Photo: TODAY/NBC
Amber Heardis opening up about the ripple effects of her headline-making trial againstJohnny Deppand why she fears her legal battles with her ex-husband are far from over.
“I took for granted what I assumed was my right to speak,” Heard explained. “I’m scared that no matter what I do, no matter what I say or how I say it, every step that I take will present another opportunity for the sort of silencing — which is what a defamation lawsuit is meant to do; it’s meant to take your voice.”
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She’s also said that she plans to appeal the jury’s decision.
“I know he promised it,” she said in Wednesday’s clip. “I testified to this. I’m not a good victim, I get it. I’m not a likable victim, I’m not a perfect victim. But when I testified I asked the jury to see me as human and to hear his own words, which is a promise to do this. It feels as though he has.”
TODAY/NBC
“The op-ed wasn’t about my relationship with Johnny,” Heard said. “What the op-ed was about was me loaning my voice to the bigger cultural conversation that we were having at the time. … It wasn’t about him.”
“I obviously knew I was important for me not to make it about him or do anything like defame him,” she continued. “I had teams of lawyers review all the drafts of him.”
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ThePirates of the Caribbeanactor has maintained that he never assaulted Heard, andclaimed she physically harmed him.
The verdict in the Depp-Heard case came through on June 1. Depp was awarded $15 million in damages from the jury, thoughHeard will only have to pay $10.35 milliondue to a Virginia law limiting punitive damages (the judge reduced the amount). In her countersuit, Heard won one of the three defamation counts, and was awarded $2 million in damages.
Heard, meanwhile, denounced thedecision as a “setback” for women. She told Guthrie that the case is “the most humiliating and horrible thing I have ever been through,” saying, “I have never felt more removed from my own humanity. I felt less than human.”
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/POOL/AFP via Getty, Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP
For more from Heard’s interview with Guthrie, viewers can stream part of the special edition ofDatelineThursday on Peacock, ahead of it airing Friday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. The interview will then be available onToday’s website, and the fullDatelineepisode will be shared on Peacock.
source: people.com
