Depp v Heard: the unreal story extract chapters 1-2

THE UK TRIAL
London, July 2020
Navigating the summer of 2020 was an unsettling experience for anyone
living in the UK. We had come out of the first coronavirus lockdown,
and life was supposed to be getting back to normal, but COVID
was still killing people, and the world was weeks away from any vaccine
being announced, let alone rolled out.
My main source of freelance income – TV news reporting – had
all but dried up. The few dates I had left were booked for Channel 5
News. I was grateful for the work. For weeks, every story they sent me
to cover was about coronavirus. I found myself traversing the country
meeting and filming (but not getting too close to) people who were essentially
trying to work out a way to survive.
By the time July came round the initial wave of horror was over,
and the severest restrictions had been relaxed. On the evening of 6 July
2020 I was called by the 5 News planning editor who told me I would
not be making a COVID piece the next day, but would instead be attending
the High Court in London to cover Johnny Depp’s libel case
against The Sun or, more specifically, the Sun newspaper’s parent company,
NGN.
In April 2018, Dan Wootton, the Sun’s ‘Executive Editor’ had written
a column attacking JK Rowling, published with a headline asking
how the Harry Potter author could be happy casting Johnny Depp, a
‘wife-beater’ (the Sun’s term), in her new Fantastic Beasts film 1 .
Wootton wrote: ‘Overwhelming evidence was filed to show Johnny
Depp engaged in domestic violence against his wife Amber Heard. She
was granted a restraining order after alleging Depp assaulted her following
a drunken argument and submitted photographs to the court
showing her bruised face. Heard – backed up by numerous friends on
the record – recounted a detailed history of domestic abuse incidents,
some of which had led to her fearing for her life.’
Depp took umbrage at being called a wife-beater, and issued legal
proceedings against Wootton and NGN in June 2018.
I had no idea the trial was happening. We were only three months
past being told we could not leave our own homes unless it was
1
The article’s headline was quickly changed to remove the term ‘wife-beater’. The article,
with the amended headline, remains online.