‘She’s coming off looking good’: the week Amber Heard finally spoke | US news

Amber Heard was asked in court last week if she recognized the name Carly Simon, soon after her attorneys introduced an exhibit of a mirror that Johnny Depp had defaced in tight, punctuated script after severing part of his middle finger in what his former wife described as a drug- and alcohol-induced blackout.

Depp’s note read: “Call Carly Simon. She said it better. Bye.”

Heard testified she wasn’t familiar with Simon or her work. But Depp, one can reasonably speculate, was referring to You’re So Vain, Simon’s 1972 hit. His attorneys may take up the issue on cross-examination the week after next. Or the week after that.

So it goes with the Depp-Heard defamation case in Fairfax, Virginia. A cautionary tale, certainly, with disturbing allegations of domestic and sexual violence. But also a man-woman fight, part gender-switch Sunset Boulevard, part Mean Girls, with flashbacks and still images taken – appropriately enough given the sinister if not vampiric nature of the relationship – in Bela Lugosi’s old house.

Which narrative jurors choose will not be known until after 27 May, when attorneys will deliver closing arguments. For now, with the court out next week – the judge, Penny Azcarate, is at an unrelated judicial conference – jurors are left to mull the last two days of Heard’s take on her turbulent marriage.

“Two skilled actors on the stand as witnesses could be equally resonant without regard to exactly where the truth is in their narratives,” said Nancianne Aydelotte, a New Jersey lawyer. “This is very challenging for jurors, who might find what the plaintiff said to be compelling and is then equally moved by the defendant.”

Heard’s testimony, highly charged at times, has been delivered while keeping eye contact with jurors. Depp has kept his head down, occasionally consulting with his lawyers, usually when he seems to find something implausible – for example, that he ingested eight to 10 ecstasy pills in one sitting in Australia, or took quaaludes in Los Angeles.

Heard’s overall story is that she was courted and seduced, was bought a colt, and fell madly in love with a movie star – “when I was around Johnny I felt like the most beautiful person in the world” – while the world beyond their “bubble” was kept in abeyance.

“We weren’t doing normal life stuff,” Heard said. “We weren’t stuck in traffic with each other, we weren’t going to the grocery store and doing life. We were hiding in these places around the world.”

That bubble, she testified, started to deflate when Depp began to disappear and she didn’t know how to find or reach him. Heard argued that Depp became threatened by her career and jealous of her co-stars.

She testified that Depp threatened her life shortly after the pair were married, and that just weeks later, in Australia while filming the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, he sexually assaulted her with a bottle of Maker’s Mark.

“I’ll fucking kill you,” Heard alleged that Depp yelled. “I was scared,” she added. “I had just married him.” Months later, Heard…