Amber Heard loses her cool as cross-examination ends

Johnny Depp‘s legal team wrapped up its cross-examination of Amber Heard after two grueling days of questioning by grilling her on her relationship with James Franco and accusations she abused her ex-girlfriend. 

Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez ended her cross-examination by referencing allegations that Heard hit her ex-girlfriend Tasya van Ree in 2009. Two officers allegedly witnessed Heard smack van Ree in the arm and yank her necklace off, and she was arrested, but the charges were quickly dropped.

‘Johnny Depp isn’t the only partner of yours that you’ve assaulted,’ Vasquez said.

‘I’ve never assaulted any partner,’ Heard insisted. ‘I’ve never assaulted Mr. Depp or any other person I was romantically linked to, ever.’

No further questions, your Honor,’ Vasquez said, wrapping up two days of cross-examination.

Earlier Vasquez asked Heard why James Franco visited her at her Los Angeles penthouse in May 2016, the day after the violent argument with Depp that was the final straw in their marriage.

The court has heard previously that Depp was extremely jealous of Franco and thought that Heard was having an affair with him. The jury was shown video of Franco and Heard in the elevator of the apartment building. 

‘You knew that Mr. Depp was out of town May 22, 2016, didn’t you?’ Vasquez asked Heard, adding that the visit came the day after she changed the locks.

‘I didn’t know his schedule,’ she replied.

JAMES FRANCO VISIT TO THE PENTHOUSE  

Heard said of Franco: ‘He was my friend and he lived quite literally next door. I’d exhausted my support network and I was happy to welcome as much friendship as I could possibly get.’

Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft asked Heard about CCTV footage from the building that showed her in the elevator with Franco shortly before 11pm that night.

In the clip he is seen putting his head on Heard’s shoulder in an affectionate gesture.

Heard said: ‘After seeing my face put his head on my shoulder. He touched the side of my face too’.

Heard claims that Depp threw a phone at her the night before, leaving a bruise on her cheek.

She told the court that Franco ‘touched the side of my face and responded to what he saw.’

AMBER RELEASED FROM AQUAMAN 

Earlier the court heard an unhinged argument between Depp and Heard in which she tells him: ‘Suck my d**k!’

Depp responds: ‘Suck my d**k!’

He adds: ‘Suck your d**k.’

Heard tells him she regrets believing ‘all the lies you sold’ and calls Depp a ‘washed up piece of s***’ and a ‘sellout’.

Heard tells Depp that ‘you’re a joke’ and Depp replies sarcastically: ‘I’m the joke in the industry, Amber?’

Depp says bitingly: ‘Aquamannnnnn’.

Heard replies: ’21 Whatever. No-one cares’, referring to 21 Jump Street, the TV series which was Depp’s big break in his 20s.

Vasquez asked Heard if it was true that Depp got her the co-starring role in Aquaman.

Heard said: ‘Excuse me? No Miss Vasquez I got that role by auditioning.’

Vasquez asked: ‘You were the jealous one in this relationship?’

Heard said: ‘Johnny’s always been very jealous when I worked.’ 

Heard told the court that she was released from her contract to do Aquaman 2 – but managed to stay in the movie.

However she has no idea how long she will appear once the film airs in theaters.

Asked if she was replaced in the movie, which is due out next year, Heard said that ‘they released me from my contract’.

She said she had to ‘fight’ to keep her role as Mera, adding that ‘I don’t know how much I’m in the final cut.’

There was laughter in court as the jury heard a Tweet that Heard sent to Depp’s former lawyer Adam Waldman in March 2021.

Heard claims that Waldman’s statements that her allegations were a ‘hoax’ were defamatory and are the basis of her $100million counterclaim.

In response to a comment by Waldman about her injuries being fake, Heard Tweeted: ‘Yes Mr. Waldman, I may be wearing makeup on this occasion but on every occasion you will still be short.’

Vasquez sought to portray Heard as the aggressor in the relationship by playing an audio recording where she admits to hitting Depp.

Vasquez asked Heard if she struck Depp ‘multiple times.’

Heard said that ‘many times I had to use my body to defend myself. If it meant the difference between a sore face and a broken nose, you bet I would.’

Asked if Heard was usually the ‘initial aggressor’, she said that if Depp was choking her then she might be the first person to slap him.

Heard claimed that if she got physical it was to ‘defend myself.’

Heard denied editing photographs she took after her final argument with Depp in May 2016 before she filed for divorce.

Vasquez showed the jury two photos side by side that Heard took showing herself with a red face and a bruise on her face.

She asked Heard: ‘You just edited these photographs?’

Heard said: ‘Never’.

Vasquez asked if Heard ‘enhanced the saturation to make your face look more red?’

Heard said: ‘That’s incorrect, I didn’t touch it’.

DEPP CAN’T LOOK HEARD IN THE EYE  

Heard told the court that the real reason Depp can’t look her in the eye is that he is ‘guilty’.

Depp’s lawyers have previously claimed that Depp vowed to never look her in the eyes again once they divorced.

With a wobbly lip, Heard said: ‘Because he’s guilty. He knows he’s lying otherwise why can’t he look at me?

‘I survived that man and I’m here and I’m able to look at him’.

While doing this she stared at Depp who kept his head down and spoke with his lawyers, refusing to meet her gaze.

The court has previously heard an audio clip of Depp from July 2016 – after the divorce – in which he says she will ‘never see my eyes again’.

Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft mocked Depp by putting on a low voice to reprise the remarks – sparking laughter from Depp.

Heard said that Depp has in fact looked her in the eyes since the divorce and at their first divorce mediation in July 2016 he did so ‘many times’.

He also kissed her and gave her a note which said: ‘I’ll love you dead or alive’ with his new number on it.

In an audio played in court, the jury could hear Heard begging with Johnny not to leave as he tried to visit his daughter. 

Depp pleaded with her, ‘Why don’t you just say, ”Okay baby, I understand, I’ll go home and you do your thing and hang out with your daughter and then I’ll see you in a couple hours and we’ll talk about it.” Is it that difficult to say that? Or do you f**king hate me? Please, it isn’t that difficult. Okay?’ 

‘I don’t want to stand here in a driveway and argue with you,’ Heard responded.

‘I don’t either.’

Heard told Vasquez that she was trying to stop Depp from taking drugs.  

COUPLE’S ‘LOVE JOURNAL’ REVEALED IN COURT

The court was shown Depp and Heard’s ‘love journal’ they would both write in to each other.

In a diary entry on May 22, 2015, Heard wrote: ‘True love isn’t about just the madness of passion or picking the safety of peace. It’s about having both. I have seen in you the true bones of friendship and respect but I still more than ever want to rip you apart, devour you and savor the taste.’

When pressed by Depp’s attorney Vasquez on the contents, Heard told the jury it was a ‘love note’ to Depp, whose own writings in the book were redacted.

Heard has previously claimed that during her honeymoon with Depp in July 2015 aboard the Orient Express he brutally assaulted her.

But the court was shown a note in the diary from July 22 that year which read: ‘My husband, happy honeymoon.’

The inside cover was a photo from when they were back in Australia having made up after the fight two months before.

Heard said that the image, where they are arm in arm on a boat, was ‘much later’ once they returned to Australia.

Heard said this was during a ‘honeymoon period’ when Depp was clean and sober.

Heard signed it off as ‘Slim’, Depp’s nickname for her.

In a note on April 8, 2016, Heard wrote: ‘I am sorry I can get crazy. I am sorry I hurt you. Like you I can get wicked when I get hurt’.

Heard added that she was ‘sorry for my part’, and that there is ‘never a reason good enough to hurt you’.

In a note on August 1, 2015, Heard wrote: ‘I couldn’t wait to tell you how much I adore you

‘I couldn’t have imagined a more gorgeous honeymoon’.

The following day Heard wrote that she missed Depp and called him a ‘warm, loving husband’.

Vasquez asked Heard if the book was a ‘love journal’ and she said yes.

Heard said: ‘The book was more of a love note book and part of communication, it was important for me to try to nurture as much peace as we possibly could’.

Vasquez asked if it was ‘also an opportunity to apologize to Mr. Depp for your behavior?’

Heard said it was ‘important to apologize’ to move on from fights.

In a note on August 17, 2015, Heard wrote, ‘I’m sorry I shook the wheel so hard. God damn I love you Johnny, I’m tied to you forever.

‘Let me try to fix this, let me try to patch this You deserve it. I need you….You’re my cornerstone, my heart, my all. I hate it when we fight.

‘I love you more than anything. I need you, I love you.’

GRILLED OVER GIFTING ‘ABUSIVE’ JOHNNY A KNIFE  

The court was shown the actual knife that Heard bought Depp as a present in 2012 – it has the inscription ‘Hasta la muerte’, or ‘Until Death’ on it.

Heard has testified that Depp used to say that the ‘only way out of this relationship is death’, which is why she inscribed it as such.

Until now the jury has only seen photos of the weapon.

Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez asked the master deputy of the court to show the knife to Heard and the jury, which he did.

Vasquez asked Heard if this was a period when Depp was being violent, and Heard said that he was in and out of sobriety in 2012.

Vasquez said: ‘During these cycles of violence you gave Mr. Depp a knife as a gift?’

Heard said: ‘I gave him a knife for a birthday present early in our relationship, around 2012.’

Vasquez said: ‘That’s the knife you gave to the man who was hitting you.’

Heard shot back: I wasn’t worried he was going to stab me with it.’

Vasquez said: ‘But you gave it to him?’

Heard admitted: ‘I gave it to him.’

Heard said that the night before her wedding to Depp in February 2015 on his private island in the Bahamas she planned to take mushrooms with her girlfriends for her bachelorette party.

The court was shown an email Heard sent on February 2, 2015 about the planning of the wedding itself.

The schedule said that after a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding there would be a ‘dance party and drugs and music.’

The court has previously heard that Heard and her friends were taking MDMA during the ceremony itself.

Asked about the email, Heard claimed it was a ‘proposed’ schedule and that the final running order was different.

Vasquez asked bitingly: ‘You planned to have drugs at your wedding to someone you characterized as a drug addict?’

Heard said that the ‘schedule ended up changing quite a bit.’

Vasquez said: ‘The original idea was to have a rehearsal dinner with your husband, the drug addict, the monster, and do drugs with girlfriends?’

Heard said: ‘I realize that’s what the email suggests. The schedule ended up changing.’

She added that there was going to be marijuana on the island and that she planned to do a ‘cuddle puddle’ with her girlfriends during the bachelorette party while they were high on mushrooms, referring to them having a group hug.

CHALLENGED OVER AUSTRALIA ‘HOSTAGE’ SITUATION

Vasquez challenged Heard’s recollection of the fight in Australia in March 2015 when she claims he cut his fingertip off while bashing a phone against a wall.

Depp has claimed that Heard sliced it off when she threw a vodka bottle at him.

The court was shown a photo of the bar area from after the fight at the rented property that Heard and Depp were staying at.

Vasquez asked why the broken pieces of the wall mounted phone could not seen on the floor.

Heard claimed that whoever took the picture was standing ‘right in front’ of where the phone should be. The court was shown another photo of the bar area with an intact phone in it.

Heard said that wasn’t the phone Depp smashed and the one he destroyed was ‘decorative, large and antique’ – the photo shown to the jury was a modern design.

Vasquez asked Heard about the sequence of events that Heard was claiming happened.

She inquired whether it was correct to say that Depp smashed the phone, assaulted Heard, lost the tip of his finger then sexually assaulted her.

Heard said: ‘I have never claimed that I can remember the exact sequence. This was a multi-day assault, that happened over three days and was the worst thing that happened to me.’

Vasquez challenged Heard over her claim that Depp sexually assaulted her with a bottle.

The jury were shown an image of a bottle of Makers Mark liquor that Heard claimed she found the morning afterwards and testified that it appeared to be the bottle Depp used.

Heard has previously described feeling a ‘pressure’ on her pubic bone and thought Depp was punching her private parts.

Vasquez asked: ‘This is Maker’s Mark bottle Mr. Depp assaulted you with?’

Heard said that it was ‘definitely that shape.’

Heard said that she had cuts to her forearms, feet and a bruise on her jaw.

But she admitted that she ‘didn’t seek treatment’ from a doctor for the injuries.

Heard also admitted that, in contrast to other incidents of violence, she did not take pictures of her injuries.

The court was shown photos taken by Heard of writing on the mirrors of the property in black and red paint and blood that Depp wrote after the fight.

Vasquez asked Heard if she wasn’t in any of the because ‘because you didn’t have any visible injuries on you?’

Heard said she was capturing the writing.

Vasquez asked Heard if she wrote in red on the mirror: ‘Call Carly Simon, she said it better babe.’ The message appeared to be a reference to Simon’s song ‘You’re So Vain.’

Vasquez said: ‘If you did write that it would mean your husband is writing around bleeding from his finger and you’re writing snarky messages.’

Heard said: ‘I don’t know what your question is’.

The court was played an audio recording of Depp and Heard later talking about the incident in Australia in which Depp described being followed around the house by his then wife.

Vasquez asked Heard if this is what ‘really happened in Australia’, that she pursued Depp through ‘five bathroom doors and two bedrooms’ as the audio detailed.

Heard shot back that Depp ‘is not an accurate historian’, causing him to laugh out loud in court.

She claimed that she knocked on one bathroom door and that she didn’t assault Depp

Vasquez asked: You weren’t scared of him at all were you?’

Heard said: ‘I have a mixed relationship with Johnny. One in which I’m scared one in which I love him very much’.

Vasquez asked if during the Australia incident she wasn’t scared of him.

Heard said: ‘This is a man who tried to kill me. Of course it’s scary. He’s also my husband’.

HEARD CLAIMS PHOTO OF JOHNNY DEPP WITH BRUISES IS PHOTOSHOPPED 

 Heard claimed a photo of Johnny Depp with two black eyes is photoshopped.  

Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez presented a photo from the couple’s honeymoon in 2015 that shows the Pirates of the Caribbean actor with dark bruises under his eyes. Depp, posing alongside his now ex-wife and three others, appeared to have visible injuries and swelling on his face.

Heard said under cross examination, ‘I’ve seen this picture before, and he’s not injured in it. This one is photoshopped.’

Heard claimed that on this trip Depp slapped her across the face, grabbed her by the neck and pushed her against the wall of a train car, however there is no photographic evidence of Heard’s alleged injuries. 

Vasquez said, ‘This is the only photo from your honeymoon that shows someone injured.’

Heard claimed that her honeymoon with Depp was ‘peaceful’ until he started drinking ‘brown alcohol’.

‘The train trip itself was peaceful up until Johnny would start drinking brown alcohol. He’d already started drinking champagne when he wrapped on Pirates 5,’ Heard said.  

‘I wasn’t ready to accept we’d gone back to a pattern at all. On the last night on the train after this was taken Johnny and I got into argument about him wanting me to agree to him drinking liquor. An argument followed in our sleeping car.

‘Johnny slapped me across the face and got a hold of my neck and pushed me up against the wall of the car. It was a small narrow sleeper car.

‘He was standing on the floor. I was trying to get his arms off my neck and he was squeezing my neck for what felt like a very long time.

‘Every time he’d pull me away from the car he’d slam me up against the wall. I remember trying to get his arms off my neck and remember thinking he could not even mean to kill me

‘I remember being scared he wouldn’t even mean to do it. Clawing at him, trying to get his arms away from my neck. At one point he tripped the top of my shirt, I had a breast exposed

‘I pull at the lapel of his shirt and he rips the shirt off of him and wraps it around my neck and that’s how I woke up the next morning, I woke up with it still around my neck and a giant knot in the back of my head.’