How Johnny Depp engineered his ‘redemption’

Detailed summary

Four years on from the viral Depp vs Heard law suits — Depp lost the UK case, while a US court ruled in his favour — the actor is back, with thousands of fans cheering him on

“We want Johnny! We want Johnny!” hordes of fans are chanting into the chilly November air. Actors like Rupert Grint, Sam Claflin, Andrea Riseborough and Ellie Bamber stroll the red carpet, surrounded by a lavish, Victorian gothic set replete with fake snow and cobblestones. Content creators and ex-Love Islanders are in sight, too. But the chorus of acolytes aren’t here for any of them. They’re here for Johnny Depp, a man who, just six years ago, in a courtroom just down the road, was told by a High Court judge that the claim Depp is a wife-beater is “substantially true”.

But this, the global premiere of Ebenezer, is Depp’s biggest comeback attempt since that fateful judgement. He is playing the eponymous character in Paramount’s Christmas film, the studio betting the film’s £28m budget on the public having forgotten the grimmer details of Depp and Heard’s toxic marriage.

As with any A Christmas Carol adaptation, the story follows a series of ghosts taking Ebenezer Scrooge through his life’s misdeeds. Maybe this marks an opportune time for Depp to reflect on his own?

Depp has always maintained his innocence, and in 2018, after a journalist at The Sun called him a “wife-beater”, citing evidence Heard had given in her divorce filings, Depp sued the paper’s owner for libel.

At the 2020 hearing, the court found that, on 12 occasions, Depp had abused Heard, and his attempt to appeal the verdict soon failed. Depp then took his case Stateside, suing Heard for $50m (£37.5m) for defamation. The case centred on an op-ed she had written in 2018 where she did not name Depp, but referred to herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”. Heard countersued, alleging Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman had defamed her in 2020.

The televised case revealed Depp’s darkest side yet. There was evidence of his drunken and drug-fuelled destruction of their home, footage of him throwing objects at Heard, and harrowing testimony from Heard alleging that Depp had sexually assaulted her with a…

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