Transcript of Heard
interview.
Part 1.
Interviewer: It's been about more than a week since the verdict. As you sit here with me now, has it sunk in?
Amber: How could it? Surreal and difficult in part, yes. This has been a long time coming.
Interviewer: Do you stand by your testimony and your accusations against Johnny Depp about abuse?
Amber: Of course, to my dying day, will stand by every word of my testimony.
Amber: I think the vast majority of this trial was played out on social media. I think that this trial is an example of that gone haywire, gone amok, and the juries not immune to that.
Interviewer: Do you think the jury saw it?
Amber: How could they not? I think even the most well intentioned juror...it would have been impossible to avoid this.
Amber: Every single day, I passed 3, 4, sometimes 6 blocks. City blocks lined with people holding signs saying 'burn the witch', 'death to Amber'. After 3 1/5 weeks, I took the stand and saw just a courtroom packed full of Captain Jack Sparrow fans who were vocal, energised...
Interviewer: Can you put into words how that felt?
Amber: This was the most humiliating and horrible thing I've ever been through. I have never felt more removed from my own humanity. I felt less than human.
Interviewer: Let's go back to the day of the verdict. Were you feeling confident?
Amber: That's a great question. I wish I could say yes to that, I want to say yes to you, but it wouldn't be true. Even if you think that I'm lying, you still couldn't tell me, look me in the eye, and tell me you think on social media that there's been a fair representation.
Amber: There was another trial handled...dealt with the same substitive?? (
Heard invents a new word!) issues, that has even more evidence in, in fact, my evidence was largely kept out. Really important pieces of evidence, kept out. Done differently, handled differently by a judge instead of a jury.
Interviewer: Some evidence is admissible in a UK court, that is not admissible in a US court. Do you think that maybe he just had better lawyers?
Amber: I will say, his lawyers did certainly a better job of distracting the jury from the real issues.
Interviewer: For some people, they just were frankly disgusted by the whole thing. They don't have much sympathy for either one of you. Can you understand that?
Amber: Absolutely. I would not blame the average person for looking at this and how it's been covered, and not think that it is Hollywood brats at their worst. But what people don't understand is, it's actually so much bigger than that. This is not only about our 1st amendment right to speak.....
Interviewer: But here's the thing about the 1st amendment - The 1st amendment protects free speech, it doesn't protect lies that amount to defamation. And that was the issue in the case.
Amber: Yes, exactly. You can't go into...free speech does not protect you, you know, if you go into a crowded theatre and you scream "
fire". We get the concept of free speech from the Greeks. My understanding of what that means is not just a freedom to speak, it's a freedom to speak truth to power.
Interviewer: But truth is the word, and that was the issue.
Amber: Yes, and that's all I spoke, and I spoke it to power, and I paid the price.
Interviewer: In the closing arguments, the Depp lawyer said...called your testimony "
the performance of a lifetime", and said you were acting. What do you say to that?
Amber: 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 that, or saying quite directly, you know, that I'm a terrible actress, so I'm a bit confused how I could be both.
Interviewer: The Depp team argued that
you were the abuser, that
you instigated physical violence. Did you?
Amber: I never had to instigate it, I responded to it. When you're living in violent and it becomes normal, as I testified to. You have to adapt.
Interviewer: You say you were responding but there is evidence, there are tapes in which you acknowledge hitting. There are tapes in which you say "
I started the fight".
Amber: I know much has been made of these audio tapes. They were first leaked online after being edited. What you would hear in those clips are not evidence of what was happening. It was evidence of a negotiation, of how to talk about that with your abuser.
Interviewer: But I'm looking at a transcript that says - He says "
you start physical fights", and you say "
I did start a physical fight, I can't promise you I won't get physical again". I mean this is in black and white, I understand context. But you're testifying and telling me today "
I never started a physical fight", and here you are on tape saying you did.
Amber: As I testified on the stand about this, is that when your life is at risk, not only will you take the blame for things that you shouldn't take the blame for, but when you're in a abusive dynamic, psychologically, emotionally and physically, you don't have the resources that you say - you or I do with the luxury of saying this is black and white, because it's anything but when you're living in it.
Interviewer: But then there are other times...there's another tape where you're taunting him and saying "
Oh tell the world, Johnny Depp, I a man, am the victim of domestic violence".
Amber: 20 second clips, or the transcripts of them, are not representative of even the 2 hours or the 3 hours that those clips are excerpt from.
Interviewer: Could your side have just put the whole 3 hours in then?
Amber: I'm not a lawyer. As I testified to, I was talking in those recordings as a person, in extreme amount of emotional, psychological and physical distress....
Interviewer: He says he never hit you. Never. Is that lie?
Amber: Yes it is.
Interviewer: What about the witnesses who said they have seen you instigate physical violence?
Amber: I've seen first hand how people will file rank and support the person they depend on.
Interviewer: Did they all come in and lie in court?
Amber: I am not here to call any of his witnesses any names. I'm here to just kind of talk about it from what it felt like for me as a person who sat there.
Interviewer: When I asked his lawyers "
why do you think you won?", and the answer I got was "
because she never took responsibility for anything she did in the marriage".
Amber: I did do and say horrible, regrettable things throughout my relationship. I behaved in a horrible, almost unrecognisable to myself ways. There's so much....I have so much regret. I freely and openly and voluntarily talked about what I did. I talked about the horrible language, I talked about being pushed to the extent where I didn't even know the difference between, you know, right and wrong. I will always continue to feel like I was a part of this, like I was the other half of this relationship, because I was. And it was ugly, and could be very beautiful. It was very very toxic, we were awful to each other, you know I made a lot of, a lot of mistakes. A lot of mistakes, but I've always told the truth.
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