Johnny Depp trial verdict against Amber Heard was a Pyrrhic victory
Amber Heard lost to Johnny Depp in his defamation suit against her Washington Post op-ed. But Depp didn't win.
The texts started blowing up my phone Wednesday while I was waiting for my son’s school bus. As a divorce coach and advocate for abuse victims, I know a lot of women who were rocked by the jury siding with Johnny Depp in his defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard.
“The award for best actor in a defamation lawsuit goes to Johnny Depp for fooling the jury, judge, media and the court of public opinion,” a woman in divorce proceedings with a high-conflict partner told me. She, like many other clients, was outraged that Depp received a $15 million verdict because Heard wrote in a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post that she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse” and “had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” (Though she never named Depp, she was widely perceived as referring to him; he has denied all allegations of abuse.)
As movements to reform our family court system grow louder, this celebrity trial brought the pervasive power dynamic usually behind closed doors right into our living rooms.
I was also shocked by the outcome — but I don’t see the verdict as an absolute win akin to one of Depp’s triumphant scenes from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” And that’s not just because Heard, too, got a judgment in her favor as part of her countersuit: $2 million for Depp’s lawyer’s assertion that the actor had organized an ambush for the police to trap Depp.
The bigger damage to Depp is that he can never salvage his reputation. He claimed his image was destroyed by Heard’s op-ed, but the real destruction actually came through the revelations made at the trial. Despite the male star’s fan base, many people will never look at his beloved character Captain Jack the same way again — if he’ll ever be allowed to reprise the role.
Rating: 5