Wednesday 1 June 2022 11:22 PM How Amber Heard was unravelled by Kate Moss in a sordid TV trial: DANIEL BATES ... trends now
Hollywood has never seen a blockbuster quite like it – a charismatic leading man, his former leading lady and a racing rollercoaster that enthralled a global television audience for more than six weeks.
The one-time golden couple fought viciously for their reputations – and their careers – in a stunning sequel to the original two years ago, when the High Court in London had ruled that Johnny Depp was a wife-beater.
Last night, it was Depp who emerged victorious – and the key to his victory may well have been the three minutes of evidence by his former girlfriend, Kate Moss.
Beaming in over Zoom from her home in the Cotswolds, Moss – who had been Depp’s partner for four years to 1998 – coolly rubbished claims repeated by Amber Heard that Depp had once pushed her down the stairs.
Amber Heard waits before the jury said that they believe she defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp
And then there was the revelation that far from paying over $7million (£5.6million) from her divorce to charity – as Miss Heard had promised – she was forced to confess to the seven-member jury that she had stumped up just a fraction of that amount.
Daniel Bates, glued to his chair from start to finish, recounts the tortuous twists and turns of a trial that has captivated and appalled the world.
THE TURBULENT YEARS
Over six weeks at the court in Fairfax, Virginia, the turbulent four years Depp and Miss Heard spent together was laid bare for all.
Through their highly-paid legal teams, the former lovers tore into each other over the details of their short marriage as they demanded eye-watering amounts of money, each claiming they had been defamed by the other. The Pirates of the Caribbean star wanted a jury to hand him up to $50million (£40million) but, more importantly, cast out an aspersion that he is a wife beater (a claim the London court case found was ‘substantially true’).
In return, his Aquaman star ex demanded double in damages – $100million (£80million) – saying her life had been ruined by a smear campaign against her when she divorced him and publicly accused Depp of assault in 2016.
While Depp had hoped the trial would help restore his reputation, it turned into a spectacle of a vicious coupling.
With millions watching as proceedings were live-streamed on the internet via a dedicated court broadcast, a story of Hollywood love turned to bitter hate unfolded.
The trial heard how the couple met 13 years ago with a kiss on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009 while they were both seeing other people – in Depp’s case the mother of his two children, French singer Vanessa Paradis.
Johnny Depp's lawyers Camille Vasquez and Ben Chew outside Fairfax County Courthouse today
Depp and Miss Heard got together in 2012, married in 2015 and then divorced 15 stormy months later when she filed for a restraining order, arriving at court sporting a bruise that sparked a slew of speculation.
The jury saw dozens of texts, photos, videos, medical records and even pages from the former couple’s ‘Love Journal’ in which they hand wrote to each other.
But the bitterness on each side now eclipsed the love that was lost.
DEPP AND HIS MOTHER
Speaking in a halting, rambling voice, Depp portrayed himself as a ‘Southern gentleman’ who was scarred from his upbringing in Kentucky at the hands of an abusive mother.
Like with his mother, Depp would try to walk away from conflict but Heard never let him, he told the jury.
He said that Miss Heard’s claims were ‘heinous and disturbing’ and were ‘not based in any species of truth’.
Depp said that at the beginning of their relationship, Miss Heard felt ‘too good to be true’ but then she started to ‘reveal herself’.
She subjected him to an ‘endless parade of insults’ and uncontrolled rage and, as Depp told the jury: ‘I was not allowed to be right. I was not allowed to have a voice.’
According to Depp, it felt like he was reliving his relationship with his mother all over again, and Heard had a ‘pure hatred’ of him and was jealous of his career.
In a dramatic moment, Depp laid his hand on the side of the witness box as he explained how Miss Heard threw a vodka bottle at him in Australia in March 2015, severing his fingertip.
But under cross-examination, Depp was forced to explain horrific texts to the British actor Paul Bettany in which he wrote: ‘Let’s Burn Amber’. In a message to another friend, Mr Depp said he wanted to see Miss Heard’s ‘rotting corpse decomposing in the f****** trunk of a Honda Civic’.
Then there was the 2014 flight from Boston to Los Angeles where Miss Heard claimed that Depp was drunk and abusive before blacking out. The court was played an audio recording of Depp groaning ‘like an animal’ after he passed out.
There was also a video of Depp smashing up the kitchen of his home in Los Angeles while drinking what was described as a ‘mega-pint’ of
