Opinions

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard and the deeply unsatisfying matter of re-litigating their trial

The series was panned by critics

Published

2 years ago

September 7, 2023

Amber Heard (Screen capture/YouTube-Netflix)

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.

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Opinions

Do not forget that Renee Good was queer

Far-right media link shooting victim’s sexuality to her protest of ICE

Published

2 days ago

January 16, 2026

Emma Cieslik

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Please do not forget that Renee Nicole Good was a queer woman.

Last week, Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, was shot and killed by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. Her wife Rebecca Good was present when the ICE agent shot her, standing outside their car. In the immediate aftermath, Minneapolis erupted with protests aimed at ICE in the city and Republican officials, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who argued the shooting was justified as an act of self-defense.

In a press conference held this past Thursday, Vance told reporters that Good was “a victim of left-wing ideology.” “I can believe that her death is a tragedy,” Vance said,” while also recognizing that it is a tragedy of her own making.” Many criticized Vance’s statement, especially given how he blamed “left-wing extremism” for Charlie Kirk’s death in September on a Utah campus and Vance himself doubled down on condemning those who were celebrating the far-right podcaster’s fatal shooting.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem implied that Good was a domestic terrorist while Fox News host Jesse Watters said that “the woman who lost her life was a self-proclaimed poet from Colorado with pronouns in her bio.”

Laura Loomer, another far-right Trump supporter, tweeted, “‘She/her.’ Literally every time,” in response to what is believed to be Good’s Instagram account. Loomer and Watters both pointed out her pronouns are somehow part of the reason she was tied to ICE-related violence.

As these comments from far right pundits show, far-right media coverage was quick to connect Good’s queerness to her work to inhibit ICE activity in Minneapolis.

But while far-right news outlets highlighting Good’s queerness, centrist and even leftist news outlets also erased her wife’s experience, featuring interviews with Good’s mom and ex-husband but not her wife who was present for the shooting, feeding into the narrative that she was an “innocent” white mother while denying Good’s own agency in mobilizing for immigrants in her community.

Nobody should be shot by government agencies ever, and these news outlets do not need to play into the construction of an “innocent” white woman for people to be outraged by her death. In fact, in doing so and denying Good’s queerness, they deny the way in which Good’s identity likely affected the way she interacted with the police. For queer and trans people, police are not safe people–in fact, Good’s last words deescalating the situation reflect the ways that homophobia and misogyny prime queer women, and all women to placate men’s emotions.

And it still didn’t work. After shooting her, the ICE agent called her a “fucking bitch,” in front of her wife who was kept away from Good while she bled out in her car.

When the media reinforces the narrative that she was an “innocent” mother, it reinforces the same sexism and racism that allows police brutality to continue.

In an interview, author of the book After Purity released this past December, Sara Moslener said that “White womanhood has been constructed to require that white women sort of maintain purity within themselves as a way to maintain the purity within themselves as a way to maintain the purity of, the innocence of, the nation state. When the purity movement resurfaced in the 1990s, it was this recapitulation of the 19th century nation of sexual purity that was highly racialized.”

“It wasn’t something that was accessible to enslaved women, to other women of color, to immigrant women. It was this ideal of true womanhood that became connected to this idea of a strong nationstate. That rhetoric was then used to justify racial terror lynchings. If white women were threatened, you know, physically, bodily, culturally, they have the right to claim things. This was often used as a guise to justify violence and murder, especially against Black men. It even ties to the concept of Karen and the entitlement of white women, where they can weaponize their vulnerability,” Moslener said.

Good’s shooting for many people was a breaking point for this very reason — because it represented the first time that they had witnessed a white person killed by an ICE agent or a member of the police.

For some, their whiteness had been a source of safety because of the privilege of their skin color, or so they thought until Good’s murder this past week. In the aftermath, they are rethinking if this privilege will continue to protect them and what it can mean in a world where violence against white women’s bodies has long caused social backlash.

This is not a reason to stop fighting — Good was not the first person killed by ICE, not even the first person killed by ICE in 2026, but her whiteness is one of the central reasons that it incited outrage — because of a society that privileges and protects white women’s bodies. To describe Good as solely an “innocent” white woman, to deny her queerness, is to play into this performance of outrage about the brutalization of white women’s bodies.

If discussions of Good’s queerness — and persistent queerphobia against queer women — is not considered in our outrage, in our protests, we feed right into the same narratives that mean some police brutality, especially that against queer and trans people and people of color, goes completely unreported and unchallenged.

This is state-sanctioned violence, and in the immediate aftermath of Good’s death, the Trump administration has demanded that people deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, has pushed the narrative that Good weaponized her vehicle against an ICE agent and that agent fatally shooting her was an act of self defense. This is categorically false but denying what we know to be true, what we can witness ourselves and understand, is the final step in fascism armed and funded by the government.

But let’s be frank: This is not the first time that the American police or a government agent has murdered an unarmed person. Just under six years ago, George Floyd was murdered by police officers in the same city — his death was a breaking point for many who had witnessed police brutality against people of color.

While people are eager to say Good’s name, we cannot say or remember her without remembering and saying the names of Black and Brown men and women, especially disabled people of color, who have been murdered in the hundreds by the police. Their names are often said, their murders often go unquestioned.

People have been and will continue to say Good’s name largely because she was a white woman but the names of Black and Brown people go unsaid and unrecognized because of a system that performs outrage about violence against white bodies. What Good’s murder realized was how a system built on the protection of white women — a Christian nationalism committed to Social Purity — will still sacrifice white women who refuse to fall in line.

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned this week over the Justice Department’s push to investigate Good’s widow. Among them was Joseph Thompson, a career federal prosecutor, who objected to investigating Good’s wife as well as the department’s refusal to investigate whether the shooting was lawful.

In the signs, in the protests, in the prayers and pleas that you say and make in the aftermath of Good’s murder, do not deny her queerness, do not deny who she was and do not deny the work she did because in performing outrage against the murder of an “innocent” white mother we replicate the same systems of harm that hurt us all.

Emma Cieslik is a museum worker and public historian.

Letter-to-the-Editor

D.C. electoral bumper car season is in full swing

More than a dozen candidates running for incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton’s seat

Published

2 days ago

January 16, 2026

John Klenert

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The District of Columbia has entered into a challenging time not seen since Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered, the city burned and rioted and risked home rule being taken away. While statehood has twice passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the dream of being the 51st star on the American flag stagnates, to say the least.

Currently according to Politics 1.com, there are already 14 Democrats including two sitting members of the City Council (At-Large Robert White and Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto) and one Republican who have declared their candidacy to become the new voice in Congress. Unfortunately Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton has refused to either announce her intentions to run for re-election again or gracefully acknowledge her time is over and she is ready to hand over the reins to continue the battles inflicted upon our home city. Congressional representation by press releases has simply got to stop as soon as possible!

Rank choice voting is going to be implemented in this 2026 cycle despite efforts to overturn or delay its implementation. Regardless of your thoughts on the new system, this will be one very interesting contest year to say the least. Rank choice … ready or not … here it comes!

Needless to say, the race for the Congressional seat is not the only major contest. Let us not forget the other positions up for election: the mayor, the attorney general, the chairman of the City Council, several ward and at-large races for the council. Add all these up and you will be looking at more moves on the political chess board than seen in the first Harry Potter film with the same results too. (As an aside, while the District of Columbia has no elected senators, it should be pointed out that any elected House member AND the District mayor have Senate floor privileges when in session.)

Before the June primary, it would be wise to make sure your voting registration is still current at the D.C. Board of Elections. Also, please urge friends not registered to do so as soon as possible. May we have the strength and will power to take back our city and stand up to those who want to destroy it.

Opinions

Zach Wahls stood up for us, now let’s stand with him

Young Iowa Democrat running for U.S. Senate

Published

3 days ago

January 15, 2026

Peter Rosenstein

Iowa state Sen. Zach Wahls (Photo courtesy of Wahls for Iowa)

It was 15 years ago, on Jan. 30, 2011, that a college student, Zach Wahls, bravely stood in front of the Iowa Legislature, and spoke out, defending the marriage rights of his two moms. On Jan. 28 we will celebrate the 15^th anniversary of that speech. That was the first time I, and millions of others, heard of Zach Wahls. I know Zach had no idea that speech would propel him to national prominence. It went viral, and Zach was invited to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show, among other appearances.

At the time, he was an engineering student at the University of Iowa. As he has said, when he prepared his notes over the weekend for his Monday speech to the legislature, he had no idea where this would lead him. Today, so many of us, not just his moms, have the chance to repay him for what he did that day, when he defended all our rights in Iowa. In the past 15 years, Zach has never stopped standing up for the rights of his moms, and for all of us in the LGBTQ community.

I first met Zach at an event in Washington, D.C., when he was leading the fight to allow gay men to be leaders in the Boy Scouts of America. Having been a Boy Scout myself, and an Explorer adviser, and having promoted scouting for the handicapped (the term we used back in those days) this was an important fight for me. I was both honored to meet Zach, and have the chance to join him in that fight. Since then, I have followed his career. First as he went to Princeton for his graduate degree, and then back to Iowa, he is a sixth generation Iowan, to run for, and win, a seat in the Iowa State Senate. He was then elected to the post of minority leader. Today, Zach is running to become the United States Senator from Iowa. Zach is a member of the younger generation so many of us want to see serving in Congress.

As soon as I heard Zach was running, I endorsed him. Many of you may have read my endorsement column in the Blade. He was recently in Washington, D.C. for a fundraiser held at the Women’s National Democratic Club, where I had the pleasure of meeting his wife, and his absolutely adorable son. I kidded him he should never go campaigning without them. Now, it’s important to remember, he is running in Iowa. Not an easy race to win. He has a primary to win, which I firmly believe he will, and then his likely opponent is the ultra MAGA Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa). A poll done just before Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said she would not run again, had Zach leading her. That may have been part of the reason she dropped out. If you followed Zach’s career in Iowa, you understand why Iowans would vote for him. If you haven’t, take a look at his website, to get an idea of where Zach stands on the issues, and the things he has been doing to fight for all Iowans. His proposed federal legislation, Keep the Promise Act, would strengthen Social Security. Zach understands we need to defeat the fascists working with the felon in the White House, before they totally destroy our country. He understands we need to fight for affordable healthcare for all, for his constituents in rural Iowa, who are getting hit the hardest by the felon’s policies. Iowa farmers are losing their farms because of the felon’s policies. While continuing to fight for the LGBTQ community, Zach has always understood, we are part of the broader community he is now fighting for.

I hope those of you who read this column, will join with me, support Zach, and be part of the Zoom call on Wednesday, Jan. 28, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Zach’s speech to the Iowa Legislature. To join, click on this link, and sign up. I also ask you to share this link with everyone you know. Our community owes something to Zach, but everyone will benefit, if Zach Wahls ends up in the United States Senate. He will make us all proud.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.