Amber Heard’s lawyers pushed back in court filings, saying Johnny Depp’s team wanted to “maliciously suggest or imply that Ms. Heard was at one time an escort”
Newly unsealed pre-trial documents from the Depp v. Heard defamation case show Johnny Depp’s lawyers attempting to bring up ex-wife Amber Heard’s previous job as an exotic dancer in court — as her team claimed his team was “maliciously” suggesting Heard had been an escort.
Over the weekend, thousands of pages of filings from months of proceedings became unsealed, showing what attorneys on both sides of the trial wanted excluded from being presented to the jury.
According to The Daily Beast and the New York Post, the court documents detailed one instance that involved Depp’s team trying to submit “nude pictures” of Heard and evidence of “Amber’s brief stint as an exotic dancer years before she met Mr. Depp” to, as her team said, “frivolously and maliciously suggest or imply that Ms. Heard was at one time an escort.” (She met Depp while making their 2011 film The Rum Diary.)
Heard’s lawyers said in their March filing that it was inappropriate to bring up the “irrelevant personal matters” during the trial, which was live-streamed and televised.
Reps for Depp and Heard did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
Last month, Judge Penney Azcarate denied Heard’s request for a mistrial. The actress, 36, has since begun the appeal process on the verdict. “While we realize today’s filing will ignite the Twitter bonfires, there are steps we need to take to ensure both fairness and justice,” a spokesperson for Heard said about appealing, adding they “believe the court made errors that prevented a just and fair verdict consistent with the First Amendment.”
In response, Depp, 59, countered Heard’s appeal with one of his own to overturn the $2 million verdict in her countersuit. (While the jury found the actress defamed Depp in her 2018 op-ed and awarded him over $10 million, they sided with Heard on one of her three counterclaims, finding that Depp defamed her via comments made by his attorney Adam Waldman in 2020.)
Reacting to Heard’s appeal, a Depp spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Deadline: “The jury listened to the extensive evidence presented during the six-week trial and came to a clear and unanimous verdict that the defendant herself defamed Mr. Depp, in multiple instances. We remain confident in our case and that this verdict will stand.”
When they spoke out about the outcome of their contentious trial on June 1, Depp said he felt like the jury “gave me my life back,” while Heard said the verdict would be a “setback” for women who speak out.
“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” Depp added. Heard, meanwhile said, “I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence and sway of my ex-husband.”
In an NBC News sit-down interview with Savannah Guthrie, Heard said she doesn’t blame the jury for siding with her “beloved” Pirates of the Caribbean actor ex-husband. “How could they make a judgement, how could they not come to that conclusion,” she said. “They had sat in those seats and heard over three weeks of nonstop relentless testimony from paid employees and, towards the end of the trial, randos — as I say. … How could they, after listening to three and a half weeks of testimony about how I was a non-credible person, not to believe a word that came out of my mouth.”
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