Amber Heard's legal team hopes the texts submitted in the libel case will help prove Johnny Depp abused her
Johnny Depp's lawsuit against English paper The Sun starts later in March in London and the case is at the heart of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp mess.
The libel case against the newspaper claims that it printed articles that damaged Depp's reputation and ability to work in the industry.
He sued the paper after he was cast in ' Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' and the paper ran an article questioning the choice, given the claims by Heard in Dan Wootton's column, "GONE POTTY: How can JK Rowling be 'genuinely happy' casting Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film after assault claim?"
According to Depp, the articles from April 2018 claim that he was guilty of domestic violence against Heard, who was left fearing for her life. The paper had published text messages between the two celebrities that Heard plans to use as evidence of abuse, texts that first came out in 2016.
Depp's team insisted that the text messages had been fabricated. According to reports, Depp's previous legal team accidentally shared an archive of 70,000 messages with The Sun's lawyers.
As part of the libel lawsuit, a judge recently ordered Depp to share more audio recordings of conversations between himself and Amber Heard as well.
In one of the text messages that was sent after May 24, 2014, following the alleged physical abuse that happened on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles, Heard reportedly texted Depp's assistant Stephen Deuters, saying, "Look, He thinks 'he doesn’t deserve this'. Obviously he has no idea what he did or to the extent that he did it. If someone was truly honest with him about how bad it really was, he’d be appalled. The man johnny is would be humiliated. And definitely wouldn’t say to me that he doesn’t deserve it."
"I'm sad that he doesn't have a better way to really know the severity of his actions yesterday. Unfortunately for me, I remember in full detail everything that happened," Deuters said added, "It was disgusting. And he knows it." He later added, "He was appalled. When I told him he kicked you, he cried."
In another text sent on May 30, 2014, Depp allegedly said to his friend Paul Bettany, "I'm gonna properly stop the booze thing, darling… Drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA this past Sunday... Ugly mate... No food for days... Powders... Half a bottle of whisky, a thousand red bull and vodkas, pills. 2 bottles of Champers on the plane and what do you get... ?? An angry aggro Injun in a f****** blackout, screaming obscenities and insulting any f*** who gets near... I’m done. I am admittedly too f***** in the head to spray my rage at the one I love... For little reason as well I’m too old to be that guy. But pills are fine!!!"
Depp's lawyer, David Sherborne, has denied that it happened, in a recent hearing. "It is denied he had been drinking heavily and the entire account of what happened on that flight is denied," he said. However, this text could undermine the pleaded case, a legal source close to Heard told Daily Mail.
According to The Mail on Sunday Depp's legal team has also wondered if Heard's mental state was like that of Gone Girl's Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike where she staged her own murder and blamed it on the husband.
Depp is also suing Heard for defamation in the US over an article she wrote in the Washington Post.