Year-end roundtable: Why we’re still talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
The most divisive trial of the year provided more questions than answers about celebrity, social media, domestic violence, and much more
Aux Features Johnny Depp
In a series of special year-end roundtable discussions, The A.V. Club looks back at the stories that made the biggest impact on pop culture in 2022.
The trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was inescapable in 2022. On the surface, it was a defamation lawsuit; Depp sued Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post about her experience with domestic violence. The conversation around the case, however, was far messier. As the trial played out on air, online, and on social media, questions arose about the role of social media, Hollywood in general, and the legacy of #MeToo, among other hot-button issues. The answers, not surprisingly, were as complicated as they were limited. Here A.V. Club staffers discuss the case, its impact, and why we’re still talking about it.
Hattie Lindert: An interesting question about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, beyond “why” we talk about it, is “how” we talk about it; how info from the trial was communicated into the cultural membrane and how the public reacted (which I feel like was often somewhat grim news fare in and of itself).
William Hughes: The “how” is all about money, I think: This felt like a big turning point for attention grifters realizing just how much cash and followers there were in riding and amplifying a story like this, which has so many aspects that activate people’s brains to these red-line extremes. You’ve got #MeToo backlash and celebrity gossip, all mixed in with the growing anti-media “Don’t let the ‘elites’ tell you what to think; let me tell you what to think” tactic.
Gabrielle Sanchez: Absolutely William. It certainly does not help that through the use of social media everyone feels as though they can become an expert by getting behind a camera and sharing their point of view, regardless of their knowledge about the law, the case, and the court proceedings. This trial then became something people could speculate on without any real consequences.
HL: Totally, everyone got to be a critic here and social media was also such a source of trivialization, definitely a new kind of online fodder that I hadn’t seen before. What was ultimately a trial about domestic abuse and power was treated so casually! Watching people make TikToks with audio from Heard’s more emotional testimony is a trend I especially recall noticing and just being floored by.
GS: The viral interest stemmed from many sources. Primarily, our culture is one that is hostile toward women, protective of men, and obsessed with the macabre (as seen with the true crime media complex). This trial became a reality show for many, who tuned into to see the “drama” play out in real-time.
Casual is a great way to put it, Hattie. It did not seem to dawn on folks that this was a case about horrendous, relational abuse, and if it did, it did not seem to matter.
WH: In a weird way, it’s a sort of grassroots movement. This always would have been A Story. (We’ve been covering the abuse allegations against Depp for years.) But it became one of the defining stories of the year because of the way people continually amplified each other on social media, egging each other on, and watching those follower counts tick up. There was an incentive to make the story bigger and bigger that eventually caused it to dominate all of the conversation for months.
And all powered, as you note, Gabrielle, by the wellspring of misogyny buried deep within our culture.
GS: What struck me about the case as well, was the number of women who were openly supporting Depp, and taking every chance they could to criticize and humiliate Heard.
WH: Well, it’s the whole myth of the “perfect victim,” right? If America’s going to believe a woman saying a man abused her, she’s got to be impossibly, unfairly impeccable. It’s pretty clear, from the testimony, that this was an unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship between two people who almost certainly shouldn’t have been in each others’ lives. And that gave the kind of people desperate for ammunition against Heard a lot of what they (thought they) wanted.
HL: The “perfect victim” conversation is such an interesting one too because in so many ways Amber Heard does have that look and appeal that one would think would lead to a different kind of coverage; I’m thinking of your true crime comment earlier, Gabrielle, and how so often cases involving young, attractive white women get so many eyes on them while movements like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women highlight that that’s not an attention or action afforded to every victim of violence. Even with the privileges Heard did and does have, she still faced such virulent, sustained hatred for her testimony.
Even though Depp lost his U.K. case, and The Sun was not held liable for referring to Depp as a “wife beater!” I would’ve imagined that that information, especially given how little so many people actually knew about the specifics, would skew some opinion, but that tidbit often seemed skipped over by the social media discourse.
WH: It often felt like people were convinced she had “gotten away with” something and had to be held accountable for it.
HL: Absolutely.
WH: Even though I have no idea what that would be, beyond “Being a moderately successful Hollywood actress married to Johnny Depp.”
HL: People, including Depp himself, also loved to act as if she had singlehandedly derailed his career when … be real. Didn’t his own behavior spur a good degree of his problems in the industry?
GS: If anything, it’s the case that brought Depp back into the Hollywood fold. Any evidence of abuse did nothing to prevent studios and those in the industry (ahem, Rihanna) from giving him jobs and a platform.
WH: Depp positioning himself as the victim—and millions of people backing him—is a big part of why this felt like such a depressing answer to #MeToo. People haven’t given up the fight to hold abusers accountable for their actions, but it feels like the opposing side has never been more empowered to push back against it.
I’m struck especially, Hattie, by what you were saying earlier about how this whole thing was packaged as “entertainment,” a sort of righteously angry soap opera for people to soak their brains in, day in and day out.
GS: I really want to talk about the long-term effects of this verdict and trial. As William said, the trial only did more to empower those who want to silence victims and support abusers.
The ramifications of this case continue to play out, and for me, it shattered any illusion of progress made by the #MeToo movement. The public’s vitriol for a woman seeking any form of justice disgusted me. This public response to the trial made me fearful and sad for the women who would come after Heard.
I’ve been covering the Tory Lanez assault trial, and I am seeing Megan Thee Stallion subjected to the same barrage of online abuse and harassment Heard was, and the court proceedings playing out on social media, propelled by speculation and misinformation. Like Heard, every word uttered and move made by Megan is being used against her, with added layers of misgynoir.
It seems as though people almost root for the women involved in these kinds of abuse trials to be liars who are looking to gain something from the proceedings because then it would affirm their ideas that women lie about this kind of stuff all the time (I don’t know why anyone would want this to be true, but nonetheless).
HL: 100%, Gabrielle. FKA Twigs’ suit against Shia LaBeouf also comes to mind as one to watch in the new year. These cases bring out the ugliest of the ugly in our culture, and it’s infuriating to watch—uninformed audiences who prefer to be spoon-fed narratives that resonate with their own truths. I certainly do hope, though, that cases like this will continue to be brought by prominent figures, and lead other abuse victims to feel within their rights to seek legal recourse.
[This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
49 Comments
A pop culture site trying to wring every last morsel out of a story involving one of the most popular Hollywood couples in the world? Shocker.Let’s write a piece about how we’re still talking about this thing.
Why we’re still talking about Johnny Depp and Amber HeardAd revenue. You’re still talking about them because people click on the articles to read the instantaneous shitshow in the comments. You honestly couldn’t give a single fuck about domestic violence victims or how male and female celebrities are treated differently. The bosses upstairs demand a certain amount of clickbait per day and you happily provide it for them. Go back to scrolling through Twitter/Instagram/Reddit for your next stolen “think piece” and stop trying to convince us you care.
And so far, this particular shit show hasn’t been particularly shit showy.
You’re not trying, people!
*inhales*Too much shit, not enough show.
Electric Poop-a-loo!
“This is a shit-show!”“Yes, and such small portions!”
I assume Engadget is just running a wrap-up of their year-round coverage about that Twitch bikini girl that hangs out in a kiddie pool.
100% agreed. I’ll add on that even if you take their coverage as sincere, an individual situation like this is sui generis and you can’t really extrapolate anything useful from a single example.
LMAO you’re obsessed
Because it gets clicks and that’s all you care about now.
Damn, came to say the same. Also, can we talk about Olivia Wilde too? I havent gotten my fill from the 875 thought pieces published here.
No one’s talking about it. You’re just posting “look at me…please” content.
“You are all terribly bad people for reading what we wrote endlessly, so endlessly, about” is a hell of an editorial line to be taking
It’s fine. Plenty of commenters on these threads pretend they don’t have any agency anyway, so fuck ‘em.
we learned it from contemporary feminism.
“White male uses feminism to justify his own shitty behaviour” is not the take you think it is.
don’t assume my identity, bigot.
Don’t worry, I didn’t.Also, tip for the future: If you’re so desperate to dismiss someone’s comment, it works better if you also don’t reply to it.
Oh good, you’re learning. Maybe for your next trick, you could learn not to be such a thin-skinned little prick.
Give us a break. You couldn’t even learn how to wipe.
You mean the rest of you aren’t restrained and forced to read the AVClub all day?
> WH: It often felt like people were convinced she had “gotten away with” something and had to be held accountable for it.> HL: Absolutely.> WH: Even though I have no idea what that would be, beyond “Being a moderately successful Hollywood actress married to Johnny Depp.”
Oh come on. You know exactly what (some) people felt she had gotten away with – being the abuser in the relationship, and preemptively and falsely claiming that Depp was. That’s exactly why the whole thing was such a cultural media circus – there was plenty of evidence to support pretty much any narrative you were predisposed to believe, whether that was “Depp is a powerful abuser protected by the system,” “Heard is sociopathic gold digger who gaslit everyone for years,” “they are awful for each other and just need to get out of each other’s lives, or “they are both degenerate creeps and neither deserves a shred of sympathy.”
This would have been a much more interesting piece if it wasn’t three people just sitting around agreeing with each other. Your version of why people are still talking about it is spot-on; there is plenty of ugly acknowledged history between these two, plus I don’t believe for a second that either was fully truthful during the trials. No matter who you think was more or less bad between them, there’s no way to look at the situation and say either was 100% right or wrong. It’s also insulting to claim that any questioning of Heard’s story is automatically the result of societal misogynism. Just because I don’t believe her entirely doesn’t mean I think abused women don’t deserve justice. Thus the conclusion; we don’t know, won’t ever know, and they just need to stay away from each other. With the added benefit of having hung big warning signs around their own necks for future potential partners to heed.
Frankly the only thing I think was 100% wrong was this whole thing revolving around the possibility that the accusation cost Depp jobs/roles. Way before this Heard shit, we’ve heard stories about him being an asshole. Plus we’ve seen plenty of supposedly canceled people come back and get roles in stuff regardless of accusations. While Heard may have caused a stir, imo the only person costing Johnny Depp roles is Johnny Depp.But otherwise I totally agree about no one being right or wrong.
That accusation of abuse and the public divorce that followed did actually cost him his role in The Secrets of Dumbledore. A few sources say that he was asked to resign, but that’s a bit hard to prove, all we do have is the timing of events and some background info that do make it a bit clear…The first accusations of abuse came in 2016, right around the time he was cast in The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) in which some fans responded harshly to the news (labelling Depp as an abuser who should no longer be in the spotlight). This prompted JK Rowling to vocally support Depp, which inadvertently ended up drawing more ire… but regardless, Depp was signed on for a multi-film contract. There’s been no reporting that I can find to say that Depp’s had issues with any cast or crew, and so far no one from the production has said anything negative about him. It’s hard to say that his “asshole” persona was any part of what would happen next.When the The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) sequel was put in production, Depp was only around for principal photography. When his issues with Heard made major headlines, and an impending trial was to take place… Depp notably stepped down and was re-cast/replaced by Mads Mikkelsen. Direct reasons for that have been mum, but we do have a lot of evidence to confirm that it was over the accusations of abuse. One thing I would like to point out right away is the fact that Depp was still paid almost $16 million for the sequel, even though he didn’t appear in it. This is what lead most investigators to believe that he was asked to leave the film following the verdict of the Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd court case, and that he could keep his money as long as he didn’t sue the production for breaching his multi-film contract.There are a few news sources that pressingly report that Depp “was asked to resign in November 2020″ after the first trial concluded. So that is why we can affirmatively say that the trial and headlines cost Depp some roles.
I think the tragic thing is that costars of both Depp and Heard will be asked to go along with cancel culture narratives. It was audibly uncomfortable when Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom, and Josh Gad asked about what it was like to work with Johnny Depp at one press conference I saw (the question was relatively innocent, presumably from a fan, and they said he was kind of a crazy guy referring mostly to an idiosyncratic personality) but his costars shouldn’t be put in the middle of it all
Well damn. Though frankly given the quality of those movies Depp might’ve dodged a bullet! (Rimshot)
“Way before this Heard shit…”Partial credit for being the first person in the discussion, roundtable-inclusive, who mentioned the real reason this story transcended the headlines to become truly inescapable inn 2022.
Yeah, co-sign on the lost roles business. IIRC the claim was it cost him another Pirates movie but at that point he’d already turned into a first-class weirdo who was a huge PITA to work with. Plus you can tell by the depressing public response that there’s still plenty of audience out there for him.
Didn’t the last pirates movie flop hard? I don’t think Disney was looking to make another one with an aging Jack Sparrow
It was the worst-reviewed but still pulled in close to $800MM worldwide. Has there ever been a more unexpectedly successful film franchise? The degree of mockery when the first movie was announced was brutal, fashioning a blockbuster movie around an aging theme park ride.
Maybe Iron Man? He was a B-tier character at best in the comics when the movie was made and now we have *gestures wildly at 50 MCU properties* this. But yeah I’d still rank Pirates as king of the “wait, really?” success stories.
I think a lot of people projected their own abuse onto the case as well, which doesn’t help. If you’re a man who was abused by women, you believed Depp. If you’re a woman who was abused by men, you believed Heard. If you were around a mutually abusive heterosexual couple in your life, or were in one yourself, you might think both of them are to blame.
Regardless, what’s true in your personal situation isn’t necessarily what’s true here, as each abuse case is its own thing.
it’s mostly interesting because Heard’s first case was much more objective in the UK, where she was successful, and didn’t rely on a very media influenced jury, and that Heard had a huge amount of evidence compared to most abuse cases. The fact that her evidence was ignored or that she somehow masterminded this for years was bizzaro, and that the public was drawing conclusions that were never the reality of what was being shown (the makeup compact as somehow proof she was lying when they just held that up as an example, the texts she provided about the dog regularly pooping in the bed being ignored etc.)it mostly was a failure of the media, where it seemed all were tip toeing around it or in support of depp.There’s no doubt abuse happens from women onto men, but for some reason the public tried to use this as that evidence, when it never was that. Her story is similar to most stories of abuse, where mutual abuse isn’t a reality, and mostly it showed how little the public understands domestic violence.
I think the case involved two very flawed people in a toxic relationship with no clearly defined victim or perpetrator and that along with the level of celebrity involved made it interesting. What I don’t understand and would challenge people to explain is why you would think that the trial in England was more fair than the trial in the U.S., other than the results themselves. I have only have a shallow understanding of the court system in England. I would guess that most people in the U.S., including the media, have less of a understanding than I do.
I don’t know about one being more fair than the other but it was less of a circus in the UK. But I don’t think they were dealing with the same question. In the UK I think it was a more simple “Did he beat her? Yes. Therefore she can say that he beat her.”. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jun/02/johnny-depp-amber-heard-libel-outcomes-differ-us-uk
The funny accents
Lawyers in wigs, maybe
Everybody loves toxic power couples, even when they’re no longer couples.
Honestly I’m in that “both of them are bad people” camp but the only thing that really bothered me was people going off about acting like they were professional psychologists and just deciding who was guilty based on who was displaying the correct emotions/reactions at any given time. There’s a real wave of people recently on YouTube/other media thinking that they can watch a criminal suspect in an interview and just discern their innocence/guilt by their demeanor and it drives me crazy every time.
Because two people can be at fault in domestic violence cases, despite the court deciding only one is? Also, Amber Heard is pretty and White and the media loves those two characteristics.
But Johnny Depp is white and use to be pretty
Why are we still talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard?(AV Club, dressed as a corn on the cob): WE’RE ALL TRYING TO FIND THE GUY WHO DID THIS
Perhaps the best way to advocate for woman and show your bias as Jezebel meets entertainment reporting is to not be so one-sided in your framing of objective reality. If you wanted to show us that Heard exists in a culture where people automatically believe and lionize men, it doesn’t have much credibility coming from a website that has spent the past 8 years hiring feminist writers who are always slipping their beliefs about the power of the patriarchy into nearly everything they write.
It’s ok to admit it: In some corners of the internet, women are lionized and each man is linked to the sins of all men. You are often one such corner.
As such you’re missing what drove so many women to support Depp over Heard. It’s not that they hate women but they were just tired of the believe all women (vs listen to women and take their claims seriously) philosopy that overdid #metoo.
I personally think the anti-Heard camp took it way too far, FWIW, and I don’t support the cancellation of either celebrity.
Pointless article. Just three vapid people patting themselves on the back for having the same inane opinions, and completely letting themselves off the hook for their role in perpetuating this news cycle (that they suppoedly found so “disturbing”) by running a story on it every single day! And even now, you still can’t stop. You’re all nothing but cogs in the media outrage machine.
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Hey, maybe you can try that with the articles!
Remember people, it’s a tale as old as the internet itself…if you click on their clickbait, they win. If you come back to argue with strangers over bullshit, they still win from your clicks. The question is, why are we all fighting on a previously decent yet increasingly terrible site that should just die?At the very least, could there possibly be a better media site out there? With better, honest movie reviews to make our forum fights meaningful again?I don’t know. Maybe it was Utah…
Well, that is the real question. Where is this better site?
The main take away from all this was that Amber pooped on the bed. Beyond that, most people didn’t really pay attention. It’s a big blow to #MeToo and any woman who will now come forward. The “she’s a liar!” defense is back in effect. They both sound like horrible people who were equally cruel to each other. But Depp’s charm and acting skills won out.