In her very first interview since the verdict in the defamation trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, the actress has been commenting on the experience of the trial and how she’s handling it, especially now that she’s aware of how social media and the public have been reacting to the case in the past couple of months.
Heard sat for over an hour with TODAY’s host Savannah Guthrie, who has been quite incisive during the interview. The media outlet has been releasing bits of the interview daily since yesterday when Heard spoke about the unfair representation of the couple on social media. Today, the interview bit mainly focused on her testimony, freedom of speech, and how Depp’s lawyers portrayed her during the trial.
She claims that social media had an impact on the jury’s verdict, claiming that even the most well-intentioned juror couldn’t be immune to the social media craze that the trial brought. Not only that, she spoke about how humiliating it was for her to walk every day through the crowds of Depp supporters and a courtroom packed with “Captain Jack Sparrow fans who were vocal.” For the actress, experiencing this for weeks made her feel “removed from her own humanity.”
When asked if she believed Johnny Depp’s lawyers did a better job, Amber Heard said that they did a “better job distracting the jury from the real issues.” Heard spoke about the libel suit in the UK, where Depp lost against the British outlet The Sun, claiming that there were strong pieces of evidence there that she wasn’t able to use in this trial. Not to mention the fact that the verdict in the UK trial was decided by a judge and not a jury.
In what was one of the most intense moments of today’s bit of the interview, Heard started speaking on how this case was more than just a couple of “Hollywood brats at their worst” but a matter of free speech and the first amendment. To that, Guthrie interrupted Heard and told her that “the first amendment protects free speech, it doesn’t protect lies that are mount to defamation, and that was the issue of the case.” She simply responded that she spoke, “truth to power, and I paid the price for that.”
Guthrie landed one of the most talked-about issues about the trial if Heard had been an abusive partner in the relationship as Depp’s lawyers claimed. To that, Heard repeated her testimony about only responding to violence; however, Guthrie brought back the many tape recording of her not only accepting she had recurred to physical violence but also starting them. Heard claims many had been leaked to the press after being edited. She added that “20-second clips or the transcripts of them are not representative of even the two hours or three hours those clips are an excerpt from.”
Finally, Savannah Guthrie mentioned that during interviews made after the trial, Depp’s lawyers Ben Chew and Camille Vazquez said that one of the things that made an impression on the jury was that Johnny had acknowledged some of his toxic behaviors while Amber never took responsibility for anything she did on the marriage. To that, Amber said that she had recognized that she “did do and say horrible, regrettable, things throughout my relationship; I behaved horrible, almost unrecognizable to myself. I have so much regret.”
According to TODAY, in tomorrow’s part of the interview, Heard will discuss how she feels about Johnny Depp today.
