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.
Opinions
There is no Pride in detention
LGBTQ refugees, asylum seekers in detention struggle to survive
“There Is No Pride in Detention” is the name of a campaign led by Rainbow Migration, the British organization to which I contribute as part of an advisory panel.
The campaign, launched during Pride Month, highlights the fact that an unknown number of LGBTQ people are held in immigration detention in the UK. They are detained without courts or judges, in prison-like conditions, often for an unlimited amount of time.
Although detention is officially meant to be used only when someone is about to be removed from the UK, in practice most detainees are eventually released. Their detention serves no meaningful purpose other than isolation and trauma.
The campaign made me think about LGBTQ refugees in other Western countries, especially the U.S. Immigration enforcement there, particularly under Trump-era and broader MAGA-aligned politics, has become increasingly brutal toward LGBTQ refugees. The UK has its own problems, but still a very different and less problematic system in tone and practice from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
British policing, for all its flaws, is generally far more restrained than many other systems I have encountered. UK police tend to be procedural, British policemen are generally polite, and reluctant to use force compared to what is common elsewhere. Most British policemen don’t even carry weapons if they are not dealing with a specific danger case. ICE, by contrast, has a well-documented record of brutality, aggressive attacks in detention settings and immigration facilities.
ICE does not meaningfully distinguish between queer refugees, asylum seekers, or people labelled in official rhetoric as “illegal aliens,” “drug dealers,” or “gang members.” In practice, they are all treated as deportable and faced the same level of brutality. Human rights organisations have documented widespread abuse, medical neglect, and high levels of physical and sexual violence in detention facilities, as well as verbal and physical abuse that was homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, or racist in nature. Transgender detainees are especially vulnerable due to systemic transphobia and lack of protection.
There is a real risk that people like me — trans refugees — could end up in these systems. I am a refugee in the UK, having arrived in 2018, but the U.S. was originally the country I most wanted to reach. I have idealized the U.S. since I was a child. I was obsessed with American mass culture as a kid, followed American politics closely as a teen, and as a young adult had more American friends than local ones, and tried to understand post-Soviet politics through American diplomatic literature, including Henry Kissinger.
In 2018, I was invited to speak at a disability rights conference in the U.S. about queer autistic people in the post-USSR. At the time, I was under pressure from Russian authorities, and my hometown of Donetsk in Ukraine was already under occupation. So, of course, I intended to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Ironically, I am now grateful my visa was denied and I never made it to that conference. I was devastated at the time, but in hindsight it may have saved me from something far worse. There is an old joke: if you are late for a trip, don’t worry, you might just be late for the Titanic.
I don’t doubt I would have been able to adapt socially in the U.S. more than I adapt to Ukraine and Russia. But it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t protect people from ICE. No one deserves the brutality reported in detention facilities, no matter how governments choose to frame them.
One example is Andry José Hernández Romero, a 31-year-old gay makeup artist who fled persecution in Venezuela. He was detained by ICE in March 2025 and deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador under allegations of gang affiliation. These claims were based largely on his nationality and the fact that he had tattoos, despite experts — from a criminology professor to a Venezuelan journalist who wrote a book about the gang — noting there is no reliable evidence that the Tren de Aragua gang uses identifiable tattoos. Hernández’s case seemed like something from a dark campy movie, because his “gang” tattoos were just ordinary tattoos on his hands that read “mom” and “dad.”
There’re too many other documented cases of abuse in U.S. immigration detention centers, including forced labor.
At the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, La., detainees reported being recruited into work programs where they were paid as little as 1$ per day. Others describe harassment, sexual violence, physical abuse, and separation of same-sex families. In some cases, people attending legal asylum appointments were detained and placed into deportation proceedings.
While the UK remains comparatively more protective in some respects, recent political shifts that became obvious after the local elections in May, are deeply worrying. The rise of far-right politics, combined with increasingly restrictive immigration policies, suggests a broader global trend.
The UK Home Office has also introduced visa restrictions affecting certain countries, including Afghanistan. This has had a severe impact on Afghan women, including lesbians and bisexual women, for whom study or work visas were often the only realistic escape from Taliban rule.
This creates a situation where some of the most vulnerable people are blocked from safety pathways before they can even reach asylum systems.
Meanwhile, in both the UK and the U.S., Pride Month is increasingly marked by symbolic gestures: councils scaling back support for events, corporations quietly stepping away from visible engagement. But for LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers, the reality is far darker.
For those in detention — or at risk of detention — Pride is not a celebration even if all corporate support and all pride parades were in place. For them, this month would be just another month to survive anyway, with or without rainbow flags on a street. And maybe we need to concentrate on their problems more than we’re concentrating on the lack of rainbow corporation logos.
Because there is no Pride in detention.
Opinions
Why I’m supporting Gary Goodweather for D.C. mayor
In a word, longtime local resident has the character for the job
Hey fellow LGBTQ+ Democrats, this is worth reading! Especially if you’re a voter in Washington, D.C. who’s planning to cast a ballot for the nomination of local candidates in the District of Columbia in 2026.
Because next Tuesday June 16 is a really Big Deal for D.C. Democrats. It’s the first time in two decades that the doors to filling the crucially important job of mayor are wide open because no incumbent is on the ballot.
That is, Mayor Muriel Bowser is not running for election. Instead she will — at last, and after three terms in office — symbolically ride off into the political sunset. And to considerable and well deserved applause. Because she’s been rightly lauded for many important accomplishments, including her well documented record of supporting the many diverse issues concerning the LGBTQ+ community.
But she’s been equally derided for her far too spineless a record recently, of (not) effectively opposing President Donald Trump and his outrageous stationing of outsider National Guard armed troops all across D.C. This despicably sad state of affairs has been a grim statement that Washington, D.C. (not being a state) is subject to the Donald’s feral instincts for nastily mean-spirited retributions. But she’s been meek and mild, and even actively complicit with Trump, when other mayors have told Trump to buzz off. And they succeeded.
But enough about Mayor Bowser. Her “sell by date” fast approaches. The old order changes. And a new day dawns.
Next Tuesday, two candidates of this old (and by now seriously outmoded) order seek to win the coveted Democratic nomination for mayor on June 16. First, there’s Janeese Lewis George, who’s a great first or second choice by any measure. And (ahem) then there’s Kenyan McDuffie.
But this is Ranked Choice Voting and it’s brand new. It’s not “either/or” binary, just like we now appreciate that sexual orientation and identity are also non-binary.
My first choice is clear because I know him. His name is Gary Goodweather. But so, who is this outsider candidate for mayor anyway?
It goes like this. First, together with his remarkable wife, successful D.C. Realtor Meredith Margolis, Gary and their two college age kids are all 20-year residents of Dupont Circle. I actually first met Gary and Meredith a year ago at a BBQ event, when he was a speaker at the historic, progressive, feminist Woman’s National Democratic Club.
So once again, who’s this Gary Goodweather? And why should you seriously consider him for your personal first or second or even third choice?
Here’s why. He’s new to politics in the conventional old paradigm of “politics.” But he knows Washington, D.C. forwards and backwards and inside and out. Because he’s been involved for many years in successful local private sector business investments, including the development of neighborhood-based BIDs, or Business Improvement Districts including the one in NoMa.
And his thinking is typically “out-of-the box.” For example, he’s currently an actual active advocate for establishing agriculture in our densely populated urban environment — through so-called “tiered gardens.” Yes, D.C., trust me, this is an actual thing. And yes, it requires street smarts to deal with challenging zoning issues; but it’s a real example of what fresh blood and new thinking and real imagination can bring to our hogtied and often over-regulated city.
Gary was in the U.S. Army and the National Guard for four years as a captain in the armored command. He earned his MBA in finance from Johns Hopkins University in night school.
If elected, Gary would be D.C.’s first Jewish mayor. (His is Reform Judaism. Repair the breach!)
He’s become my friend and I admire his intelligence and diligence and imagination and in a word his character.
Here’s what he said to me about what he calls his political North Star: “All D.C. residents should be protected, regardless of who they love. Love is love. Love who you want. Identify how you choose to be.”
Look, it’s always time for good weather in our city. Maybe it’s time for Gary Goodweather as mayor too. First choice or second choice. Then let’s all see what happens next.
David Hoffman is a freelance writer and retired federal government civil servant. He is a longtime resident of the H Street Northeast corridor. He is a member of both the Woman’s National Democratic Club and DSA, Democratic Socialists of America Metro DC chapter.
Opinions
Don’t just vote for change — vote for Hope Solomon for mayor
LGBTQ community isn’t separate from Washington’s story — it is our story
My name is Hope Solomon, and I’m running for mayor of Washington, D.C.
I’ve spent my entire life here. I attended D.C. Public Schools. I grew up working in my family’s small business here in D.C. I live in Dupont Circle. For 17 years, I worked in national security with the Department of Defense, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. Then last July, I got DOGE’d by Elon Musk.
I don’t recommend it as a career strategy.
But it did give me something I hadn’t had in a long time: perspective.
For the first time in years, I had space to slow down and ask a simple question: Why does it feel like Washington is being run by the same small group of people playing musical chairs, while everyone else is just expected to live with the results?
That’s when I decided to run.
I wasn’t raised in Washington’s political circles. I was raised in Washington. There’s a difference.
Some of my earliest memories are going to see the AIDS Quilt on the National Mall with my mother. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but I understood enough to know it mattered—because it made something the country had been trying not to see completely impossible to ignore.
My family’s version of a home-cooked meal has always been Annie’s or Mr. Henry’s. I grew up going to Pride, the High Heel Race, drag brunches, and drag shows. As a kid, I thought that was just what cities were like—sequins, show tunes, queens, neighbors, everything mixed together.
Turns out that wasn’t every city.
It was Washington.
The arts shaped me just as much as anything else. I started at Fillmore Arts Center, trained for years with the Washington School of Ballet, and performed across the city—from the Kennedy Center to Warner Theatre to Lisner Auditorium.
The arts taught me discipline and confidence. But more than that, they taught me something Washington has always understood: A city works when people are free to be exactly who they are.
Growing up here, LGBTQ+ Washingtonians were my neighbors, my teachers, fellow business owners, artists, friends, and family.
They helped build the Washington I know.
And that’s why this moment matters.
Washington is facing a budget crisis. Small businesses are struggling. The federal government is openly hostile toward our city. But what worries me most isn’t just policy—it’s whether we lose what makes Washington itself while trying to fix it.
Because the soul of this city is in places like Annie’s. It’s in neighborhood restaurants, small theaters, Pride celebrations, independent businesses, and the people who make this city feel like home.
As mayor, I’ll fight to protect that. I’ll stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, support LGBTQ+ youth, invest in the arts, strengthen public safety, and back the small businesses that keep our neighborhoods alive.
Most importantly, I’ll lead with the understanding that the LGBTQ+ community isn’t separate from Washington’s story.
It is Washington’s story.
If you want another career politician, you’ve got plenty of options.
If you want someone who was shaped by this city, believes in this city, and is ready to fight for this city, I’m asking for your vote.
Learn more at HopeForDC.com. On Election Day, don’t just vote for change. Vote for Hope.
Hope Solomon is a candidate for D.C. mayor.
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