Ellen Barkin
Undermining Johnny Depp’s longtime claim that no other woman besides Amber Heard ever accused him of abuse, actress Ellen Barkin testified in a deposition played in court on Thursday that the Pirates of the Caribbean star tossed a wine bottle in her direction.
“It was a toss, a throw,” Barkin asserted.
She said that the bottle did not hit her or anyone else in the hotel room, where she claimed the incident occurred. She said that she was with a group of people in that room.
Asked whether she understood Depp was throwing the bottle at her, Barkin said: “I don’t know why he threw the bottle.”
Barkin first made that allegation against Depp in 1998, when they both co-starred in the cult classic Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas. The movie was adapted from a book by Depp’s close friend and counterculture icon, the late Hunter S. Thompson, who was known for his frank depictions of drug and alcohol use.
Several witnesses noted Depp’s reputation for frequently indulging in both.
“He’s drunk all the—most, a lot of the time,” Barkin said, adding that he also used hallucinogenics, cocaine, and marijuana.
Barkin said that they started off as friends, and after Amber Heard’s attorney asked about their “romantic” relationship, Barkin hastened to correct her.
“Can we change that to sexual? Just sexual?” Barkin asked. “Thank you.”
Depp has claimed in the past that Barkin holds a grudge because she had wanted a “proper relationship,” and he didn’t.
But Barkin testified that Depp acted possessive toward her.
“He’s just a jealous man, controlling,” she claimed, quoting him peppering her with questions like “Where are you going?” and “Who are you going with?”
She said that she had a scratch on her back once, and Depp accused her of getting it while having sex with another man.
Though first made public on Thursday, Barkin’s deposition was recorded on Nov. 22, 2019.
The prerecorded deposition was meant to bolster Heard’s case in Depp’s defamation lawsuit accusing the Aquaman actress of falsely describing herself as a domestic abuse survivor in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed. Heard filed a countersuit claiming that Depp smeared her by having his attorney Adam Waldman characterize her abuse claims as “fake” and a hoax.”
Since trial began, Heard has accused Depp of horrific physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and liquor bottles have loomed large over the trial, on both sides. Heard claimed that Depp raped her with a liquor bottle during an alleged three-day drug bender in Australia, tearfully telling a jury that she was worried that the bottle may have been broken. Depp emphatically denied the alleged assault occurred, and his attorney sharply questioned Heard’s account on cross-examination.
Throughout the trial, Depp has claimed that Heard abused him and admitted that on tape. His account of the Australia incident has it that Heard assaulted him with a bottle, allegedly throwing a broken one toward him that sliced off the tip of his finger.
This week, most of Heard’s witnesses have testified via remote deposition, rather than on the witness stand of the small Virginia courthouse where the trial is taking place.
(Screenshot via the Law&Crime Network)
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