Actor Amber Heard, who is known for appearing in DC’s Aquaman, is temporarily quitting social media ahead of the hearing of a defamation suit that ex-husband and actor Johnny Depp filed against her for recounting moments of domestic abuse.
The hearing is slated for Tuesday.
“I’m going to go offline for the next several weeks. As you may know, I’ll be in Virginia, where I face my ex-husband Johnny Depp in court. Johnny is suing me for an op-ed I wrote in the Washington Post, in which I recounted my experience of violence and domestic abuse,” Heard wrote in an Instagram post, on Saturday.
She added, “I never named him, rather I wrote about the price women pay for speaking out against men in power. I continue to pay that price, but hopefully when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny. I have always maintained a love for Johnny and it brings me great pain to have to live out the details of our past life together in front of the world.”
Heard and Depp got married in 2015 after dating for three years. In 2016, Heard filed for divorce stating that Depp was abusive. While their divorce was finalised in January 2017, the two have been engaged in a prolonged legal battle.
Depp, who has starred in films like Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fantastic Beasts franchise, sued Heard in 2019 over an op-ed piece she wrote for the Washington Post in December 2018, describing her life as a victim of domestic abuse.
He had also filed a libel suit against the British tabloid The Sun, for calling him a “wife-beater.” But, that lawsuit was rejected by the British High Court in 2020. The court also found that 12 of the 14 alleged domestic violence incidents did occur.
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Despite Heard’s attempts to get the defamation suit quashed at the time of the libel case against The Sun, the judge noted that Heard’s interest in having the court recognise her domestic violence charges against Depp and The Sun’s interest in the libel suit did not align. The court thus allowed the defamation suit to proceed and this case is now up for hearing.
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the legal battle between the two, Depp was dropped from major projects like Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean as well as the new Fantastic Beasts film.
Even though Depp’s fans demanded that a similar treatment be meted out to Heard, the producers of Aquaman clarified that they had no plans of removing her from the franchise.