestic violence is ‘not about Johnny’
Ms Heard told the court that the 2018 op-ed at the center of the defamation trial opposing her and Mr Depp is “not about Johnny”.Ms Heard said that the article is actually about her and what happened to her “after I escaped my marriage”.
“The only one who made it about him ironically is Johnny,” she told the court.
Heard begs Depp to stop ‘smear campaign’ as court hears emotional audio
Emotional audio was played to the court as Ms Heard said she begged her then-husband to stop calling her “a liar” about his alleged abuse.
In the audio clip, Ms Heard is heard speaking to Mr Depp in a recorded conversation in June 2016 – one month after she filed for divorce from him.
“I’m being called a liar and a gold-digger,” she is heard saying.
“I’m not lying about any of this s*** and I’m not after any of your money.”
She told the court that she wanted him to stop calling her “a liar” and stop the “smear campaign” that he had allegedly launched against her.
Heard breaks down saying she filed for divorce from Depp as she feared she ‘wouldn’t survive’
Ms Heard said she filed for divorce from Mr Depp because she feared she “wouldn’t survive” if she stayed in the relationship.
“I knew if I didn’t I’d likely not literally survive,” she said, choking back tears.
Ms Heard told jurors that her decision to divorce her then-husband was “the hardest thing I ever had to do”.
But she said that she realised she had to do it because the “monster” and domestic violence had become the “normal”.
“The monster had been this thing that was now the normal and not the exception. The violence was now the normal and not the exception,” she sobbed.
“I believe he would have taken it too far and I wouldn’t be here.”
Heard recounts police being called after Depp attacked her as court shown photos of her injuries
Ms Heard shared her account of an incident during which she says police were called to her apartment after Mr Depp attacked her.
Ms Heard was asked about the alleged events of 21 May 2016 and said she and Mr Depp hadn’t seen each other for about a month at the time. Ms Heard said she agreed to see Mr Depp following his mother’s death, and that she was under the impression that he had started drinking and using drugs again at the time.
“He said he really needed his wife. He had lost his mother and he missed his wife, he really needed his wife. He said it over and over again,” she said. “I felt torn, I felt conflicted. Obviously the situation hadn’t gotten better with Johnny, mentally, and I was afraid that all the work and progress and distance I had finally got on it, on the relationship for the first time I had a month of distance on it, I didn’t want that to be undone but I was also affected by the fact that his mother had passed.”
She said a plan was made for Mr Depp to visit her during the day, which she thought would help mitigate his drinking as “night is a little bit more dangerous”.
“He came over and we sat on the couch and it was relatively peaceful. I could tell that he was inebriated, but in my head it made sense. He wasn’t incoherent. It was peaceful,” she said, adding that Mr Depp started talking about feces, accusing one of Ms Heard’s friends of having left a “prank” for him in Ms Heard’s bed. Ms Head said she tried telling Mr Depp that didn’t make sense, but that he kept talking about it.
Eventually, Ms Heard said she called the friend she said Mr Depp claimed was responsible, iO Tillett Wright.
Ms Heard said her friend reminded her that she “wasn’t safe”.
“iO said, ‘Amber, get out of the house. Get out of the house now, you’re not safe. Get out of that house,’” she told the court.
According to Ms Heard, Mr Depp “heard this, turned around, came bolting down the stairs, grabbed the phone from my hand and really, really started screaming this time, laid into iO, called iO every imaginable horrible name that you can say to an LGBTQI person for one, and any person, any human being ever.”
“He just screamed at iO some really nasty stuff,” she said. “When he’s done, he says, ‘You wanna have my woman now, you wanna have my b***h, you take her, you can have her.’ With that he pulls his arm back with the phone and throws it at my face.”
Ms Heard said she felt like the phone had hit her in the eye.
“I put my head in my hands and immediately start crying. I said, ‘You hit me with the phone. Johnny, you hit me.’ I’m sitting on the couch. I didn’t even have time to react. I didn’t even have time to put my hands up,” she said.
“I was still sitting cross-legged with my socks on the couch. I haven’t seen him for a month and the last several times now that I’ve seen him he’s hit me. I didn’t even have time to react to this.”
Ms Heard said Mr Depp verbally taunted her, then whacked her on the top of her head.
“This heavy ringed hand landed on top of my skull, grabs me by the hair, yanks me up off the couch. I’m struggling to stand up,” she said.
“I don’t know if he was intending to hit me in the face or if he was just trying to grab my face but he was making this gesture around my face to try to expose my face to him and he was like, ‘Yeah, let me see how bad I hurt you. Let me see it. Let me see how bad I hurt you this time. What if I pulled your hair back? What if I pulled your hair back?’
“And he yanks my hair back. I’m trying to prevent him from landing the blows to my face and trying to prevent my face from being exposed, and I just remember this mocking taunt he was doing with me as he’s yanking me around the room.”
Ms Heard said another friend, who lived in the neighboring apartment, came in and tried to protect her. She said Mr Depp’s two security guards eventually came in too. At some point, she said Mr Depp picked up a bottle and started “smashing things off the nightstand, the coffee table,” and “screaming.”
Eventually, she said Mr Depp exited the apartment, knocking things off and breaking things along the way. She said her friend’s husband brought her to his and his wife’s apartment, where she stayed for the next few hours.
Ms Heard said about an hour after Mr Depp left, she learned the police had been called. She said she was not the one who made the call.
Asked on Monday why she didn’t want to cooperate with the police, Ms Heard told the court: “I wanted to protect Johnny. I didn’t want him to be arrested. I didn’t want him to be in trouble. I didn’t want the world to know. I didn’t want this to come out. I didn’t want him to be in trouble. I didn’t want this to be – I wanted to protect Johnny.”
Heard denies lying about donating $7m from divorce
In a tense cross-examination on 16 May, Ms Heard pushed back against the suggestion that she lied about making $7m in donations to two charities from her divorce payout from Mr Depp, despite damning video evidence played in court.
When the couple’s divorce settlement was reached in August 2016, Ms Heard pledged to split the entire payout equally between the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
Terence Dougherty, the chief operating officer and general counsel of the ACLU, testified earlier at the trial that the charity had so far received less than half of the $3.5m promised.
Under questioning by Camille Vasquez, Ms Heard claimed that she had been unable to complete the payments because of the costs from her ex-husband suing her.
“I still fully intend on honoring all of my pledges,” she testified. “I would love him to stop suing me so I can.”
When Ms Heard said that she had been unable to fulfil her commitment to make the donations because her ex-husband was suing her during Monday’s testimony, Mr Depp’s attorney pushed back that 13 months passed between her receiving the full divorce settlement and the lawsuit being filed.
The court was shown a clip from Ms Heard’s appearance on Danish TV show RTL Late Night in October 2018, where she said that “$7m was donated in total”.
“I split the amount between the ACLU and CHLA. ACLU is a prominent non-profit organisation in the US and they work on the behalf of marginalised communities on the ground, and in legislative reform,” she said on the show.
“I wanted nothing.”
The final payment of $2.3m was paid on 1 February 2018, the court heard.
Ms Heard claimed that she uses the terms “pledged” and “donated” interchangeably.
Thursday 26 May
Heard begs Depp ‘leave me alone’ claiming daily death threats over trial
Asked how she’s been affected by the Depp-Waldman statements at the centre of her counterclaim, Ms Heard on Thursday (26 May) said: “I am harassed, humiliated, threatened, every single day. Even just walking into this court room, sitting here in front of the world, having the worst parts of my life, things that I’ve lived through, used to humiliate me.
“People want to kill me, and they tell me so everyday. People want to put my baby in the microwave, and they tell me that,” she continued, adding, “Johnny threatened, promised, promised me, that if I ever left him, he’d make me think of him every single day,” she added before being interrupted by a “non-responsive” objection from Depp’s team.
When Ms Heard’s lawyer asked her how Mr Depp’s alleged threats “continue to manifest themselves today”, she responded: In the harassment, in the humiliation, in the campaign against me that’s echoed every single day on social media, and now, in front of cameras in this room. Every single day I have to relive the trauma. My hands shake, I wake up screaming. I have to live with the trauma and damage done to me.”
“My friends have to live with a set of unspoken rules about how to not scare me... how to not touch me, not to surprise me. My intimate partners have rules about how they can deal with me, how they can touch me. I have rules for doctors and medical professionals I see, gynaecologists I see.
“I live my life with these sets of rules that I have to follow, my friends have to follow, for me not to have a panic attack or triggering event,” the Aquaman actor told the jury.
She testified that “the damage that I have to live with every single day” impacted her ability to train for combat scenes in the DC movie, also starring Jason Momoa.
“If a combat scene, and a trigger happens, I have a meltdown and I have to deal with that, the crew would have to deal with that because of the damage I walk around with, every day,” she continued.
“I’m not sitting in this courtroom, laughing, making snide jokes. This is horrible, this is painful, and this is humiliating for any human being to go through,” Ms Heard said, adding that she “doesn’t deserve this”.
The psychologist hired by Mr Depp’s legal team, Dr Shannon Curry, on Wednesday (25 May) refuted Ms Heard’s diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Testifying for Ms Heard’s defence on 3 May, clinical psychologist Dr Dawn Hughes said that the actress does suffer from PTSD stemming from domestic violence.
“I diagnosed Ms Heard with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… and the cause was the intimate partner violence by Mr Depp,” Dr Hughes said at the time.
“The only reason someone like Dr Curry can sit up here and say that I’m high-functioning, I do things like have hobbies, and have interests... Is because I found a solution to that pain. I woke up every morning with panic attacks and trauma, until I realised I could do something with it. I was able to turn the things that I’ve lived through, my life experiences into action, into work, into providing a voice for other people.”
“I’m not trying to present myself as a saint, as you all know,” she continued, adding, “But I selfishly found relief in being able to use what I’ve lived through to advocate for others,” she added, saying she would not wish this situation on her “worst enemy”.
“I just want Johnny to leave me alone,” Ms Heard said on the stand.
Heard spars with Depp attorney when grilled about Kate Moss and other witnesses supporting him
Ms Heard sparred with one of Mr Depp’s attorneys as she was grilled about Kate Moss and other witnesses supporting him.
Ms Heard appeared distressed as she took the stand once again. Depp lawyer Camille Vasquez said Ms Heard’s “lies have been exposed to the world multiple times, right?”
“I haven’t lied about anything I’ve been here to say,” Ms Heard replied.
Ms Vasquez asked about Ms Heard’s allegation that Mr Depp was violent in Hicksville in 2013, noting that Ms Heard’s witness Rocky Pennington, a previously close friend, didn’t support her claim that Mr Depp grew jealous and grabbed a woman by the wrist.
The manager of the trailer park where they were staying at the time appeared in court on Monday. Ms Heard said she didn’t recognise the witness, claiming that he “wasn’t there” and that he wouldn’t know what took place in private. Ms Heard denied that she was the one who was jealous.
Ms Vasquez said that Ms Heard has claimed that she had “no idea” that the press would be outside the court when she sought a restraining order against Mr Depp in May 2016.
“I said I did not have anything to do with it,” Ms Heard responded.
Ms Vasquez said Ms Heard wasn’t “shocked at all” when she met photographers when she left the courthouse because she was aware that they would be present.
Ms Heard rejected the allegation that she made entertainment site TMZ aware that she would be at the courthouse.
She was then asked about testimony from a former TMZ staffer who said on Wednesday that they had received a tip from a verified source. When it was suggested that it came from her team, Ms Heard pushed back.
“Absolutely not. Why would I want that? What survivor of domestic violence wants that?” she said.
Ms Vasquez asked Ms Heard about a 2015 incident in which she said she punched Mr Depp in defence of her sister while thinking of him pushing his former partner Kate Moss down a set of stairs.
“You didn’t expect Ms Moss to agree to testify that that never happened, did you?” Ms Vasquez asked.
“Incorrect,” Ms Heard replied. “I know how many people would come out of the woodwork to be in support of Johnny.”
“So you’re saying Ms Moss needs to ‘come out of the woodwork’ to testify for Mr Depp?” Ms Vasquez asked.
Ms Heard said everyone who was “around in the ‘90s and ‘00s” had heard the same rumour concerning Ms Moss and Mr Depp.
“Of course that’s what flashed through my head when my violent husband not only swung for me but also swung for my sister,” Ms Heard said.
She added that Ms Moss’ testimony in support of Mr Depp “doesn’t change what I believed at the time when we were on the stairs and I thought he was going to kill my sister”.
