Helena Bonham Carter is sharing her thoughts surrounding some of her controversial peers.
In a new interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, the actress, 56, said she believes Johnny Depp, who she has starred alongside in numerous films, has been “completely vindicated” following his six-week defamation trial against Amber Heard earlier this year.
“I think he’s fine now,” Bonham Carter, who spoke to the publication after being named the first female president of the London Library, said. “Totally fine.”
Bonham Carter’s comments come months after a Virginia jury found that Heard, 36, defamed Depp, 59, in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed about domestic violence, though she didn’t name her ex-husband in the article. Depp was awarded more than $10 million in damages, and Heard won one of her defamation counterclaims and was awarded $2 million. They are both appealing the verdicts.
Depp had previously lost a libel case against The Sun newspaper after being described as a “wife-beater” by the publication in 2018 — which a judge ruled was “substantially true” in a written statement delivered through the UK Ministry of Justice.
During her discussion with The Sunday Times, Bonham Carter added that she believes Heard “got on that pendulum” when she was asked if Depp’s recent case was the “pendulum of #MeToo swinging back.”
“That’s the problem with these things — that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it,” Bonham Carter said.
Elsewhere in her discussion, Bonham Carter also addressed the backlash that Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has faced in recent years.
The writer first came under fire in June 2020 when she appeared to support anti-transgender sentiments in a series of tweets. Though she denied that her views on feminism were transphobic, Rowling, 57, doubled down on her controversial standpoints in a lengthy essay shared on her website days later.
“It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks. I think she has been hounded. It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse,” Bonham Carter said of Rowling, seemingly referring to Rowling’s 2020 revelation that she’s a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor.
“Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain,” she said. “You don’t all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”
Other Potter stars, including Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, have each spoke out against Rowling’s much-criticized remarks regarding the transgender community.
“Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are,” Watson, 32, wrote on Twitter in June 2020. “I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.”
When asked if she felt her cast mates were “ungrateful,” Bonham Carter disagreed. “I won’t say that. Personally, I feel they should let her have her opinions, but I think they’re very aware of protecting their own fan base and their generation,” she said. “It’s hard. One thing with the fame game is that there’s an etiquette that comes with it; I don’t agree with talking about other famous people.”
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
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