Johnny Depp Details Grisly Attack From Amber Heard That Resulted In His Finger Being Severed, Audio Tapes Show Aquaman Star Admitting To “Hitting” Him

Spencer Baculi |

Apr 21, 2022

Source: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018), Warner Bros. Pictures

In the sixth day of testimony given in Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard, the Aquaman actress was not only accused of abuse by her ex-husband, but also heard in an audio recording outright admitting to engaging in such actions.

Taking the stand for the second day in a row on April 20th, Depp opened the proceedings by recalling the deterioration of his relationship with Heard, explaining to the court that during the course of their relationship, he suddenly found that she began treating him as if he “was just wrong, about everything” (00:09:00).

“If I made a statement about something that I had been familiar with, for example in my work, that I’ve been chopping away at for thirty years, I was suddenly wrong,” he stated. “Then, beyond that, if you tried to explain yourself and correct the problem, the misunderstanding, began to heighten, as Ms. Heard was unable to be ‘wrong.’ It just didn’t happen. She couldn’t be wrong.”

Continuing, Depp noted that “these little digs, they would commence with demeaning name-calling, berated sort of to be made a fool of, and those would escalate into full-scale arguments.”

“And in the beginning, as one does, one sticks up for oneself in a debate or an argument over something to try to prove a point, but when it escalates…It’s hard to explain, but the argument would start here, and then it would roll around and become this circular thing of its own,” he explained. “So, you’d get back to the beginning, essentially of the argument, now it’s heightened even more, but it’s still circular, and there’s no way in or out.”

“It was sort of a rapid-fire, endless parade of insults and, you know, looking at me like I was a fool,” he said of Heard’s rhetoric during these arguments. “And I just, I couldn’t. I was having difficulty in my mind and in my heart, dealing with that sort of barrage.”

“I was not allowed to be right, I was not allowed to have a voice,” he asserted. “So I found the only way to find any sort of peace was to try and walk away. There were times when I would just go and lock myself in the bathroom, anywhere that she couldn’t get into. That happened constantly over the years.”

Asked by one of the attorneys on his legal team, Jess Meyers, to describe how their fights “would escalate,” Depp told the court, “Well, if they escalate…if I continued to try to present my version, my side of the story – when you’re approached with such anger and hatred, it seemed like pure hatred for me. If I stayed to argue that, eventually, I was sure it was going to escalate into violence. And often times, it did.”

Pushed for an elaboration on what he meant by “violence”, Depp stated, “In her frustration and in her rage and in her anger would strike out.”

“It could begin with a slap, it could begin with a shove, it could begin with throwing a TV remote at my head, it could begin with throwing a glass of wine in my face,” the actor said. “All in all, it was constant.”

He further noted that Heard would also use his personal experiences and history, such as his abusive upbringing “as weapons” against him.

“Especially when it came to my kids,” Depp added. “There was no need for it. Too many lines were crossed, you couldn’t see the lines any more.”

As the trial proceeded, the Pirates of the Caribbean star eventually turned to the now-infamous severing of his finger at the alleged hands of Heard (2:16:00), revealing that the incident erupted after his ex-wife discovered that he had requested a post-nuptial agreement regarding their marriage.

“She was very upset,” said Depp. “She stated to me that what she had said to the lawyer, the woman, ‘Johnny can’t…he must not…he doesn’t know about this. He’s never seen. He doesn’t know this is what this is. No way he would agree to this.’ What Ms. Heard then expressed to me was that the lawyer, the woman, had laughed at her and said ‘Oh, he knows. Yes, he knows everything.’”

“‘Which sends her into a tailspin, so by the time she arrived in Australia [to visit him on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales], that was sunk pretty deep into her psyche,” he posited. “So much so that, what really surprised me, was that she kept saying ‘I’m not even in your will. I’m not even in your will.’ I thought that was an odd thing to say, especially since I don’t think anybody had had time to change wills or anything of that nature.”

“It felt wrong,” Depp surmised. “And she would not let go of the fact that I was ‘in’ on this post-nuptial agreement and that I was trying to trick her into essentially getting nothing if something were to happen.” When asked how he responded to her, Depp replied, “I said, ‘I just told her those were not my intentions.’”

“It escalated and escalated and turned into madness, chaos, violence,” he then declared. “She was irate. She was irate and she was possessed. And when I tried to remove myself, as I normally would from a situation, as she’s hammering me with brutal words and, you know…it wasn’t nice being called an ‘ass kisser to lawyers,’ or a ‘p—y who didn’t fight for her or stand up for her.”

“I think that I ended up locking myself in about at least nine bedrooms and bathrooms [in my temporary Australia residence] that day as she was banging on the doors and screaming obscenities and wanting to have a physical altercation,” he stated.

When asked how his finger became injured, Depp answered, “At one point, I’d stayed sitting on the bathroom floor, door locked, she’s banging away, banging away, screaming. Then suddenly, she stopped, and I could hear her walk away. I could hear her receding into the distance, if you will.”

The actor then maintained that, following this outburst, he proceeded to go to a bar in the house’s bottom floor and poured himself “two or three stiff shots of Vodka – the first taste of alcohol I’d had in a long time” before Heard found him there and “started screaming, ‘Oh, you’re drinking again, a monster, so she walked up to me and reached the bottle of Vodka and then just kind of stood back…and hurled it at me.”

Though Depp said that this initial projectile missed his person and shattered on a wall behind him, a second, larger vodka bottle which he attempted to pour drinks from was also thrown at him by Heard, this time resulting in the actor noticing that “the tip of my finger had been severed.”

“And I was looking directly at my bone sticking out and the meaty portion of the inside of your finger, and blood was just pouring out,” he recalled. “At that point, I think that I went into…I don’t know what a nervous breakdown feels like, but that’s probably the closest that I’ve ever been. Nothing made sense.”

Amidst this panic, Depp said that he “started to write with my blood in my own blood on the walls little reminders from our past that, essentially, represented lies that she had told me, lies that I had caught her in.”

Later in the trial (3:22:48), Depp’s legal team would play for the court a number of audio recordings taken during an argument between the couple in 2015 immediately after Heard claimed she had no memory of allegedly kicking the bathroom door and hitting me in the skull as I was bent down.”

Arguing over an instance where Depp appears to have told Heard to go tell a friend “that you punched me in the f—ing face,” the actress quickly attempts to counter with an admission of her own, stating “I didn’t punch you by the way. I’m sorry that I didn’t hit you across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you. I was not punching you. Babe, you’re not punched.”

“Don’t tell me what it feels like to be punched,” Depp can be heard standing up for himself, to which Heard again mockingly dismisses, “I know you’ve been in a lot of fights. You’ve been around a long time. I know.”

Depp then replies, “No, when you have a f—ing closed fist,” to which Heard counters, “You didn’t get punched. You got hit. I’m sorry I hit you like this, but I did not punch you. I did not f—ing deck you. I f—ing was hitting you. I don’t know what the motion of my actual hand was, but you’re fine. I did not hurt you, I did not punch you, I was hitting you.”

“What am I supposed to do? Do This?,” she further attacks, presumably imitating a physical motion of some kind. “The difference is I’m not sitting here b—-ing about, am I? You are. That’s the difference between me and you. You’re a f—ing baby. You are such a baby! Grow the f–-k up, Johnny!”

Ultimately, the recording drew to a close with an admission from Heard that she “did start a physical fight,” and a further berating of Depp for his decision to attempt to remove himself from the situation.