Opinions
Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the deeply unsatisfying matter of re-litigating their trial
The series was panned by critics
On Aug. 16, Netflix released a three-part docuseries revisiting last summer’s televised civil litigation over allegations that Amber Heard had defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp by claiming to have survived sexual violence and domestic abuse during their four-year relationship.
Rather than offering anything new by way of insight or analysis from anyone with relevant qualifications or experience, each episode features clips from some of the online “creators” who turned their hot takes on the trial into a veritable cottage industry of amateur legal commentary and courtroom conspiracy theories, feeding the rapacious demand for anti-Heard and pro-Depp content. (As if to underscore the project’s unseriousness, these included a men’s rights YouTuber who wore a Deadpool mask and was surrounded by Spider-Man costumes.)
Worse still, “Depp v. Heard” director Emma Cooper fails not only to answer but also to even ask the obvious questions that have lingered since a verdict was returned more than 14 months ago by seven jurors in northern Virginia who were not sequestered as the case became, by far, the most popular topic on social media and online platforms.
At the same time, however, the episodes include footage of courtroom testimony that offer a glimpse, though incomplete, into some of the trial’s more salient and dispositive moments that I otherwise would never have seen (with neither the time nor the inclination, either last year or now, to follow 120+ hours of argument by the parties presented over the course of a seven-week trial.)
Do these scenes redeem the series? Hardly. But that does not mean they offer nothing of value, especially considering that while this was not the retelling of last summer’s events that we deserve, it remains the only one we’ve got. At least, for now.
Susan Sontag, in her 1977 collection of essays “On Photography,” proclaimed “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”
In “Depp v. Heard,” the cameras facilitate a very specific kind of tourism that feels both exploitative and voyeuristic, because the reality in which we find ourselves trespassing is dark: the unraveling of a relationship between movie stars through patterns of dysfunction and abuse both familiar and alien, knowable and unknowable, like a city you have visited but never called home.
Especially when coupled with the more outrageous moments from trial that made headlines at the time – such as the debate over whether Heard defecated on Depp’s bed and blamed his teacup Yorkshire Terrier – there is a temptation to treat footage of testimony concerning the smashing of liquor bottles and hurling of wine glasses, the shoving and taunting and threats, even the physical and sexual violence, as though it were pure spectacle.
However, this would suggest, wrongly, that the painful realities of the actors’ relationship are so far removed from our lived experiences that we do not, cannot, or should not relate to them. As if a seven-week trial adjudicating the conflicts in our own intimate relationships or those involving the people we love would not turn up evidence of trouble and dysfunction, or worse.
Considering that we are primed to pick winners and losers and heroes and villains, perhaps it was unsurprising that incomplete and selectively edited footage from the case provided ample fodder for Instagram reels and TikTok videos that were created in the service of narratives that, most often, favored Depp and vilified Heard.
For me, witnessing these scenes in their proper context revealed a picture so much more complicated and, frankly, ugly that the prospect of framing the case in this manner seemed as preposterous as the idea that audiences leaving a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” should find themselves allied with either Martha or George.
To take just one example: From the witness stand, Heard recounted how she would often return home to their shared Los Angeles penthouse to find Depp nodding off in a chair because he had washed Roxicodone down with whiskey, or lying supine on the sofa fully unconscious with melted ice cream pooled in his lap. Worried about her husband’s apparent substance use disorder and unsure how best to help, the actress admitted she would sometimes take photos of him and share the pictures with a trusted friend.
Or, Depp’s attorney asked, was she just trying to humiliate him? Or, online commentators asked (often rhetorically), was this a calculated and premeditated move to collect evidence she would use against Depp in litigation or for purposes of extorting him?
As if these motives are mutually exclusive.
Having experienced the pain of watching loved ones spiraling in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction, I can tell you why I suspect Heard took the photos, but of course the reality is neither I nor anyone else – perhaps not even she – has any clue.
Last year, so much of the online noise about the trial came from content creators who made specious arguments to poke holes in the credibility of Heard’s testimony or alleged ulterior, sinister hidden motives based on the actress’s countenance, demeanor, speech, and other behavior.
For example, in clips that were often selectively edited or presented outside of their proper context, Heard might have seemed to cry more hysterically upon realizing the cameras were trained on her, which were used as supposed proof that her claims of suffering abuse at the hands of her ex-husband must therefore be fabricated.
Watching the footage in the manner presented on screen in “Depp v. Heard,” it becomes even more obvious how silly these interpretations were. In reality, of course, no one – not even police officers, trial court judges, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, trial lawyers or forensic psychiatrists – can reliably spot when someone is lying to them.
However convincing some YouTuber may have been, and however comforting the idea that we are able to see through the lies of others, I’m sorry to tell you the research on this is overwhelming and uncontested.
As Malcolm Gladwell observes in “Talking to Strangers,” Amanda Knox was falsely convicted for a murder she did not commit because “much of the prosecution’s case…rested on the allegedly strange, guilty behavior she exhibited,” which “the public deemed not in line with typical responses to grief and trauma.”
The cameras did not tell the complete story.
Well before 2022, private details about Depp and Heard’s troubled relationship had spilled onto the pages of tabloids like The Sun, which called Depp a “wife beater” in a 2018 story alleging that “overwhelming evidence was filed to show Johnny Depp engaged in domestic violence against his wife.” After he sued the paper for defamation, London’s High Court of Justice ruled against the actor in 2020, concluding the claims at issue were “substantially true.”
Still, last summer’s litigation between the actors earned far more public attention and unearthed far more (and far more titillating) private information, causing, therefore, far more damage than the supermarket rags and gossip blogs – as well as, ironically, the financial and reputational damage resulting from the very defamation claims that were adjudicated at trial.
As a reminder, Depp sued his ex-wife for a 2018 opinion article in the Washington Post in which she had written, “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” Heard was referencing the backlash against, essentially, identical claims she made in a statement after securing a restraining order against Depp following their divorce in 2016. (“During the entirety of our relationship, Johnny has been verbally and physically abusive to me,” she wrote.)
In so many cases including this one, intimate partner abuse is messy. An audio recording of one of the couple’s arguments shows Heard acknowledging she had struck her ex-husband but denying that she punched him. Her testimony, meanwhile, detailed serious violent crimes, including that Depp had thrown her into a ping pong table and repeatedly hit her in the face before sexually assaulting her with a liquor bottle that may have been broken.
Of course, assuming their sworn testimony to be true, it must also be said, domestic violence is a gendered crime. And the imbalanced power dynamics within their relationship put Heard at a disadvantage, including in this respect. While both are famous actors, the wealth, power, and fame wielded by Depp was then (and remains, now) much greater.
The disparity was evident from the outset. In the Netflix series, throngs of fans are shown cheering the Pirates of the Caribbean star and booing Heard on the first day they were sighted arriving separately to the Fairfax County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, online, evidence of a sustained and coordinated character assassination of Heard had just begun to emerge.
The smear campaign would persist through the trial and beyond. The actress was called a manipulative liar, a gold digger, an abuser, a violent psychopath, a drug addict, and worse. Some of the most outrageous claims were among the most widely circulated: She snorted cocaine on the witness stand, killed her own mother to conceal testimony that would have exonerated Depp, plagiarized lines from the film The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Creators mocked Heard by lip-synching over audio of her testimony about suffering violent abuse in videos that went viral on TikTok along with hashtags like #JusticeForJohnnyDepp, which was seen nearly 3 billion times on the platform. (#justiceforamberheard earned just 25 million views.) One-sided articles and videos, many containing false and misleading claims, were promoted by Ben Shapiro’s conservative media outlet The Daily Wire through its estimated $35,000 and $47,000 purchase of Facebook and Instagram ads.
“Depp v. Heard” was panned by critics.
“If ever a true-crime documentary needed the usual collection of talking-head interviews with esteemed journalists, law enforcement veterans and legal experts to put things in perspective,” Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, “this is it — but that never happens.”
Others, like CNN’s Brian Lowry, agreed: “How much is gained from listening to a guy in a Deadpool mask offering extensive trial takes is a question ‘Depp v. Heard’ should have contemplated and apparently didn’t,” he wrote.
Several reviews added that part of the problem was that not nearly enough time had elapsed between the events and their retelling. Bustle’s Scaachi Koul pointed to other recent projects involving the private lives of public figures (especially women) that, with sufficient space and distance, found new and interesting things to say about their subjects and opportunities to tell their stories anew.
Ryan White’s excellent documentary “Pamela: A Love Story,” which was released by Netflix in January, manages to find plenty of material about actress and model Pamela Anderson along with the broader sociocultural forces of the 90s and early aughts that helped shape – and were shaped by – the era’s most enduring sex symbol.
The film would have been nothing, however, without Anderson. Listening to her tell her own story, one realizes how poorly suited everyone else was to the task – particularly the leering talk show hosts and journalists who treated her as nothing more than a sex object.
And maybe that, above all else, is the lesson to be gleaned from “Depp v. Heard”: Let’s come back to this story, sure, when we’re ready to cut through the bullshit, reframe the conversation away from the “him vs. her” framing, stop relying on provably unreliable evidence, and consider the broader context of their relationship and the impact of the trial that happened on TikTok and YouTube. And let’s definitely listen to Heard if and when she’s ready to talk about this again.
Until we get that docuseries (or documentary, scripted series, film, book, whatever), I fear everything else will be deeply unsatisfactory and unsatisfying.
Commentary
Second ‘lavender scare’ is harming our veterans. We know how to fix it
Out in National Security has built Trans Veterans State and Local Policy Toolkit
Seventy years after the first “lavender scare” drove LGBTQ Americans from public service, a second version is taking shape. Executive directives and administrative reviews have targeted transgender servicemembers and veterans, producing a new wave of quiet separations and lost benefits.
The policy language is technical, but the result is personal. Veterans who served honorably now face disrupted healthcare, delayed credentials, or housing barriers that no act of Congress ever required. Once again, Americans who met every standard of service are being told that their identity disqualifies them from stability.
Out in National Security built the Trans Veterans State and Local Policy Toolkit to change that. The toolkit gives state and local governments a practical path to repair harm through three measurable actions.
First, continuity of care. States can keep veterans covered by adopting presumptive Medicaid eligibility, aligning timelines with VA enrollment, and training providers in evidence-based gender-affirming care following the World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care Version 8.
Second, employment, and licensing. Governors and boards can recognize Department of Defense credentials, expedite licensing under existing reciprocity compacts, and ensure nondiscrimination in state veterans’ employment statutes.
Third, housing stability. States can designate transgender-veteran housing liaisons, expand voucher access, and enforce fair-housing protections that already exist in law.
Each step can be taken administratively within 90 days and requires no new federal legislation. The goal is straightforward: small, state-level reforms that yield rapid, measurable improvement in veterans’ daily lives.
The toolkit was introduced during a Veterans Week event hosted by the Center for American Progress, where federal and state leaders joined Out in National Security to highlight the first wave of state agencies adopting its recommendations. The discussion underscored how targeted, administrative reforms can strengthen veterans’ healthcare, employment, and housing outcomes without new legislation. Full materials and implementation resources are now available at outinnationalsecurity.org/public-policy/toolkit, developed in partnership with Minority Veterans of America, the Modern Military Association of America, SPARTA Pride, and the Human Rights Campaign.
These are technical fixes, but they carry moral weight. They reaffirm a basic democratic promise: service earns respect, not suspicion.
As a policy professional who has worked with veterans across the country, I see this moment as a test of civic integrity. The measure of a democracy is not only who it allows to serve but how it treats them afterward.
The second “lavender scare” will end when institutions at every level decide that inclusion is an obligation, not an exception. The toolkit offers a way to begin.
For more information or to access the toolkit once it is public, visit outinnationalsecurity.org/toolkit.
Lucas F. Schleusener is the CEO of Out in National Security.
For years, the far right has relied on a familiar infrastructure to wage its political battles: coordinated legal networks, back-channeled money, and an ever-growing pipeline of model legislation that moves quietly from one statehouse to another. What used to be a fringe ecosystem of activist lawyers has matured into something far more muscular. Today, the attacks on LGBTQ Americans—especially transgender people—are not random. They are designed, drafted, and deployed by a disciplined constellation of groups that understand how to move legislation with precision. And if Democrats, civil rights advocates, and national LGBTQ organizations continue treating each bill as an isolated outrage rather than a unified offensive, this machine will keep outpacing them.
Most Americans have never heard of outfits like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Principles Project, the Leadership Institute’s law arm, or the network of state-based policy shops that orbit the Heritage Foundation. But these entities now function as the shadow authors of state legislation. The anti-trans sports bans that appeared in more than 20 states did not arise organically; they were cloned from drafts circulated by ADF attorneys. The same is true for bills restricting gender-affirming care, limiting name and pronoun accommodations in schools, or expanding “religious liberty” carve-outs that allow discrimination against LGBTQ employees or customers. Legislators often change a few words, swap in a local sponsor, and reintroduce the same provisions session after session — giving the impression of momentum when, in reality, only a handful of ideologues are writing the nation’s culture-war script.
The operational model is simple: produce a bill, partner with a state-level think tank, recruit a legislator to introduce it, and provide legal testimony to defend it. But the strategic sophistication lies upstream. These groups have spent years cultivating relationships with attorneys general, state solicitors, and conservative judges who are sympathetic to their worldview. They draft legislation with litigation in mind, anticipating which language will survive scrutiny before the federal courts they have worked diligently to remake. They treat policy, politics, and jurisprudence as a seamless ecosystem; meanwhile, LGBTQ advocates are forced to fight on three fronts at once, often with smaller budgets and no comparable network of state-by-state affiliates.
What is most striking now is the acceleration. Bills that used to be test-driven in one or two states are being introduced in a dozen simultaneously. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the same legal strategists pushing abortion bans pivoted almost immediately toward restricting trans health care, framing puberty blockers and hormone therapy as “sterilization.” The rhetorical shift was not accidental. It was a deliberate legal construction designed to open the door to future Fourteenth Amendment challenges, should the movement secure a case capable of reaching the Supreme Court. This is not simply a legislative fight; it is the groundwork for long-term judicial warfare.
And yet, Democrats and even national LGBTQ groups often treat these measures as if they were spontaneous outbursts of local prejudice. That is politically naïve. The reason similar bills appear in Idaho, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas, and Ohio at the same time is because they originate from the same set of PDFs stored on the same servers belonging to the same legal networks. The far right has embraced an industrial model of anti-LGBTQ policymaking: mass production, rapid deployment, and coordinated amplification by media channels that echo the same talking points across state lines.
The consequence is that the burden falls on queer people themselves—especially trans people—to respond to an avalanche of bills, hearings, lawsuits, and administrative changes that no individual or small advocacy team can fully track. When you have a network of attorneys feeding language to legislators, drafting amicus briefs, and preparing future litigation strategies in advance, you create an asymmetry that is difficult to counter with reactive press releases or one-off legal challenges. This imbalance of power is not about public opinion, which still supports LGBTQ equality by wide margins. It is about institutional positioning. The far right has placed its lawyers where the pressure points are: in state AG offices, in coordinated legislative caucuses, in judicial clerkships, and in the nonprofit legal trenches where issue fights are shaped long before the public hears about them.
There is a path forward, but it requires abandoning the old model of treating each bill as a separate emergency. LGBTQ organizations need a unified, long-range strategy that mirrors the discipline of the groups attacking them. That means state-by-state legal surveillance, rapid drafting of counter-model legislation, formal partnerships with progressive state AGs, and a standing litigation coalition capable of anticipating—not just responding to—legal threats. It also means investing in local leaders who understand that these bills are symptoms of a national machine, not quirks of their hometown politics.
What’s at stake here is nothing less than the architecture of civil rights in the United States. The far right is attempting to rewrite the legal landscape through volume and repetition, hoping courts will eventually treat these contrived bills as reflections of a shifting national consensus. They are betting that if they introduce enough legislation, in enough states, for enough years, the judiciary will reinterpret LGBTQ equality not as a settled constitutional principle but as a contested social question that can be narrowed or rolled back. Their ultimate goal is not just to restrict trans rights today but to lay the doctrinal groundwork for limiting LGBTQ protections for a generation.
The community can still win this fight, but only if it sees the battlefield clearly. These bills are not local skirmishes—they are coordinated acts of legal engineering. And it is time the pro-equality movement built an equally coordinated system to match them.
Isaac Amend is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him on Instagram at @isaacamend
Opinions
Everything is Everything
Transformer’s 21st Annual Benefit Art Auction & Gala at the LINE DC November 19, 2025
In Washington, DC, art has never existed in isolation—it thrives where people gather and create. Art isn’t an accessory to the city’s identity—it’s foundational to it. This city was designed by artists, built by craftsmen, and has been continuously shaped by creative vision for more than two centuries. While other American cities grew organically around commerce or geography, Washington was imagined first, drawn by hand, and constructed as a deliberate artistic expression of democratic ideals. The result is a living gallery where public art doesn’t just reflect our history; it actively shapes how we understand citizenship, memory, and identity.
For 23 years, Transformer has been a cornerstone of DC’s contemporary art scene, committed to uplifting emerging and underrepresented artists who challenge boundaries and engage audiences with new experimental artistic concepts. On November 22, 2025, Transformer will host Everything is Everything, our 21st Annual Benefit Art Auction & Gala at the LINE DC, a night dedicated to celebrating the power of connection through art, performance, and community.
Everything is Everything is an extension of our non-profit organization’s cutting-edge vision, bringing together artists across different mediums, aesthetics, and walks of life. This philosophy embraces interconnectedness: where art, identity, and community are a part of the same living fabric. The gala brings together hundreds of people to celebrate art & artists, featuring over 140+ artworks in a public exhibition available for silent bidding. Guests also enjoy our innovative Artist Activated Experiences Lounge, featuring immersive installations by DC based queer artists Bumper, Katie Magician, Div0id, JaxKnife Complex, Stitches DC, Hennessey and Kunj.
In a time when queer and drag performers face renewed cultural and legislative attacks, Everything is Everything affirms that freedom of expression is not optional—it’s essential. Our “Celebration of DC Club Kids” pays tribute to DC’s legendary Club Kids and nightlife culture—those radiant spaces that have long nurtured queer creativity, self-expression, and freedom. Produced at the Gala in collaboration with queer artist collective haus of bambi, this performance honors our city’s history while celebrating the diversity and creativity that will continue to shape its future. Everything is Everything culminates in a show-stopping performance by iconic New York City based performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist Joey Arias.
As Transformer’s Everything is Everything Gala Committee, we’ve experienced firsthand how artists in DC transform spaces, challenge norms, and build community. The Gala is a celebration of that creativity and resilience. It is also a crucial act of support: proceeds from the Everything is Everything Benefit Art Auction & Gala directly supports artists while sustaining Transformer’s year-round exhibitions and programs that elevate emerging artists and arts leaders within DC and beyond. In doing so, Everything is Everything ensures that experimental and inclusive artistic practice, particularly of queer, trans, and BIPOC artists, continues to thrive.
Because in DC, art isn’t just something we look at—it’s something we live, share, and fight to protect.
Purchase tickets to Everything is Everything, Transformer’s Annual Benefit Art Auction & Gala at onecau.se/everythingiseverything. Learn more about Transformer’s mission at www.transformerdc.org.
- Transformer’s Everything is Everything Gala Committee: Allana D’Amico, Sondra Fein, Theresa Nielson, Jennifer Sakai, Christopher Addison, Monica Alford, Samantha Dean, Samira Farmer, Carole Feld, Celina Gerbic, Ally Helmers, Allison Marvin, Marissa McBride, Tom Noll, Crystal Patterson, Victoria Reis, Dorothy Stein, Emily Strulson, Gregg Tourville, José Alberto Uclés, and Hanna Thompson
PHOTOS: Remove the Regime rally and march
Dominican court strikes down police, military sodomy ban
Acclaimed bisexual activist, author Loraine Hutchins dies at 77
Second ‘lavender scare’ is harming our veterans. We know how to fix it
PHOTOS: Transgender Day of Remembrance
New LGBTQ bar Rush set to debut
MTG should keep up the pressure on Trump, MAGA
Guillermo Diaz on his role as a queer, Latino actor in Hollywood
27 trans people murdered over last year
