24% of Americans thought OJ Simpson was innocent in 1995.
12% of Americans thought Casey Anthony was innocent in 2011.
25% of Americans thought Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted in 2021.
Only 10% of Americans believed Amber Heard was telling the truth in scientifically done polls.
OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony & Derek Chauvin were all visibly guilty of murder/homicide, but the three managed to get more support from the public over Amber Heard in her defamation case with Johnny Depp.
A couple things have lead to where we are today.
The first was Johnny Depp getting fired from the third Fantastic Beasts movie, but due to contract, was still paid 10 million for filming four hours of footage a year prior.
The second one was the rumor Amber Heard was fired from Aquaman 2 and replaced with Game of Thrones actress, Emilia Clarke.
Looking at the case, I did support Johnny Depp feeling there was some fowl play on what was going on, so I wanted to discuss why I made that choice and why I feel this trial became such a big deal.
First up, the reasons for backing Johnny Depp.
Looking at everything, I believe the best way to judge anything is history.
Johnny Depp had public support from all of his ex’s, with very high profile names such as Winona Ryder coming out for Johnny Depp.
There were rumors of abuse from Johnny Depp towards his ex Kate Moss and she testified in the trial recently confirming them not only false, but a complete 180 on the story. A rumor being he pushed her down the stairs in the 90s, but reality was she fell due to it raining by the hotel and Johnny Depp got her a doctor.
Johnny Depp being in his late 50s, with almost four decades in entertainment, never having a single accusation before this made it hard to believe it’d start now.
After that, Amber Heard’s history had a different story.
She was married in the late 2000s to her ex-wife Tasya Van Ree, where in 2009, she was arrested at an airport for punching her and several people witnessed it.
When asked about it later on, she accused the airport staff of being homophobic, only to learn the woman that arrested her was a lesbian.
Not a lot of support happened for Amber Heard and other scandals with ex’s surfaced.
Amber Heard dated Elon Musk after divorcing Johnny Depp and was later quoted accusing Elon Musk of bugging her Tesla.
After that, the specifics on this abuse case.
- There was an audio tape of Amber Heard & Johnny Depp talking, where she admitted to bruising him, while he continued to deny it and she said nobody would believe him for being a man.
- The cop who came when she called the police on him said she didn’t see any bruises on Amber Heard.
- Amber Heard’s makeup artist came out saying she never saw bruises, despite her working with Heard during the time of the abuse.
- The couple’s marriage counsellor in her notes, which were revealed in the trial said Amber Heard would start the violence.
There was a lot of evidence that something was wrong here.
On top of that, there were the charitable donations.
Amber Heard had a prenup with Johnny Depp, which changed when she accused Depp of abuse.
In settlement for signing an NDA, she was paid 7 million in the divorce.
Amber Heard claimed she’d donate the money to prove the claims weren’t about money, but ended up only donating 10% of it and fundraised for the ACLU, with Elon Musk and Johnny Depp being her biggest donors.
That made it really hard to feel bad for her.
On top of that, the defamation trial itself.
Amber Heard signed an NDA to never speak about Johnny Depp again, but did an article for the Washington Post where she called herself a victim of abuse and did everything besides say his name.
Johnny Depp lost all work after that and made the damages of that claim in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions.
Looking at this, the case is one of the biggest stories in the last 10 years and I’d argue the biggest trial since George Zimmerman in terms of PR.
That, I’d put to two reasons. One being okay and the other being bad.
The first one, it’s Johnny Depp.
This is a pretty sensitive legal case with an A list celebrity of 30 years.
It’s obvious why it got the level of coverage it did.
The second one and the one I’m worried by, it was a response to the Me Too movement.
A lot of people have been accused of doing awful things.
James Franco
Bill Cosby
Kevin Spacey
Armie Hammer
Floyd Mayweather
Harvey Weinstein
A lot of people who are men that I believe did horrible things to both men and women, that shouldn’t work again.
Most of those, I think the public agreed near universally on them being bad.
The issue though for Me Too became when a lot of the famous people being shut down weren’t clearly guilty anymore and instead, it was grey.
Louis CK was an example of this, where he clearly did something wrong, but while inappropriate, it was technically consensual.
After that, things got stranger, where cases such as Aziz Ansari, John Lasseter and Chris Hardwick getting almost ruined over very thin accusations, where it felt people were happy to never see them work again over things which weren’t really stories.
This created sort of a flow for Me Too, where it initially had 90%+ public support, but began gradually going after so many people, it got hard to back it always.
Johnny Depp was the biggest name and had the best case for innocence, which created this desire to have him win, so Me Too as a whole would collapse.
This I’m genuinely worried about.
I think 99% of the time, the accuser is telling the truth and people should listen, but this case is now an attempt for people to dismiss that other 99%.
Final thoughts
All said and done, I’m happy with the results and amazed it happened, where I thought they’d declare a mistrial halfway through.
It ended up with a win for Johnny Depp and a news story, which I think will still be talked about and mentioned for years to come.