Johnny Depp is back on the stand as he recounts blowout fights with Amber Heard

Johnny Depp was back in witness box Wednesday morning to answer questions for a second time.

Wearing a gray suit, blue shirt and dark yellow pattern tie, Depp was called back by his own lawyers as he sat drinking from a large metal cup full of coffee.

He recalled the incident with Kate Moss where she slipped down stairs on a vacation in Jamaica. Moss testified this morning that Depp had not pushed her down the stairs, as Heard had previously claimed on the stand.

‘As Kate Moss testified, many many years ago and what exactly happened is what she said happened. I recall speaking with Miss Heard about that very incident because of the downpouring of rain because it was raining very heavily the day Kate slipped,’ Depp said. ‘I recalled the story to her.’

‘Miss Heard took the story and turned it into a very ugly incident all in her mind. There was never a moment where I pushed Kate down any set of stairs yet she’s spewed this three times before.’

Heard lawyer Benjamin Rottenborn said that Heard simply heard a ‘rumor.’ 

‘What’s a rumor?’ Depp questioned. ‘Very simply we were in Jamaica, I’d left our bungalow about three minutes prior to her, I was standing outside and rain starts coming down like it’s a monsoon.

‘I remember seeing Kate coming out the door and there were three little wooden stairs, she slips her legs went up, she landed on her lower back. She was obviously physically in pain, she was hurt, she was crying. I ran over and grabbed her to make sure she was alright.

‘That’s it, that’s the whole story but then the rumor of it, I’d never heard a rumor of that before Miss Heard grabbed hold of it. It’s like that,’ Depp said. 

KATE MOSS TESTIFIES SHE WAS ‘NEVER PUSHED’ 

This came after Kate Moss told Johnny Depp‘s $100million defamation trial that he never pushed her down the stairs. 

Moss, appearing briefly via live video from Gloucestershire, England, said that while on vacation in Jamaica she slipped and Depp came to her aid. 

Moss said that throughout the court of their relationship (1994-1998), ‘He never pushed me, kicked me or threw me down any stairs.’ 

The famously-private model, who rarely discusses her personal life, shut down Heard’s claim the 58-year-old pushed Moss. 

Heard opened the door to Moss’ testimony by claiming she feared Depp would push her sister down the stairs during a violent argument. According to Heard, there was a rumor that Depp had once done the same thing to Moss and it came to her mind.

Questioned by Depp’s attorney Benjamin Chew, Moss said, ‘We were leaving the room and Johnny left the room before I did. There had been a rainstorm and as I left the room I slid down the stairs. I hurt my back. And I screamed because I didn’t know what had happened to me and I was in pain.

‘He came running back to help me, carried me to my room and got me medical attention.’

Moss was appearing as a witness for Depp during a stage of the trial known as rebuttal, where he gets to challenge Heard’s allegations.

Moss was at the height of her fame when she began her intense relationship with Depp who was a teen idol thanks to his roles in films like Edward Scissorhands.

Both of them were notorious for their drink and drug use and became known as the ‘chicest, druggiest couple in LA.’

Among their favorite hangouts was the Viper Room in Los Angeles, which Depp owned, where they partied with the likes of Jared Leto, Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron.

Moss later said that she ‘cried for years’ over the breakup, after which her drug use escalated and eventually led her to rehab.

After the testimony, a source close to Heard said, ‘So Johnny Depp didn’t abuse Kate Moss. That makes him 1 for 2 in the abuse column.

‘But, to date, he’s 0 for 1 in the courtroom on the central issue in this case back when he lost the same exact case in England. And when the jury deliberates over the singular issue in this case – whether Amber Heard can exercise her right of Freedom of Speech – he’ll be 0 for 2, no matter how much his lawyers try to distract and divert the jury’s attention.’

He denied having seen any of the statements made by his lawyer Adam Waldman calling Heard’s claims a ‘hoax’ before they were published. Depp said that the first he became aware of them was August 2020 when Heard countersued him for $100million.

Jessica Meyers, one of Depp’s lawyers, took him through each of the statements from Spring 2020 which Waldman made.

They said things like Heard’s claims were a ‘hoax’, that it was an ‘abuse hoax’ and that Heard and her friends staged a crime scene after the former couple’s last fight in May 2016.

Depp said that when he was first made aware of the statements he didn’t know ‘where they’d come from. It just seemed like a lot of word salad to me.’

‘I MADE CALLS TO GET AMBER THE ROLE IN AQUAMAN,’ DEPP CLAIMS  

Depp claimed that he did help Heard get the role of Mera in Aquaman, the role which made her a star.

He said: ‘After Miss Heard’s audition or auditions for Warner Bros, the creative team, Miss Heard expressed to me that the film was going to be shooting in Australia and Australia for Miss Heard was a potential problem.

‘That was of concern to her, it was of concern to Warner Bros. She asked if I would – I’d had a multi-film deal with Warner Bros for a few years so we’d been in business together so I knew these people, I’d been on films with them.

‘She asked me if I would speak to them. I made a phone call and I spoke to three upper echelon Warner executives’, reeling off their names.

Depp added: ‘Ultimately she did get the job in the film, so hopefully I suppose I’d curbed their worries to some degree.’

‘I’D BE DEAD IF I TOOK 10 MDMA PILLS,’ DEPP CLAIMS 

The questioning turned to the incident in Australia in March 2015 when Depp’s fingertip got sliced off during a violent argument with Heard.

He claims she sliced it off by throwing a vodka bottle at him. Heard says Depp smashed it off with a phone.

Depp was asked about Heard’s claims that he took 8-10 MDMA pills during what she claimed was a ‘three day hostage situation’.

Asked how many times he has done MDMA in his life, he said: ‘Actually not that many times. In my lifetime MDMA six, seven maybe.’

At this Heard could be seen smirking.

Asked how much MDMA he had taken during the Australia incident, Depp said, ‘Not enough to properly, well, to experience what the chemicals are supposed to do to you.’

Meyers asked Depp: ‘Have you ever consumed 8-10 MDMA pills at once?’

With a smile Depp said: ‘No ma’am I have not. Because I’d be dead. I think one would die. Probably rather quickly.’ 

‘SHE TOOK OFF A GOOD CHUNK OF MY FINGER, I MISS IT’

The court was shown photos of the aftermath of the fight where Depp’s fingertip was sliced off and the bar area where the row happened.

Depp drew on the picture and put out his hand on the bar to show where he was sitting and where Heard was standing when she threw one vodka bottle which missed him, and a second which hit his hand.

H said: ‘My arm was leaning on the marble bar, (I’m) leaning and being back and looking gat Miss Heard.

‘She walked away with the second bottle. She walked this way when she threw the first bottle which is visible on the floor’.

Depp pointed to glass fragments on the floor in a photo and said: ‘All that is the exploded first bottle. It went past my head. The second bottle hit right up here where my hand was resting on the marble bar.’

Depp said that another photo of blood spots was from his bleeding finger.

Depp was asked about a text he sent to his personal doctor, David Kipper, after the fight in which he said Heard was as ‘full of s**t as a Christmas Goose.’

According to Depp he was ‘telling him I’d had it and just lost a fingertip.’

Asked how he could text given he’d just lost a finger tip, Depp held up his hand and said: ‘He (right middle finger) wasn’t available at the time so thumb your way through it.’ 

Depp said: ‘The first thing he wanted to do was inspect the damage to my finger.

‘There would be no point in lying to the man. He’d been through it with me and Miss Heard before. I told him she’d thrown a bottle of vodka and cut my finger off, the tip of my finger. A good chunk. And I miss it’.

DEPP’S  ‘SHINER’ ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS  

Heard has claimed that Depp became violent during their honeymoon on the Orient Express in August 2015 and punched her repeatedly in their car.

Depp said that they did take the train from Bangkok, Thailand, to Singapore but his account was very different.

Depp said: ‘There were times when it was very agreeable, very nice and then there were times when something had become dissatisfactory for her and she would start then rant, the blooming of a fight would be on deck there.

‘At one point – I don’t remember it lasting long – I took a pretty good shot to the face, to the eye, to somewhere up here. I had a bit of a shiner but it all went, ended and everything got fine again and we’d go to dinner and it was all fine.’

The jury were shown a photo of Depp and Heard posing with the staff of the Orient Express.

Depp said that it showed his eye ‘a little bit bugged out.’

He said: ‘These things could happen very quickly. If you disagreed. I don’t look like myself much but it certainly looks like me with a black eye’,

Depp was asked if the image had been Photoshopped as Heard claimed.

He said: ‘It would be difficult to start getting into digital processing with a number of people on the shot.’

The jury were shown a photo of Depp and Heard posing with the manager of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore at the end of their trip.

Depp said you could see his left eye is ‘swollen and a bit of a shiner there.’

‘I DONATE MONEY ANONYMOUSLY, I DON’T NEED THE ADULATION’  

Depp dismissed claims from his former business manager Joel Mandel who testified the actor ignored pleas to get his finances in order.

According to Depp, Mandel was a ‘very bitter man’ who he discovered had embezzled ‘a lot of money that I worked hard for over the years.’

Depp took objection to Mandel’s claims that Depp did not donate much money to charity.

He said: ‘When I donate money, I donate without my name being involved because I don’t see that’s important, my name being there in terms of money.’

Depp said that he preferred to work behind the scenes such as turning premieres of his movies into benefit events for charities like Great Ormond St Hospital for children in London.

He said: ‘I’m not looking for that pat on the back. I don’t need the adulation, I don’t need the attention.’

‘AMBER’S SISTER WAS HER LACKEY AND PUNCHING BAG’ 

Depp said that he ‘grew to love’ Heard’s sister Whitney and let her live in one of his Los Angeles penthouses.

He said: ‘Whitney seemed to get the dirty end of the stick. I felt bad for her for that because it wasn’t new. It had been there for life. That seemed pretty obvious. I took to Whitney very, very quickly, she was a very sweet kid, she was wonderful.’

According to Depp, Whitney was treated by Heard as a ‘strange combination of loving sister, trusted sister and friend and then lackey’.

He added: ‘Either punching bag or dartboard or recipient of demeaning and ugly words or she would have wine thrown in her face (by Heard)’.

‘They were constantly up and down. I could sense Whitney was trying to please her sister, trying to be up to snuff and it seemed like she got shut down’.

Depp said he had never seen any ‘full on physical blow outs’ between Heard and her sister but he did see ‘tonnes of verbal blow outs’.

He had seen Heard ‘grab’ her sister and ‘push her around’ and recounted one time having to sit outside in his car while they fought.

As Depp testified Heard could be seen smirking and her lawyers were shaking their heads. 

Depp’s forensic psychologist insisted that Amber Heard does suffer from a personality disorder after being recalled to the stand on Wednesday. 

Dr. Shannon Curry – an expert witness for Depp – said that there were ‘clear indications’ that Heard was suffering from a personality disorder despite the actress’ own expert denying it.

In her previous testimony Dr. Curry diagnosed Heard with borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.

Heard called her own forensic psychologist as an expert witness, Dr. Dawn Hughes, who rejected Dr. Curry’s claims and said that Heard was suffering from PTSD.

Dr. Curry said that Dr. Hughes used checklists in her analysis that are ‘not appropriate for forensic settings’ and are ‘easily exploited’.

One example was the checklist given to Heard by Dr. Hughes about PTSD which is the most frequently claimed and feigned’ mental trauma.

According to Dr. Curry, giving Heard a checklist of the symptoms was like ‘teaching (her) all the little nuances to get that diagnosis’

Heard ‘ticked most of the items’ which led to her being diagnosed by Dr. Hughes with PTSD.

Dr. Curry said: ‘A person being evaluated will have a major incentive to benefit the outcome of their case.

‘You always approach examinations with a healthy dose of skepticism.’

Early Wednesday morning, fans continued to wait in long lines to get wristbands for the trial.

They passed the time trying to sleep wrapped up in blankets on the ground, playing cards, or chatting with new friends.

Early arrivals bided their time across the street before rushing across the courthouse lawn to secure a place in line when the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department finally allowed them on the premises.

Some, still in their sweatpants, did their makeup as 7am approached – the moment when sheriff’s deputies hand out the wristbands that are the fans’ prized tickets into the courtroom.

After all the wristbands are distributed, those who didn’t get in traipse to the back of the courthouse, hoping for the next best thing: a glimpse of Johnny Depp when he arrives for court.

A love forged in decadence: We rarely hear her speak, but Kate Moss is due to give evidence backing her ex, Johnny Depp. The reason? A love affair so destructively all-consuming that it drove her to rehab and years of grief, writes ALISON BOSHOFF 

They were the iconic couple of the period: a potent combination of beauty and cool, all dangerous cheekbones and grand passions, with a shared love of poetry, narcotics and booze.

During the course of their four-year romance, Johnny Depp presented Kate Moss with a diamond necklace — nestled between his buttocks, for a joke — and apparently poured her a bath of 36 bottles of champagne.

When they met, he was 31, she was 20. He introduced the young Croydon model to art galleries, the joy of owning first-edition books and his bohemian heroes, whom she adopted as her own.

Inspired by her lover, Kate developed a love of vintage looks straight out of the Keith Richards/Anita Pallenberg playbook, which helped to form her own style.

This was a global love affair, conducted at the Ritz hotel in Paris and the Chateau Marmont and The Viper Room in Los Angeles, with the couple flying around the world by private jet.

By 1998, Moss had hopes they would marry . . . but just at that point Depp dumped her.

A few weeks later, he met French actress Vanessa Paradis, and within three months she was expecting his baby.

Soon afterwards Kate went to rehab for the first time, and by her own admission she cried ‘for years’.

Depp was the one who got away, and the defining love affair of her life. Some believe she is still half in love with him.

The Kate Moss and Johnny Depp romance will come back into the spotlight today, when she testifies for him via video link in court in Fairfax, Virginia.

Depp is fighting to restore his shattered reputation, suing ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation in a case which essentially re-litigates their divorce and repeats much of the ghastly testimony which gripped the world when he tried to clear his name in the High Court in London last year.

But at least one compelling bit of evidence will be new.

Moss was not among the ex-girlfriends who gave statements in the London case, which resulted in Depp being branded a wife-beater by the judge. Only actresses Vanessa Paradis and Winona Ryder spoke up for him at that point.

However, because Heard made a glancing reference to Kate Moss being pushed down a staircase in testimony last week, Depp’s legal team have the opportunity to call her to make a rebuttal.

My understanding is that, at this stage, the contact between the former lovers is merely at the level of one legal team contacting the other.

However, once the favour has been discharged, Depp will surely get in touch with Moss to thank her. And from that point — who knows what might happen?

For on many levels they are twin souls who appeared to be made for each other.

Their story began at the Cafe Tabac in New York’s East Village in February 1994, when Depp and Moss were introduced by a journalist acquaintance.

Moss later recalled: ‘I knew from that moment that we would be together . . . We just sat down and talked sheer nonsense, and from that moment didn’t want to be apart.’

Maureen Callahan, author of Champagne Supernovas, wrote of the encounter: ‘They had a drink, did some coke, and then went back to his hotel room, where they holed up the next day through a snowstorm.’

Callahan continues: ‘Kate and Johnny were the chicest, druggiest couple since Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg — the epitome of cool in a Trainspotting culture; but Kate was often on edge with Johnny, afraid of his moods.’

A source who was with Kate on her 21st birthday remembers the romance differently.

‘She was just very sweetly and very completely in love with him. She couldn’t stop talking about Johnny and how wonderful he was to her, how he took care of her, protected her and educated her.

‘Yes, there was an undercurrent of grunge culture, but the power of them as a couple was the romance — he would do anything for her.’

One time Depp surprised her at The Viper Room — the night club he owned in Los Angeles — by secretly flying out her divorced parents and her close friend, fashion designer John Galliano.

The group had to wait silently behind a curtain and then jump out on Depp’s signal to give Kate a surprise.

He would meet her in Paris, whisking her off to an £18,000-a-night suite at the Ritz, even though she had her own apartment in the city. It was all part of his culture as a ‘Southern gentleman’ who knew how to treat a lady.

Legend has it they made love in every one of the Chateau Marmont’s 63 bedrooms.

Moss later reflected: ‘There’s no one that’s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit. I believed what he said.

‘Like if I said, ‘What do I do?’, he’d tell me. And that’s what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust.’

But the love affair was always volatile. In September 1994, in the early days of the romance, Depp trashed the presidential suite at New York’s exclusive Mark Hotel (later the scene of Meghan Markle’s lavish baby shower.)

The explanation given for his outburst was that he had been startled by an armadillo which had come out of one of the closets.

However, no such animal was found by officers during a search. There were also reports that Depp had said he’d seen a cockroach the size of a baseball.

Moss, who had been present, was unhurt and, after declining to leave, Depp was taken to a cell by the NYPD and charged with criminal mischief. However, the charges were later dropped.

Aside from being landed with a $9,000 bill to restore the hotel’s damaged furnishings, no harm seems to have been done.

Depp later said: ‘The owner approached my publicist about two years after the incident and thanked her, saying: ‘It was so great for us that Johnny got arrested at our hotel. You can’t imagine the business that we got out of it!’ ‘

The director John Waters told People magazine at the time: ‘I think Johnny obviously has a temper, but this was a very minor incident — the room service must have been bad.’

One friend of Moss says of her relationship with Depp: ‘It was a romance which really shaped her. It’s not about money and bling and showing off — that’s just vulgar and stupid.

‘He got her into Jack Kerouac and Iggy Pop, Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs. He took her to art galleries.

‘He also changed the way she looked. Before she met Johnny, Kate would wear a pair of trainers and a slip dress — afterwards it was all about vintage looks.

‘Johnny idolised the Rolling Stones, and although he is from Kentucky he passed on a love of that very quintessentially British boho culture.

‘There was a really obvious influence on her in smaller ways, too. He told her that it’s more clever to subvert, not to just be a passive mainstream consumer. He schooled her in being cool.’

There were ‘bust-ups’ during the romance, sparked mostly by Moss’s jealousy and Depp’s mood swings.

At this point, Depp was working constantly, having been made a star by Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.

He filmed Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco, Donnie Brasco and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas pretty much back to back, and also made his directorial debut with The Brave, which he co-wrote.

Author Maureen Callaghan quotes a friend as saying of Moss: ‘She’d phone him all the time, on sets, in hotels. She never expressed concern about his drug use — she expressed concern about being separated from him on jobs.’

Moss said later: ‘He was away a lot of the time and I’d go shopping, that ladies-who-lunch crap. It was so boring. The most lonely, shallow place.

‘I was going insane. I’m not normally a depressed person, but I got really sad . . . and we grew apart.’

They split briefly in 1997, because of her partying and ‘the clinginess’. Moss was seen being comforted by a number of men, including actor Leonardo Di Caprio. But she and Depp reconciled — she missed him.

The rekindled romance lasted only six months. In January 1998, Depp reportedly ordered 36 bottles of champagne to fill a Victorian bathtub at the Portobello Hotel in Notting Hill.

Moss’s agent denied it, saying: ‘It was not Kate — it’s not her style. She doesn’t use the hotel any more.’

Their final outing as a couple was at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1998, where Depp was promoting the film Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.

Moss had a run-in with the management of the Hotel Du Cap, where they were staying, after being told that it wasn’t appropriate for her to run around the corridors in a bikini. It’s said that she damaged their room and was banned from the place for life as a result.

Not long after, Depp spoke regretfully about his single status in an interview. He told Hello! magazine: ‘I have been so stupid because we had so much going for our relationship. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for what happened — I was difficult to get on with.

‘I let my work get in the way and I didn’t give her the attention I should have. I’m a total moron at times.’

He added: ‘I have to get out there now and find the right candidate to be the mother of my children. I am coming up to 35 and you get broody.

‘Why shouldn’t a guy get broody? Some people imagine that because of the movies I make, or just the way they perceive me to be, that I wouldn’t make a great father. They don’t know me at all.’

A few weeks later, in the summer of 1998, Depp bumped into French actress Vanessa Paradis in the lobby of a hotel in Paris. Once again, it was love at first sight.

This time, though, everything was different: Paradis fell pregnant in August 1998 (their daughter, Lily Rose, arrived in May 1999).

Moss was devastated, and in December 1998 she checked into the Priory for five weeks.

She later told The Face magazine: ‘I never wanted to go to rehab . . . I had lost the plot really.’

The problem wasn’t just her lifestyle, though. She was also heartbroken. In another interview, she said that she had cried ‘for years’ after their break-up.

A source says: ‘She knew she had lost Johnny for good when Vanessa got pregnant. She lost him to fatherhood — there was no going back from that.

‘It was very painful. She hoped they would get married, and then he makes it work with the next person who comes along.’

Depp was enchanted by the sophisticated Paradis. He told friends: ‘She reminds me of Kate, but much easier.’

Their paths diverged.

Depp and Paradis went on to have a son, Jack, and he took those mega-money-spinning roles in the Pirates Of The Caribbean movie franchise.

Kate, meanwhile, embarked on a wild period — her Primrose Hill years — burning through one crazy fling after another.

It was Depp who had arguably established her on a debauched path which came to an end only after the ‘Cocaine Kate’ episode in 2005, when she was filmed snorting what appeared to be lines of the drug in a recording studio. She was with then-boyfriend Pete Doherty, a grubbier iteration of Depp’s Byronic charm.

Ever the gentleman, Depp was among a handful of voices to defend her at that time. He said: ‘The first thing that went through my mind was I was concerned for her, hoping that she was OK.’

Now, with her former lover’s reputation at an all-time low, Kate finally has a chance to repay the favor.