Due to the frequently gruesome and disgusting facts of the couple’s unhappy marriage, the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial has gotten a lot of attention. However, the jury must also evaluate whether one of them experienced actual career harm as a result of the other’s lies about them.
While there is proof that both of their careers have suffered as a result of the defamatory claims, it is considerably more difficult to link that damage to individual defamatory statements.
Depp claims he lost tens of millions of dollars as a result of Heard’s domestic violence charges, which she referred to in a 2018 op-ed. However, the testimony revealed that Depp was already a declining star before to the charges, and a string of legal defeats rendered him essentially unemployable by big studios.
Depp’s former manager and business manager testified that the actor’s unethical behavior had diminished Hollywood’s enthusiasm for him, putting him in serious financial trouble. Depp was regularly late and unprepared on the set of the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” film and subsequent projects, relying on an earpiece to feed him lines.
“I was very honest with him and said, ‘You’ve got to stop doing this. It’s hurting you.’ And it did,” remembered Tracey Jacobs, the UTA agent who helped orchestrate Depp’s career rise over three decades of working with the actor. “His star had dimmed,” she added, bluntly.
On the set of the last “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, things had become so bad that Disney, the studio behind the series, had an employee stationed outside the house where Depp was staying to keep track of his activities and let the set know when Johnny was awake and ready to work. Depp’s fingertip was amputated, which he alleges happened after Heard threw a bottle at him, and production was halted. To hide his injury, the studio had to rely on considerable CGI, yet another example of the drama surrounding Depp’s work life reflected in pixels and green-screens.
Depp is far from the first celebrity who has acted arrogant, obnoxious, or wasteful. His idol, Marlon Brando, used to frighten studios with his extravagant demands and odd on-set antics, and everyone from Bruce Willis to Vin Diesel has had their fair share of high-profile production conflicts.
Studios are more generous when the movies are successful. Depp was once that rare commodity: an actor with such a mesmerizing acting ability that he could get butts in chairs. Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Depp as the Mad Hatter, grossed over $1 billion worldwide, and the duo’s remakes of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Sweeney Todd” were also successful. Depp’s box office strength had faded over the last decade, with disappointments like “Mortdecai,” “Transcendence,” and “Black Mass” stacking up and puncturing his commercial reputation. Following the enormous success of the “Pirates” films, Depp had become accustomed to having companies attend to his whims and indulge him. Despite the fact that the studios’ profits from his films were dwindling, he confronted his problems.
“Initially crews loved him,” Jacobs said in her taped deposition. “He was always so great with the crew. But crews don’t love sitting around for hours and hours and hours waiting for the star to show up.”
Depp is suing Heard over a Washington Post op-ed she wrote in 2018 in which she defined herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” His team claims that the scene cost Depp roles, hastening his downward spiral.
“It was hard to get him a studio film after the op-ed,” said Jack Whigham, Jacobs’ talent manager who took over after she was dismissed in 2016.
However, the op-ed was written two and a half years after Heard initially made abuse charges, which had already caused studios to shun the actor. When Heard filed for divorce and a restraining order in May 2016, she accused Depp of physically abusing her during their relationship. Depp testified that Heard’s 2016 allegations cost him “everything” in his testimony.
“The second the allegations were made against me… I lost then,” he said.
However, Depp agreed to a divorce settlement that waived his right to sue Heard over the 2016 allegations. As a result, Depp has been forced to file a lawsuit in response to the December 2018 op-ed.
His team has tried to establish that the op-ed, not the earlier allegations, caused the most damage to his career. Depp continued to work in 2017, but he did not shoot another studio film after “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” was shot in the fall of 2017. Depp didn’t work much in 2018 on purpose, according to Whigham, since he “wanted to take time off to recover.”
His team also attempted to demonstrate that the op-ed had harmed his Q Scores, which are used to determine how popular a musician is. However, it’s difficult to tell how much of an effect it has. Depp’s unfavorable score increased five points after the 2016 allegations, while his positive score decreased four points, according to their own expert. The impact, though, was significantly more mild after the December 2018 op-ed. His positive score fell by two points, while his negative score fell by one.
Depp’s expert also displayed Google Trends data that showed a rise in interest in Depp around May 2016, but not around the op-ed.
After losing his 2020 libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom, Depp looks to have become completely unemployable, regardless of previous damage. That’s when Warner Bros. dismissed Depp and replaced him with Mads Mikkelsen in the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise. Warners had already begun to be hesitant to do business with him. An story in Rolling Stone in 2019 characterized the actor as intoxicated and high on drugs, raising concerns about the negative publicity he could bring to projects.
The jury is not confined to awarding “actual damages,” or damages that can be linked to the defamatory words directly. They can also “presume” damages to either party’s reputation without providing concrete evidence, based only on the defamatory remarks’ intrinsically destructive nature. However, they have received very little guidance on how to award damages that are not clearly related to career injuries.
Depp, for his part, has alleged that Heard coordinated a smear campaign that cost her a role in the “Aquaman” sequel, as well as sponsorships and other TV and film prospects. She called her own expert, who testified about a spike in anti-Heard tweets allegedly tied to Depp’s lawyer’s statements that her allegations were a “hoax.” Ron Schnell, the expert in question, admitted that his investigation could only reveal mathematical correlations, not definite causal links.
The studio’s decision-making process was also shrouded in testimony. Warner Bros. considered recasting the part after Heard performed in the first film and in “Justice League,” according to Heard and DC Films President Walter Hamada. Heard revealed that she had to “fight really hard” to keep her role as Aquaman’s love interest in the upcoming sequel, and that even after winning, she still had to deal with less screen time..
Hamada had a different perspective on the situation. It wasn’t the negative publicity surrounding Depp’s court battle that nearly cost him his job. He maintained in a taped deposition that he had heard the part. Rather, it was a lack of connection with the film’s lead, Jason Momoa.
“It’s not uncommon on movies for two leads to not have chemistry,” he said. Hamada said that deft editing and other movie tricks papered over the lack of sizzle.
“You can fabricate that chemistry,” he said. “I think if you watch the movie, they looked like they had great chemistry, but I just know that during the use of the post-production that it took a lot of effort to get there.”
“No one can say out loud, ‘We’re taking this away from her because of this bad press,’” said the agent, Jessica Kovacevic. “But there’s no other reason.”
Kovacevic claimed that “Aquaman” was a global smash with over $1 billion in box office receipts and that Heard’s performance was well-received, and that she should have shot to celebrity after that, using Ana de Armas as an example. However, not all of the reviews for “Aquaman” were positive, with one critic criticising Heard’s “wooden” line delivery and another describing her character as “one of the least fascinating big-screen love interests in recent memory.”
Depp’s team objected to Heard’s side’s comps, which included Zendaya, de Armas, Momoa, Chris Pine, and Gal Gadot, claiming that several of those actors had performed key roles and had significantly longer careers than Heard.
Heard’s op-ed, according to Depp, cost him a lucrative return to the realm of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” costing him $22.5 million. However, the relationship between cause and effect becomes hazy here as well. Depp’s deal for the film, if it ever existed, was never written.
Although Heard’s opinion article was published in December 2018, the Daily Mail reported in October of that year that Depp was no longer a part of the franchise. Depp appeared to accept that he could have been fired before Heard’s article, but he continued to link it to her first charges in the 2016 divorce filing.
“I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “Two years had gone by of constant worldwide talk about me being this wife-beater. So I’m sure that Disney was trying to cut ties to be safe. The #MeToo movement was in full swing at that point.”
There was no record of Heard’s op-ed in Disney’s files, and there was never a deal for Depp to star in the sixth “Pirates” picture, according to a Disney representative.
Although a decision in the Depp and Heard case is likely in the coming days, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, which catapulted Depp to stardom, is continuing without him. Jerry Bruckheimer, the franchise’s producer, confirmed that Depp would not be returning in a recent interview. Instead, the studio is working on two possible sequels, one of which will be a female-centric adventure starring Margot Robbie.
Regardless matter the outcome of the trial or a lucrative offer, Depp vows he will never use Jack Sparrow’s mascara again.
“There was a deep and distinct sense of feeling betrayed by the people that I’ve worked hard for,” Depp said.
