Who is Savannah Guthrie's husband? Michael Feldman was Johnny Depp team's 'PR consultant'!
Amber Heard sat down with NBC's Savannah Guthrie for her first interview since losing a defamation case to Johnny Depp. It later emerged that Guthrie's husband Michael Feldman had served as a consultant for Depp's legal team.
On June 1, a Virginia-based jury ruled in a unanimous decision that Heard, 36, defamed Depp, 58, when she called herself a victim of domestic abuse in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post. Heard was ordered to pay $15 million in damages, including $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, but Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the punitive damages to $350,000 as per Virginia state law. The jury also awarded Heard compensatory damages of $2 million, agreeing to her claim of being defamed when Depp's lawyer Waldman called her abuse allegations a "hoax."
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NBC announced on Monday, June 13, that it would be airing a primetime special interview with Amber Heard on Friday, June 17, featuring Today co-host Guthrie. The reputed anchor, who moderated one of the presidential debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in October 2020, interviewed Depp's attorneys Camille Vasquez and Benjamin Chew last week. It was then that she revealed that her husband, public relations consultant Michael Feldman, was also an adviser to Depp in the widely-discussed trial.
Guthrie made the admission about her husband's ties to Depp's lawyers at the start of the interview before quickly moving on to her questions about the trial. “A quick disclosure, my husband has done consulting work for the Depp legal team, but not in connection with this interview,” she said.
Who is Savannah Guthrie's husband?
Feldman, 53, a public relations consultant and former Democratic political adviser, was part of Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1992 and has several high-profile projects under his belt. He also worked for the former Vice President Al Gore as a senior adviser and traveling chief of staff, and worked alongside Gore during his 2000 presidential campaign. He is a founding partner and managing director of The Glover Park Group — a communications, consulting, and advocacy firm. His wife Guthrie was a prominent face during the coverage of the Depp-Heard trial.
Guthrie interviewed one of Heard's attorneys, Elaine Bredehoft, after the trial. Shortly after news emerged of Heard's forthcoming primetime interview with Guthrie, a spokesperson for the actress defended her decision to speak out. "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," Heard's rep told Newsweek in a statement on Monday. "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."
In a two-minute teaser for the tete-a-tete, Heard says she does not blame the jury for its verdict following the seven-week courtroom showdown in response to Depp's defamation lawsuit. The 'Pirates of the Caribbean' star was victorious almost two years after he lost a 2020 libel case against NGN, the publishers of British tabloid The Sun. The newspaper had labeled the actor a "wife-beater" following Heard's allegations of domestic abuse and, according to the verdict in the UK libel case, The Sun proved that what they published was "substantially true”.