Actress Amber Heard broke down on the stand during her second day of testimony on Thursday, graphically describing how her ex-husband Johnny Depp physically and verbally abused her.
Heard, who is being sued for defamation by Depp regarding an op-ed she wrote about sexual violence, alleged that Depp grew aggressive when she spoke about her male co-stars and her acting career, often while drinking or using drugs.
Showing photographs of Depp passed out on multiple occasions, Heard tearfully said Depp — who admitted to drug abuse during his testimony — lost control of himself while using drugs and drinking alcohol, becoming violent and falling asleep mid-sentence.
“He started howling like an animal and passed out in the bathroom with the door locked,” Heard said ahead of an audio recording she presented of Depp drunk on an airplane. “I knew that Johnny wouldn’t remember what he had done.”
She also said that he did drugs with her father, whom she testified Wednesday had a good relationship with Depp, during their engagement party.
Depp, who laughed to his lawyer during some of Heard’s testimony, denies ever striking Heard. She alleges abuse, including Depp kicking her in the back over his jealousy of actor James Franco, who she starred alongside in “The Adderall Diaries.”
“He hated James Franco and was already accusing me of having a relationship with him in the past because we already did ‘Pineapple Express’ together,” she said.
“It went from asking me about how the kissing scene went or how the sex scene went to asking me what James Franco had done in the scene and being really explicit about my body,” Heard said.
Franco was rumored to be a potential witness on behalf of Heard but The New York Post reported he wouldn’t take the stand.
Heard said Franco wasn’t her only co-star to draw Depp’s jealousy — she said he also accused her of sleeping with his former “Fantastic Beasts” co-star Eddie Redmayne, who she acted alongside in “The Danish Girl.”
Contradicting Depp’s testimony, Heard also told her side of the now-infamous fight between them that left Depp’s fingertip severed off. He claimed that she threw a vodka bottle at him, but she testified she was assaulted the night before and woke up to blood on the wall, only later finding out he was injured.
“At some point I shoved him hard, to get him off me, and he shoved me back,” Heard said about that night. “Johnny had the bottle inside of me, and he shoved it into me over and over again.”
Heard expressed during both days of testimony that she believed Depp would change, since he promised he would become sober and stop being violent.
“I believed he was embarrassed and sorry, he said he was, and I believed him,” Heard said, remembering a time when Depp told her he would become sober in 2014. “So I got back with him on the condition that he would uphold his promise to do the treatment, to do the full detox.”
During the 2014 detox, he asked her to come to the Bahamas with him, where she alleged he hallucinated and would scream and slap her across the face.
The trial between Depp and Heard comes almost six years after a photograph of Heard with a black eye prompted public outrage against Depp in May 2016, when she obtained a restraining order against him, just two days after she filed for divorce following one of Depp’s alleged abusive episodes.
Depp’s lawsuit focused on a 2018 article in which Heard wrote: “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse,” which his lawyers say amounted to false and defamatory accusations of abuse.