Amber Heard sat down for her first interview since a jury found that she had defamed her ex-husband Johnny Depp in a highly publicized public trial that ended with Johnny being awarded $15 million in damages and Amber $2 million in her countersuit. “To my dying day (I) will stand by every word of my testimony,” she told TODAY show‘s Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired on Thursday, June 16.
“And that’s all I spoke [is the truth]. And I spoke it to power,” Heard told the host. “And I paid the price.”
In an earlier preview released on Monday, Amber decried the backlash she received on social media during and after the trial.
“Even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t tell me — look me in the eye and tell me — that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation,” Heard said. “You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”
In spite of the verdict overwhelmingly in the Pirates of the Caribbean star‘s favor, Amber said she doesn’t “care what one thinks about me or what judgements you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors.”
In fact, the Aquaman star doesn’t even blame the jury for their decision.
“I don’t presume the average person should know these things. And so I don’t take it personally,” she added. “I actually understand. He’s a beloved character and people feel they know him. He’s a fantastic actor.”
The jury’s verdict found that Amber defamed her ex-husband in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, in which she wrote, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change. Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
“I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse,” she added.
In the fallout after the trial, Amber shared her initial reaction on Instagram, writing in a statement, “The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence and sway of my ex-husband.”
Johnny, in a statement of his own, said that “jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled.”
Even though Heard only has to pay the actor $10.35 million, due to a Virginia law that sets a maximum for punitive damages, Amber’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, said she can “absolutely not” pay that amount in another preview for Amber’s TODAY show interview released earlier in June.
Source: InTouch
