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

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PREFACE Talking and writing about what may or may not have happened between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard across the course of their four-and-a-half year relationship is fraught with difficulties. Multiple, competing, intertwining narratives offered up by interested and disinterested parties point to contradictory conclusions. Hard evidence is thin on the ground. I have spent hundreds of hours reviewing sworn testimony and statements, reading court transcripts, watching videos, listening to recordings and scrolling through endless tweets, texts and emails. At the conclusion of one multimillion pound trial in 2020, the allegation Johnny Depp was a wife-beater was ruled ‘substantially true’. At the conclusion of another, held in 2022, a jury found Amber Heard had lied about her allegations of abuse. In this book I have tried to build a picture of who Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are, why they matter and how their relationship became so toxic. I’ve worked through the details of each alleged incident of violence to see whose story stands up, and I’ve picked out some of the key moments in both trials, either because they inform a wider truth, or because they felt significant at the time. I’ve also attempted to give you a flavour of what it was like reporting everything first hand, trying to make sense of the overwhelming volumes of information flooding out of each trial and the raging passions of the online armies who invested so much of themselves in the proceedings and the outcome. My basic working methods involved examining primary and secondary source documents and assessing their credibility before inserting them into the narrative. Credibility is a subjective measure, and weighing the credibility of a source can be complex. Contemporaneous documentary evidence is the best, though it needs context. Court transcripts are an undisputed and accurate record of the recollections of primary witnesses. Unfortunately those recollections could be cloudy, mistaken or deliberately misleading. I have tried to include as much as I think you need to know about the story without being overwhelmed by pointless detail. I have also tried to do this dispassionately, without being dull. This book distils the several million words which have been written and spoken about this case into a few hundred pages. Not everything is going to make the cut. Unless an event is generally agreed to have happened in a manner which is largely unchallenged, I flag it as alleged, reported, apparent
viii DEPP V HEARD: THE UNREAL STORY and so forth. In doing this, the qualifiers can stack up. To improve narrative flow, there are occasions where I have not described every single action within a contested event as alleged, if I feel I have made it clear that the entire event is denied or not accepted as true by one or more parties. Please be assured I am acutely aware just how strongly many people feel about the events depicted in this book. I am not claiming anything definitely happened, unless I was there to witness it myself. I was in court on most days of Depp v NGN 1 in the UK and Depp v Heard in the US, but I don’t know Johnny Depp or Amber Heard. I wasn’t in the Diamond Head compound in Australia in 2015, I wasn’t on the Boston to LA plane flight in 2014 and I’ve never been to Johnny Depp’s private island in the Bahamas. I wasn’t there when the alleged acts of violence are said to have occurred. In putting together this book I’ve spoken to a number of people close to the story, many of whom do not wish to be acknowledged, let alone quoted. Whilst they have all been helpful, none of them have any better idea of the truth of what really happened than I do. That is bound up in the competing narratives of the protagonists, the contemporaneous documentary evidence, and the recollections of the witnesses. I want to state for the record I am not here to be partisan. I want to let the facts – such as they are – speak for themselves. 1 NGN stands for News Group Newspapers, the Rupert Murdoch-owned parent company of The Sun newspaper.
Page 2 and 3: DEPP V HEARD THE UNREAL STORY NICK
Page 4 and 5: CONTENTS Preface ..................
Page 8 and 9: READER NOTES Johnny Depp’s reside
Page 10 and 11: GETTY IMAGES Johnny Depp and Amber
Page 12 and 13: KISS IN A SHOWER In 2008, the movie
Page 14 and 15: Kiss In A Shower 3 A fateful romanc
Page 16 and 17: The Uk Trial 5 absolutely necessary
Page 18: The Uk Trial 7 There was one small

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

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