Actress Amber Heard has posted on her official Instagram account that she plans to “go offline for the next several weeks” ahead of the court proceedings in the defamation case Johnny Depp has filed against her. She stated that laying out all the details of everything in her personal life brings her “great pain”. She revealed that she had always loved Depp and hoped that they would be able to “move on” when the ongoing legal battle between them ends.
“Johnny is suing me for an op-ed I wrote in the Washington Post, in which I recounted my experience of violence and domestic abuse,” Heard began her statement about her case against her ex-husband, as well as his own case against Heard. “I never named him, rather I wrote about the price women pay for speaking against men in power. I continue to pay that price, but hopefully, when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny.”
To give a recap on what went down between the Aquaman star and Johnny Depp – in March 2019, Depp filed a public defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard for indirectly referring to him in an article she had written in the Washington Post. The article titled, “Opinion: Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”, spoke about how sexual predators and assaulters were shielded by prestigious institutions. It had apparently hurt his career as an actor and destroyed his reputation in the public eye as well.
Prior to the defamation claim, in 2016, Heard had already filed cases against Depp for verbal and physical assault and alleged that she had been abused by the actor throughout the duration of their relationship. Depp’s team retorted that it was an “elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity for Ms. Heard and advanced her career”, as reported by Vulture. The couple filed for divorced in 2016 and made it official in 2017, citing “irreconcilable differences.”
Coming back to the legal trial for the public defamation lawsuit, the trial is scheduled to be held on the 11th of April in Fairfax County, Virginia. One might wonder why it would be held in Virginia if both the actors live in Los Angeles, California. According to Vulture, Depp’s legal team argued that because the Washington Post is physically published in Virginia, a Virginia court and jury was the right jurisdiction to hear his defamation case.
