Amber Heard was the final witness on the stand in her trial against Johnny Depp on Thursday — and things got heated.
Her own legal team were the first to question her, asking her about how she has suffered as a result of the Depp/Waldman statements — with an instant speculation objection from Camille Vasquez. It would not be the last.
“I am harassed, humiliated, threatened, every single day… even just walking into this courtroom, sitting here, in front of the world having the worst parts of my life, things that I’ve lived through, used to humiliate me,” Heard said.
“People want to kill me and they tell me so every day. People want to put my baby in a microwave, and they tell me that.”
“Johnny threatened — promised me — that if I ever left him he’d make me think of him every single day that I lived…” an objection from Vasquez cut her off here.
Asked about how Depp’s threats affected her today, she claimed friends, doctors and even intimate partners have a specific set of rules on how to touch her.
“My hands shake, I wake up screaming,” she said, her voice quivering. “I have to live with the trauma and the damage done to me.”
“My friends have to live with a set of unspoken rules about how to not scare me, about 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, gynecologists 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 where I re-live the trauma.”
Heard claimed that while training for combat scenes in Aquaman 2, something would trigger her and she would suffer a panic attack or a melt down, and the crew would have to deal with it.
“I’m not sitting in this courtroom snickering. I’m not sitting in this courtroom laughing, smiling making snide jokes. I’m not. This is horrible. This is painful. This is humiliating for any human being to go through.”
“And perhaps it’s easy to forget that but I’m a human being, and even though Johnny promised that I deserved this and promised he’d do this — I don’t deserve this. I want to move on.”
She accused her ex of soliciting millions of people in a campaign to cancel her, which prompted Vasquez to object on speculation grounds. It was sustained.
Asked how the ordeal affected her charity work, Heard shot back at Dr. Shannon Curry’s testimony that Heard was able to perform this with ease, claiming she had channeled the pain and trauma into positive action.
“The only reason that people like Dr. Curry can sit up here on the stand and say I’m high functioning and I do things like have hobbies and have interests, is because I found a solution to that pain,” she said.
“I woke up every morning with panic attacks and trauma until I realized I could do something with it,” she continued. “So to answer your question, I was able to turn the things that I’ve lived through, my pain, my life experiences, into work, into action, into providing a voice for other people.”
“I’m not a saint, I’m not trying to present myself as one, as you all know. But I selfishly found relief, in being able to use what I’ve lived through to advocate for others, to bring light to these issues — to give a voice to people who don’t have the voice or the platform that I have.”
She said she now can’t have a career or even have people associate with her because of the attacks and the threats that they have to endure.
She said she has received thousands of death threats since the trial started.
“People mocking my testimony about being assaulted, making fun,” she said, voice cracking. “It’s been agonizing, painful, the most humiliating thing I’ve ever had to go through. I hope no one has to go through anything like this.”
“I just want Johnny to leave me alone. I just want him to leave me alone. I’ve said that for years now and I thought he would after 2020.”
Finally asked what she hoped to reclaim after the trial was over, she said “my voice.”
“Protecting the secret that I did for as long as I did has taken enough of my voice,” she said. “Johnny has taken enough of my voice.”
“I have the right to tell my story, I have the right to say what happened to me, I have the right to my voice and my name. He took it long enough.”
“I have a right as an American to talk about what happened to me, to own my story and my truth. I have that right. I hope to get my voice back. It’s all I want, and I’ve said that from day one.”
After that, it was Camille Vasquez’s turn to cross-examine — and as expected, it took a very different tone.
“Your lies have been exposed to the world multiple times, right?” came the opening question, which Heard denied.
Depp’s lawyer sifted back through several witnesses who gave testimony contradicting Heard’s, challenging the actress that she didn’t expect so many people to show up and come to his defense.
Heard countered that she fully expected people to “come out of the woodwork” and support her powerful ex-husband.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say a lot of things to be involved in the Johnny Depp show,” she proclaimed.
Vasquez pointed out that Heard testified Depp had “trashed” the Hicksville trailer, when the manager had testified there was only $62 worth of damage to a single light fixture.
When Heard countered that Morgan Knight was just summarizing what he saw to favor Depp, Vasquez asked if she was accusing the manager of lying under oath.
The grilling didn’t let up. Vasquez showed Heard a picture of her laughing with Raquel Pennington the day after the bruise photo — in which she did not appear to have a bruise.
“I don’t know when this was taken,” Heard replied. “And also, I’m outside, I was obviously wearing makeup… I have no idea if I can speak to what bruise you can see or no.”
Vasquez then turned to Kate Moss’s testimony dispelling the rumor — which Heard had brought up in her own previous testimony — that Depp had pushed her down a flight of stairs.
“You never expected Ms. Moss to testify that that never happened, did you?” Vasquez queried.
“Incorrect. I know how many people would come out of the woodwork to be in support of Johnny, it is clear by this courtroom how many people will do that,” Heard replied.
“So you’re saying Ms. Moss needed to come out of the woodwork to testify for Mr Depp?” Vasquez asked incredulously.
“Everybody who is around in the ’90s and the early aughts knew that rumor — I had heard that rumor from multiple people,” Heard shot back. “Of course that’s what flashed through my head when my violent husband not only swung for me but all of a sudden swung for my sister. Of course I thought of that.”
“I did not expect her to show up, or not expect her to show up. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t change what I believed at the time, when we were on the stairs and I thought he was going to kill my sister by pushing her down the stairs.”
“I know how many people will come out and say whatever for him,” Heard went on. “That’s his power. That’s why I wrote this op-ed. I was speaking to that phenomenon. He is a very powerful man — and people love currying favor with powerful men.”
“And risking jail time for committing perjury?” Vasquez interjected.
“I have seen people do this time and time again,” Heard insisted. “That’s why I wrote the op-ed.”
“You didn’t expect (Depp’s friend, Isaac) Baruch to weep — to weep — for Mr. Depp after what you’ve put him through, and so many others with your lies, did you?”
“I relate to Isaac because he and I are the only ones to cry on this stand…” Amber began.
But Vasquez cut her off with a “no further questions Your Honor”, walking off and leaving Heard still talking.
The last words were left to Heard’s team under a redirect, during which she denied ever faking injuries or lying, and claimed Depp had abused her physically, verbally, emotionally and psychologically.
“Johnny promised me — promised me — he would ruin me,” she said. “That he’d ruin my career, he’d take my life from me, death was the only way out. And if I got out, this is what he’d do to me. He’d make me think of him every single day.”
“He promised global humiliation. You saw those texts, what he couldn’t do… the work of one individual — meaning Johnny — when he was inviting a disgruntled employee over for a ‘spot of purple’ to ‘fix my flabby ass up’… that revenge that he sought, back then, was just what he could do as an individual. Calling the studio to get me fired. Trying to block me from working.”
“Those are just an echo of what I’m living through today. What you see in this courtroom — and the other courtroom he dragged me into to do the same thing again — that’s just an echo of the violence and the abuse I suffered within our relationship, the campaigns to have me fired, blocking me to try to ruin my career, the threats he’s made to humiliate me globally, are being being lived out in real time, in front of you ladies and gentlemen for the past six weeks, and for the whole world, since there are cameras here.”
It is now up to the jury to decide the result of both suits.
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