Johnny Depp will donate Amber Heard’s $1 million settlement to charities

The acrimony between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard continues. Heard has reportedly paid out her $1 million settlement to her ex-husband, who plans to donate the money to charity, according to a source for People. The insider claims the funds will be dispersed amongst five charities: Make-A-Film Foundation, The Painted Turtle, Red Feather, Tetiaroa Society, and Amazonia Fund Alliance.

After attempting to appeal the U.S. trial, in which Heard was found guilty of defamation, Heard ultimately decided to settle in December 2022. The Aquaman star said in a statement at the time that her life had been “destroyed” by coming forward with her story of abuse. “The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimized when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to,” she wrote in part. “I have made no admission, this is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward. I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder.”

Meanwhile, in their own statement, Depp’s lawyers said, “We are pleased to formally close the door on this painful chapter for Mr. Depp, who made clear throughout this process that his priority was about bringing the truth to light. The jury’s unanimous decision and the resulting judgment in Mr. Depp’s favor against Ms. Heard remain fully in place. The payment of $1M—which Mr. Depp is pledging and will (actually) donate to charities—reinforces Ms. Heard’s acknowledgment of the conclusion of the legal system’s rigorous pursuit for justice.”

The “actually” is the crux of the matter here, and what makes Depp’s charitable benevolence double as an act of spite. Heard’s own pledge to donate her $7 million divorce settlement from Depp featured prominently in the U.S. trial when an ACLU executive testified that the organization had only received half of the promised funds. A clip of Heard played in court in which she seemingly claimed the money had already been donated was used by Depp’s legal team to undermine her credibility.

The truth of the unfulfilled donation is more complicated than simply concluding that Heard lied, however. The actor never signed a pledge form (which would make the donations legally binding), but she did have an agreement to pay the money in installments over 10 years, a period which has not yet expired. Heard testified that she had trouble paying out her pledges because of her legal battles with Depp; the ACLU’s Terence Dougherty testified that the organization was made aware of her financial difficulties in 2019. Additionally, he testified that he was “not aware of any indication that Ms. Heard has decided to no longer pay additional amounts” (per Vulture).

Nevertheless, the damage was done; a juror told ABC News that the donation reveal was a “fiasco.” In a subsequent interview with Savannah Guthrie on Dateline, Heard—whose accusations against Depp were found to be “substantially true” in a similar U.K. case—said of the situation, “I feel like so much of the trial was meant to cast aspersions on who I am as a person, on my credibility, to call me a liar in every way you can.” She added, “This is another one of those examples if you pull back and you think about it, I shouldn’t have had to have donated it in an attempt to be believed.”