Year-end roundtable: Why we're still talking about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard

In a series of special year-end roundtable discussions, The A.V. Club looks back at the stories that made the biggest impact on pop culture in 2022.

The trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was inescapable in 2022. On the surface, it was a defamation lawsuit; Depp sued Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post about her experience with domestic violence. The conversation around the case, however, was far messier. As the trial played out on air, online, and on social media, questions arose about the role of social media, Hollywood in general, and the legacy of #MeToo, among other hot-button issues. The answers, not surprisingly, were as complicated as they were limited. Here A.V. Club staffers discuss the case, its impact, and why we’re still talking about it.

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Hattie Lindert: An interesting question about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, beyond “why” we talk about it, is “how” we talk about it; how info from the trial was communicated into the cultural membrane and how the public reacted (which I feel like was often somewhat grim news fare in and of itself).

William Hughes: The “how” is all about money, I think: This felt like a big turning point for attention grifters realizing just how much cash and followers there were in riding and amplifying a story like this, which has so many aspects that activate people’s brains to these red-line extremes. You’ve got #MeToo backlash and celebrity gossip, all mixed in with the growing anti-media “Don’t let the ‘elites’ tell you what to think; let me tell you what to think” tactic.

Gabrielle Sanchez: Absolutely William. It certainly does not help that through the use of social media everyone feels as though they can become an expert by getting behind a camera and sharing their point of view, regardless of their knowledge about the law, the case, and the court proceedings. This trial then became something people could speculate on without any real consequences.

HL: Totally, everyone got to be a critic here and social media was also such a source of trivialization, definitely a new kind of online fodder that I hadn’t seen before. What was ultimately a trial about domestic abuse and power was treated so casually! Watching people make TikToks with audio from Heard’s more emotional testimony is a trend I especially recall noticing and just being floored by.

GS: The viral interest stemmed from many sources. Primarily, our culture is one that is hostile toward women, protective of men, and obsessed with the macabre (as seen with the true crime media complex). This trial became a reality show for many, who tuned into to see the “drama” play out in real-time.

Casual is a great way to put it, Hattie. It did not seem to dawn on folks that this was a case about horrendous, relational abuse, and if it did, it did not seem to matter.

WH: In a weird way, it’s a sort of grassroots movement. This always would have been A Story. (We’ve been covering the abuse allegations against Depp for years.) But it became one of the defining stories of the year because of the way people continually amplified each other on social media, egging each other on, and watching those follower counts tick up. There was an incentive to make the story bigger and bigger that eventually caused it to dominate all of the conversation for months.

And all powered, as you note, Gabrielle, by the wellspring of misogyny buried deep within our culture.

GS: What struck me about the case as well, was the number of women who were openly supporting Depp, and taking every chance they could to criticize and humiliate Heard.

WH: Well, it’s the whole myth of the “perfect victim,” right? If America’s going to believe a woman saying a man abused her, she’s got to be impossibly, unfairly impeccable. It’s pretty clear, from the testimony, that this was an unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship between two people who almost certainly shouldn’t have been in each others’ lives. And that gave the kind of people desperate for ammunition against Heard a lot of what they (thought they) wanted.

HL: The “perfect victim” conversation is such an interesting one too because in so many ways Amber Heard does have that look and appeal that one would think would lead to a different kind of coverage; I’m thinking of your true crime comment earlier, Gabrielle, and how so often cases involving young, attractive white women get so many eyes on them while movements like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women highlight that that’s not an attention or action afforded to every victim of violence. Even with the privileges Heard did and does have, she still faced such virulent, sustained hatred for her testimony.

Even though Depp lost his U.K. case, and The Sun was not held liable for referring to Depp as a “wife beater!” I would’ve imagined that that information, especially given how little so many people actually knew about the specifics, would skew some opinion, but that tidbit often seemed skipped over by the social media discourse.

WH: It often felt like people were convinced she had “gotten away with” something and had to be held accountable for it.

HL: Absolutely.

WH: Even though I have no idea what that would be, beyond “Being a moderately successful Hollywood actress married to Johnny Depp.”

HL: People, including Depp himself, also loved to act as if she had singlehandedly derailed his career when … be real. Didn’t his own behavior spur a good degree of his problems in the industry?

GS: If anything, it’s the case that brought Depp back into the Hollywood fold. Any evidence of abuse did nothing to prevent studios and those in the industry (ahem, Rihanna) from giving him jobs and a platform.

WH: Depp positioning himself as the victim—and millions of people backing him—is a big part of why this felt like such a depressing answer to #MeToo. People haven’t given up the fight to hold abusers accountable for their actions, but it feels like the opposing side has never been more empowered to push back against it.

I’m struck especially, Hattie, by what you were saying earlier about how this whole thing was packaged as “entertainment,” a sort of righteously angry soap opera for people to soak their brains in, day in and day out.

GS: I really want to talk about the long-term effects of this verdict and trial. As William said, the trial only did more to empower those who want to silence victims and support abusers.

The ramifications of this case continue to play out, and for me, it shattered any illusion of progress made by the #MeToo movement. The public’s vitriol for a woman seeking any form of justice disgusted me. This public response to the trial made me fearful and sad for the women who would come after Heard.

I’ve been covering the Tory Lanez assault trial, and I am seeing Megan Thee Stallion subjected to the same barrage of online abuse and harassment Heard was, and the court proceedings playing out on social media, propelled by speculation and misinformation. Like Heard, every word uttered and move made by Megan is being used against her, with added layers of misgynoir.

It seems as though people almost root for the women involved in these kinds of abuse trials to be liars who are looking to gain something from the proceedings because then it would affirm their ideas that women lie about this kind of stuff all the time (I don’t know why anyone would want this to be true, but nonetheless).

HL: 100%, Gabrielle. FKA Twigs’ suit against Shia LaBeouf also comes to mind as one to watch in the new year. These cases bring out the ugliest of the ugly in our culture, and it’s infuriating to watch—uninformed audiences who prefer to be spoon-fed narratives that resonate with their own truths. I certainly do hope, though, that cases like this will continue to be brought by prominent figures, and lead other abuse victims to feel within their rights to seek legal recourse.

[This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]