Johnny Depp says he won’t return to his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise again. During his ongoing defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard, Depp acknowledged that Disney was wary of working with him even before Heard published an op-ed in The Washington Post in December 2018, writing about the domestic abuse she suffered.
Depp sued his ex-wife for $50 million, accusing her of ruining his career with the piece. Amber Heard, in turn, counter-sued for $100 million.
According to Variety, under questioning from his own lawyer on Wednesday, Johnny Depp said Disney dropped him from the sixth instalment of Pirates of the Caribbean just days after the piece was published.
However, when Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn cross-examined Depp and pointed out that a Daily Mail article, published two months before Heard’s piece, reported that Depp was “out as Jack Sparrow”, the actor said it did not surprise him.
“I wasn’t aware of that, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Depp testified. “Two years had gone by of constant worldwide talk about me being this wife beater. So I’m sure that Disney was trying to cut ties to be safe. The #MeToo movement was in full swing at that point.”
Amber Heard first accused Johnny Depp of domestic abuse in 2016. The claims were resolved when their divorce was finalised just a few months later. Depp says that when his ex-wife repeated the claims in her 2018 Washington Post piece, he suffered career-ending damage as a result.
“Once that happened, I lost then,” he said, according to Variety. “No matter the outcome of this trial, I’ll carry that for the rest of my days… I’m suing her over defamation and the various falsities that she used to bring my life to an end.”
Amber Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn also referred to something the 58-year-old actor had said in his deposition about not wanting to work on Pirates 6, even if it were offered to him.
“The fact is, Mr. Depp, if Disney came to you with $300 million and a million alpacas, nothing on this earth would get you to go back and work with Disney on a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ film? Correct?” Rottenborn asked.
“That is true, Mr. Rottenborn,” Depp responded.
AFP reports that Depp filed the defamation complaint in the United States after losing a separate libel case in London in November 2020 that he brought against the tabloid The Sun for calling him a "wife-beater."
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