Amber Heard, the embattled actress, is speaking out about her recent courtroom defeat to Johnny Depp.
Following the televised trial, in which jurors agreed with Depp that Heard had defamed him with false charges of domestic abuse, Heard appeared on NBC’s Today for her first post-trial interview with Savannah Guthrie.
The first portion of the interview aired on Tuesday morning, with Heard discussing the verdict and her public image.
Guthrie questioned Heard about the judgment, which he described as “surreal.” When pressed further about her evidence, which most trial observers do not believe, Heard reiterated everything she claimed during the trial.
As Heard noted (via Variety), she will always stick by her claims, even if it results in a trial that she finds uncomfortable.
“Surreal and difficult. This has been a long time coming. To my dying day, I’ll stand by every word of my testimony.” [It was] the most humiliating and horrible thing I’ve been through. I’ve never felt more removed from my own humanity. I felt less than human.”
Heard has stated that she does not blame the jurors for reaching their decision, implying that they were swayed by Depp’s celebrity and popularity.
She thinks that even well-intentioned jurors would have been “impossible” not to notice the Depp admirers who had encircled the course, and she feels this influenced their capacity to perceive the Pirates of the Caribbean actor negatively.
“I think even the most well-intentioned juror…it would have been impossible to avoid this. Every single day I passed three, four, sometimes six city blocks with people holding signs saying ‘Burn the Witch,’ ‘Death to Amber.” After three and a half weeks, I took the stand and saw a courtroom packed full of Captain Jack Sparrow fans who were vocal, energized.”
“There was another trial that dealt with the same substantive issues and had even more evidence in. In fact, my evidence was largely left out. His lawyer did a better job at distracting the jury from the real issues… I would not blame the average person for looking at this and how it’s been covered and not seeing Hollywood brats at their worst. But what people don’t understand is that it’s so much bigger than that. This is not only about our First Amendment rights to speak. It’s a freedom to speak truth to power, and that’s all I spoke and I spoke it to power and I paid the price.”
In response to Depp’s lawyer accusing Heard of acting while on the stand, Heard responded:
“Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers? I’m the performer? I had listened to weeks of testimony insinuating or saying quite directly that I’m a terrible actress, so I’m a bit confused how I could be both.”
