Amber Heard, Johnny Depp
[Photos via: Johnny Depp/Caroline Bonarde Ucci/Wikimedia Commons, Amber Heard/Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons]

Johnny Depp sues ex-wife for defamation, calls abuse claims a “hoax”

Johnny Depp is now suing his ex-wife Amber Heard for $50 million. The actor is filing suit under defamation for Heard’s claims of domestic abuse.

The suit follows Heard’s piece in the Washington Post last December. In the piece, Heard does not mention Depp by name, but rather addresses the culture surrounding sexual violence as a whole.

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However, according to the Blast, Depp’s lawyers claim the article “depends on the central premise that Ms. Heard was a domestic abuse victim and that Mr. Depp perpetrated domestic violence against her.”

That said, Heard does briefly reference the time she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse and felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” just two years ago. The timeline lines up with her highly publicized divorce with Depp in 2016.

Depp’s legal team go on to say that Heard used the allegations to promote her career, according to People. Furthermore, they call her piece in the Washington Post an “elaborate hoax” for the sake of positive press.

“Mr. Depp never abused Ms. Heard. Her allegations against him were false when they were made in 2016,” Depp’s lawyers say. “They were part of an elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity for Ms. Heard and advance her career.”

As for the accusation in 2016, the suit resulted in a restraining order against Depp and separate non disclosure agreements to not publicly speak of their relationship. Additionally, Heard donated her $7 million divorce settlement to charity.

In a previously unreleased testimony, published by the Hollywood Reporter this past January, Heard claimed that Depp allegedly physically abused her prior to their divorce in 2016.

“Johnny and I refer to his other personality, the part of him that is present when he beats me up — we call that the monster and have called [that] the monster for years,” Heard says. “I was petrified of the monster.”

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However, according to US Weekly, Depp submitted more evidence to U.K. courts following Heard’s claims in another defamation lawsuit against the Sun tabloid.

“Mr. Depp filed new and previously unseen evidence with the U.K. court, including security camera video clips of Ms. Heard’s face in the days following her false beating claims, sworn depositions taken in 2016 from neighbors, eyewitnesses and building personnel who interacted with Ms. Heard in the ensuing days, and more,” Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman says in the story with US Weekly.

The pair were married for a short time from Feb. 2015 to May 2016.

Recently, Depp’s movie City Of Lies—a film about the murder investigations of popular ’90s rappers the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur—has been canceled a month before its planned release, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie was due out last September from Global Road Entertainment. But Depp’s reported personal struggles apparently contributed to its cancellation: the actor’s been suffering a publicity crisis after reported financial troubles and allegations of abuse, as noted by Consequence of Sound.