After three weeks of testimony from Johnny Depp‘s side, including the actor’s memorable four days on the stand, it’s Amber Heard‘s turn to tell her story. The Aquaman star, 36, sat before a jury on Wednesday afternoon and accused her ex-husband of physical abuse and sexual assault. Throughout her three-hour testimony, Depp, 58, kept his head down and never looked at her on the witness stand.
“I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote,” Heard began. “I struggle to find the words to describe how painful this is. This is horrible for me to sit here for weeks and relive everything … this is the most painful and difficult thing I have ever gone through.”
Heard is being sued for $50 million as Depp claims she defamed him in a 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post. The actor’s legal team presented its case that he lost at least $40 million in earnings and that the article was “catastrophic” for his career. The Pirates of the Caribbean star testified that he “never” abused Heard, or any woman, and that she was the violent aggressor in their relationship.
According to Heard, that’s not the case. She testified that Depp was volatile after they started dating. “It started with throwing things, destroying the property and screaming at me,” she claimed. It turned physical in 2013.
“It’s seemingly so stupid, so insignificant. I will never forget it. It changed my life,” Heard told the jury about the first time she was hit. “I was sitting on the couch and we were talking, we were having like a normal conversation. There was no fighting, no argument, nothing. He was drinking and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think he was using cocaine. … I asked him about the tattoo he has on his arm.”
Depp’s tattoo read “Wino Forever,” which he changed from “Winona Forever.” (The actor previously dated Winona Ryder.) When Depp told Heard what it said, she laughed.
“He slapped me across the face — and I laughed. I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do. I thought this must be a joke. This must be a joke because I didn’t know what was going on. I just stared at him kind of laughing still, thinking that he was going to start laughing too … but he didn’t,” Heard declaraed.
Depp purportedly yelled at her “You think you’re funny, bitch?”
“He slapped me again. It was clear it wasn’t a joke anymore. I stopped laughing but I didn’t know what else to do. … He slapped me for no reason it seemed like,” Heard continued, adding that Depp slapped her a third time “hard.” She remembered how “dirty” the carpet was as she was laying there face down.
Heard became emotional on the stand, claiming Depp told her he’d “done it before” and “thought I put the monster away.” The actress left the house, but not the relationship. She said Depp later begged for forgiveness and told her, “I’ll never lay a hand on you again.”
When Depp testified two weeks ago, he claimed this whole incident never happened. In fact, there’s practically nothing the actors agree on except that when they kissed filming The Rum Diary in 2009, their chemistry was “remarkable.”
“It didn’t feel like a normal scene anymore, it felt more real,” Heard recalled.
That’s where the similarities end.
Heard told the jury about how on movie sets, “you don’t use your tongue” as to keep things professional.
“Those lines were blurred. He grabbed my face and pulled me into him and really kissed me. But we were filming a scene,” she said, confirming that Depp slipped her his tongue. Alluding to more unprofessional behavior, Heard claimed that one time when she was wearing a bathrobe on set “he kind of picked up the back of my robe with his boot.”
“I didn’t know what to make of it at the time, I just kind of giggled and batted it away playfully,” she explained.
Depp testified that he and Heard kissed one time off-camera in his trailer, and that while she wanted to stay, he knew it was a bad idea as they were in other relationships. Heard had a different story. She said Depp “playfully” pushed her on a bed in his trailer in a “flirtatious” way.
“I giggled, laughed it off and batted him away,” she claimed.
Heard and Depp didn’t see each other for almost two years, although she says he sent her lavish gifts in the interim. When they reunited for the film’s press tour in 2011 they were both single. Heard said Depp invited her up to his hotel room under the guise of having a drink with the director, but when she arrived, the director wasn’t there. They drank wine and hung out for hours on the couch.
“As I went to leave he grabbed both sides of my face, similar to what he did [during filming],” She said. “He kissed me and I kissed him back … then we fell in love.”
By March 2013, according to Heard, violence was becoming routine in their relationship. She claimed in one instance, Depp hit her and “my lip went into my teeth and it got a little blood on the wall.”
Heard said she was attacked on another occasion that month: “He grabbed me by the arm and he kind of just held me on the floor screaming at me. I don’t know how many times he hit me in the face, but I remember being on the floor of my apartment and I remember thinking, ‘How could this happen to me again?'”
Heard claims she wasn’t just physically assaulted, but that she experienced sexual violence, too. (Depp testified he never sexually assaulted any woman.)
The alleged incident happened in May 2013 when they were doing drugs with a group of friends in Joshua Tree, Calif. (It’s been dubbed the “Hicksville” incident during trial.) In the trailer where they were staying, the actress testified that she was digitally penetrated by Depp when he was searching for cocaine.
“He ripped my dress … he’s grabbing my breast, he’s touching my thighs, he rips my underwear off and then he proceeds to do a cavity search,” Heard emotionally recounted. “He said he was looking for his drugs, his cocaine.”
Heard told the jury she “didn’t do cocaine and was against it.”
“Why would I hide his drugs from him?” she continued, claiming Depp “shoved his fingers inside me.”
Heard said she “just stood there staring at this stupid light.”
“I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there while he did that. He twisted his fingers around. I didn’t say stop or anything I just,” Heard added, becoming emotional. “I froze.”
Heard still didn’t leave Depp after the alleged incident calling him the “love of my life” at the time. “I had so much hope,” she explained.
The relationship didn’t improve that summer as Heard testified about two more alleged abuse incidents. After a flight where they supposedly both took MDMA, and fed a pill to a flight attendant, he gave her a bloody nose.
While in the Bahamas with his children, Heard claims Depp slammed “me up by my neck and holds me there for a second and tells me that he could f****** kill me and that I was an embarrassment.”
Heard’s testimony has wrapped for the day. She will be back on the stand on Thursday.
MORE: Johnny Depp’s testimony concludes, says “The only person I’ve abused in my life is myself”
