Helena Bonham Carter gave her unfiltered opinions on controversies surrounding two high profile former collaborators in a new interview — Johnny Depp and J.K. Rowling.
Speaking with The Sunday Times, the British star weighed in on Depp’s dual defamation trial with Amber Heard earlier this year.
Bonham Carter said she believed Depp was “completely vindicated” after a Virginia jury decided Heard had defamed the Pirates of the Caribbean actor in a Washington Post op-ed claiming she was a victim of domestic violence — Heard did not call her former husband out by name in the piece. Depp was awarded over $10 million in damages, while Heard won one of her counterclaims to the tune of $2 million. Both sides are appealing the verdicts.
“I think he’s fine now,” Bonham Carter said of Depp, “Totally fine.”
The Sunday Times then asked Bonham Carter if the high profile trial was an example of the “pendulum of #MeToo swinging back.”
“That’s the problem with these things,” she replied, “that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it.”
Depp previously lost a libel case against The Sun after the newspaper called him a “wife-beater” in 2018, with a UK judge ruling it was “substantially true.”
At another point in her interview with the publication, Bonham Carter was asked about Harry Potter author Rowling’s brushes with controversy over the past couple of years.
Rowling appeared to support anti-trans tweets back in 2020 and was accused of transphobia, which she denied at the time. She then published an essay to her website soon after that seemed to reiterate some of the very same viewpoints, while also revealing she was a “domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor.”
“It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks. I think she has been hounded. It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism [sic] of people,” Bonham Carter said of the criticism surrounding the children’s writer.
“She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse,” the actress added.
“Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain,” Bonham Carter continued. “You don’t all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”
Meanwhile, when Rowling’s social media behavior surrounding trans issues came to light many Harry Potter stars distanced themselves from the author — including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.
Bonham Carter was then asked if she felt her Potter costars were “ungrateful”.
“I won’t say that,” she countered. “Personally, I feel they should let her have her opinions, but I think they’re very aware of protecting their own fan base and their generation.”
“It’s hard. One thing with the fame game is that there’s an etiquette that comes with it; I don’t agree with talking about other famous people.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
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