When a relationship between two A-listers self-destructs, there’s bound to be some collateral.
Celebrities from Elon Musk to Kate Moss have been caught up in the explosive trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
Depp is suing his ex-wife, Heard, for $50m (£40m) over a Washington Post op-ed she wrote in 2018, which he says implied he abused her.
Heard is countersuing for $100m (£80m), accusing Mr Depp of orchestrating a “smear campaign” against her and describing his lawsuit as a continuation of “abuse and harassment”.
The trial has lasted more than three weeks and at times, the number of people involved in the case has been hard to follow.
Below, we have collated 10 celebrities who have made an appearance, whether they like it or not, in the trial between Depp and Heard.
Elon Musk
During her testimony, Heard described the moment she met Elon Musk at the 2016 Met Gala after her then-husband Depp “stood me up” on the red carpet.
“He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice,” Heard said about developing a friendship with the billionaire Tesla CEO.
Heard and Musk are rumoured to have dated on and off between 2016 and 2018 and the SpaceX boss was named on her witness list for the trial. However, he has not appeared on the stand.
During opening statements, Heard’s lawyers said that Depp had been “obsessed” with Musk.
Later in the trial, it was revealed that Musk had donated at least $500,000 to the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles on Heard’s behalf.
Paul Bettany
Depp testified that Heard “despised” his friend Paul Bettany because she saw him as a “threat” to their time together.
“Ms Heard despised Mr Bettany, mainly because we had become such close friends and for her, he was a threat and would take me away from her, with regard to if Paul Bettany were getting the attention from me, that was a show-stopper. It would cause all kinds of unpleasantries,” Depp said.
James Franco and Amber Heard attend the premiere of ‘The Adderall Diaries’ in 2015
Depp’s friendship with the Wandavision star had already come up during Depp’s previous libel case against The Sun in 2020. Text messages between the two were used as evidence in both trials – in them, the pair joked about burning and drowning Heard.
“Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead,” Depp wrote in the texts.
Bettany addressed the messages during an interview with The Independent in December 2021, saying it was “embarrassing” to have the messages made public.
“And we live in a world without context,” he told The Times.
Paul Bettany and Johnny Depp
Kate Moss and Johnny Depp
