Amber Heard standing by ‘every word’ of testimony until her ‘dying day’
Amber Heard maintains that she spoke the truth during her court battle with Johnny Depp.
“To my dying day, [I] will stand by every word of my testimony,” Heard told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in her first sit-down interview since the high-profile defamation case.
“I will say, his lawyers did certainly a better job of distracting the jury from the real issues,” she added in the clip, which aired on the “Today” show Tuesday.
The seven-person jury in Fairfax County, Va., awarded Depp $15 million in damages on June 1 after finding that Heard’s 2018 Washington Post op-ed about sexual violence was defamatory and had impacted her ex-husband’s career.
The “Aquaman” actress, for her part, was awarded $2 million as part of a countersuit for a defamatory statement made by the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star’s lawyer.
Heard, 36, reiterated to Guthrie, 50, that she only ever became physical with Depp, 59, when she was trying to defend herself from his alleged abuse.
“As I testified on the stand … when your life is at risk, not only will you take the blame for things that you shouldn’t take the blame for, but when you’re in an abusive dynamic, psychologically, emotionally and physically, you don’t have the resources that, say, you or I do, with the luxury of saying, ‘Hey, this is black and white,’” she said.
“Because it’s anything but when you’re living in it.”
Heard also touched upon the social media firestorm that surrounded the trial.
“I would not blame the average person for looking at this and how it’s been covered and not think that it is Hollywood brats at their worst,” she said. “But what people don’t understand is it’s actually so much bigger than that.”
When asked by Guthrie about Depp’s lawyer calling her testimony the “performance of a lifetime,” Heard replied, “Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers?” referencing Depp’s 1990 film “Edward Scissorhands.”
“I had listened to weeks of testimony — insinuating that or saying quite directly that, you know, I’m a terrible actress. So I’m a bit confused how I could be both,” she quipped.
Depp and Heard were married from 2015 to 2017.
Part two of her interview will air Wednesday on “TODAY” followed by Dateline on Friday at 8 p.m.
