“I Don’t Blame Them. I Actually Understand ”: Amber Heard Tapes Her First Sit-Down Interview After Losing Johnny Depp’s Defamation Case

Amber Heard has filmed her first interview after a court found that she defamed her ex-husband, Johnny Depp. Regarding the seven-person jury and their verdict, Heard told Savannah Guthrie he Today, “I don’t blame them. I actually understand. He’s a beloved character and people feel they know him. He’s a fantastic actor. ”

The six-week trial ended earlier this month after the jury deliberated about 12 hours over three days. They awarded Depp $ 10 million in compensatory damages and $ 5 million in punitive damages over Heard’s 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she called herself “a public figure representing domestic abuse,” but did not name Depp as her abuser (punitive payments are capped at $ 350,000 in Virginia, so Depp’s total damages came to an amount of $ 10.35 million). The jury simultaneously awarded Heard $ 2 million in compensatory damages in her countersuit against Depp.

Throughout the trial, support for Depp outpaced support for Heard by an enormous margin, with social media hashtags in favor of Depp gaining billions of views. This was the case across platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, however, the support felt particularly strong on TikTok. Depp even joined the short-form video hosting service after the trial, and now has over 14 million followers. In his first and only message so far, he thanked his “most treasured, loyal and unwavering supporters” with a video of himself playing guitar.

In the interview, which will air Tuesday and Wednesday, before a special will air on Dateline Friday, Heard told Guthrie, “I don’t care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors. I don’t presume the average person should know those things. And so I don’t take it personally, ”adding,“ But even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think I’m lying, you still couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation. You can’t tell me that you think this has been fair. “

Guthrie previously spoke with Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft, who maintains that the anti-Heard vitriol that blanketed the internet before and during the trial must have reached the jury, the seven of whom were not sequestered. “How can you not [see it]? ” Bredehoft said. “They went home every night. They have families. The families are on social media. We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference, there’s no way they couldn’t see it. ” (In his own interview on Good Morning America, Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew said that “social media played no role whatsoever” in the jury’s decision to rule in favor of the actor.)

Of Heard’s appearance on Today, Her spokesperson said, “Johnny Depp’s legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television, and Depp himself did the same on social media. Ms. Heard simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week; she did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand. ”