Kate Moss Denies Johnny Depp Pushed Her Down Stairs in Testimony
Appearing as a witness for Mr. Depp, whom she dated in the 1990s, the British model countered testimony by the actor’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, who had alluded to a rumored incident between them.
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Kate Moss, a former girlfriend of Johnny Depp, testified via a video link at the libel trial involving Mr. Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.Credit...Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
By Julia Jacobs
May 25, 2022Updated 7:17 p.m. ET
Lawyers on each side of the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard worked on Wednesday to undermine the credibility of the other as the trial wound down and the moment approached when the jury would be tasked with deciding whether to believe that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard, she abused him or mutual abuse occurred.
Mr. Depp’s legal team brought forward testimony from the British model Kate Moss, a former girlfriend, to rebut a rumor Ms. Heard had alluded to earlier in court suggesting that Mr. Depp had pushed Ms. Moss down the stairs in the 1990s. And Ms. Heard’s team confronted Mr. Depp with a series of text messages in which he appeared to use vile language in reference to women, writing in 2016 that Ms. Heard was “begging for total global humiliation.”
Mr. Depp said that message reflected his shock that Ms. Heard was making false allegations about him, but he denied sending a pair of separate messages that included the words, “I need. I want. I take,” in reference to a woman.
“You read it right but I did not write that,” he said, later calling the texts “grotesque.” “Perhaps someone else had my phone.”
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A lawyer for Mr. Depp, Benjamin Chew, questioned Ms. Moss in response to a detail from Ms. Heard’s testimony earlier in the trial. Ms. Heard described a fight in 2015 in which, she said, she struck Mr. Depp because he had swung at her sister while she was standing at the top of a staircase.
“I just, in my head, instantly think of Kate Moss and the stairs and I swung at him,” Ms. Heard said.
Ms. Moss denied that Mr. Depp had ever pushed her down the stairs.
In Ms. Moss’s brief testimony over a video call, she told the jury sitting in Fairfax County, Va., that she recalled slipping down the stairs at a resort in Jamaica during their relationship, which she said lasted from 1994 to 1998.
“There had been a rainstorm and as I left the room I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back,” Ms. Moss said. “He came running back to help me and carried me to my room and got me medical attention.”
“He never pushed me, kicked me or threw me down any stairs,” Ms. Moss said.
Ms. Heard had also discussed that “rumor” in testimony at an earlier trial in Britain in 2020, a case also associated with the question of whether Mr. Depp had physically abused his wife. In that case, Mr. Depp sued a British tabloid company and editor after The Sun newspaper called him a “wife beater” in a headline. The judge in that case found that Mr. Depp had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly during their marriage and that he had put her “in fear of her life.”
Ms. Moss did not testify during the proceeding in London. But Mr. Depp’s legal team chose to call her as a witness in Virginia after Ms. Heard again referred to Ms. Moss in the courtroom. When she did, on May 5, Mr. Depp’s lead lawyer, Mr. Chew, pumped his fist, appearing to celebrate the mention, which opened the door for Ms. Moss to be called to testify about her relationship with Mr. Depp.
Johnny Depp returned to the stand on Wednesday to continue testifying in the libel case he has brought against his ex-wife, Amber Heard.Credit...Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstein/EPA, via Shutterstock
The jury is expected to get the case by the weekend. Technically the members are empaneled to determine whether the reputation of either member of the former couple has been damaged by false statements about their tumultuous relationship. To do so, jurors will have to decide whether either side presented credible evidence that abuse had occurred.
Another witness for Mr. Depp on Wednesday was Beverly Leonard, who said she saw Ms. Heard get into an altercation with a companion in 2009, when Ms. Leonard was working at an airport in Seattle. Ms. Leonard said Ms. Heard grabbed the other woman and pulled a necklace off her before she stepped between them. (Ms. Leonard was a police officer at the airport and arrested Ms. Heard on suspicion that she had assaulted her then-partner, Tasya van Ree, according to court papers. Ms. Heard was not charged, and Ms. van Ree called the situation “over-sensationalized.”)
Under cross-examination, Ms. Leonard, an unexpected witness, acknowledged that she had reached out to Mr. Depp’s team on Tuesday night, offering to testify. A lawyer for Ms. Heard, Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, questioned whether she had done so to “get on television,” but Ms. Leonard denied that.
Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber Heard
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In the courtroom. A defamation trial involving the formerly married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is currently underway in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. Here is what to know about the case:
The case. Mr. Depp brought a defamation case against Ms. Heard in an effort to clear his name from domestic abuse allegations that she has made against him and that he denies. The jury is also considering a countersuit from Ms. Heard, who claims that Mr. Depp defamed her when his former lawyer said her domestic abuse claims were a “hoax.”
Ms. Heard’s op-ed. Mr. Depp’s suit was filed in response to an op-ed Ms. Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Though she did not mention her former husband’s name, he and his lawyers have argued that she was clearly referring to their relationship.
The end of their marriage. Ms. Heard filed for divorce in 2017, just over a year after the pair had married. She also obtained a temporary restraining order against the actor after accusing him of hitting her. She later withdrew that claim, and in January 2017, the couple agreed to a $7 million divorce settlement.
An earlier defamation case. The trial follows another case Mr. Depp brought in London in 2020 against The Sun newspaper, which called him a “wife beater” in a headline. In that trial, a judge found that there was evidence that he had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly.
The domestic abuse claims. In the 2020 trial, Ms. Heard accused her former husband of assaulting her first in 2013, after they began dating, and detailed other instances in which he slapped her, head-butted her and threw her to the ground. Mr. Depp has since accused her of punching him, kicking him and throwing objects at him.
Ms. Heard, 36, has accused Mr. Depp, 58, of repeated physical abuse, as well as several instances of sexual assault, and has said she only ever hit back in defense of herself or her sister. Mr. Depp has denied ever hitting or sexually assaulting Ms. Heard, and has described her as the abuser in the relationship.
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Earlier in the trial, Ellen Barkin, with whom Mr. Depp was also romantically involved in the 1990s, called him a “controlling” and “jealous man,” recounting an incident in a Las Vegas in which, she said, Mr. Depp threw a wine bottle across a hotel room. She said there had been a fight going on between Mr. Depp and other people in the room, but she could not remember the cause of it.
The Virginia case was sparked by a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, in which Ms. Heard said her career suffered after she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article did not mention Mr. Depp by name, but he has asserted that its allusions to their relationship “devastated” his acting career.
The seven-person jury is also considering Ms. Heard’s countersuit, which says Mr. Depp defamed her when the lawyer representing him at the time made statements to the British tabloid The Daily Mail saying that her abuse accusations were a hoax.
Ms. Heard has testified that Mr. Depp’s rages were fueled by his drug and alcohol use and triggered by his suspicions that she was having affairs, which she has repeatedly denied. Mr. Depp, she said, would punch, slap and kick her, and had torn out clumps of her hair and sexually assaulted her with a bottle.
Over four days of testimony earlier in the trial, Mr. Depp described Ms. Heard as someone with a “need for conflict” and a “need for violence.” He said she had lashed out at him physically over a number of issues, including a potential postnuptial agreement, her desire for Mr. Depp to abstain from drugs and alcohol, and his tardiness to her 30th birthday dinner.
On Wednesday, one of the texts that Mr. Depp was confronted with included his saying of Ms. Heard in 2016, “I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion, or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market.”
Mr. Depp said the text portrayed his anger at the false accusations that turned him into “scum” in the eyes of many.
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Appearing as a witness for Mr. Depp, whom she dated in the 1990s, the British model countered testimony by the actor’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, who had alluded to a rumored incident between them.
Give this article
Kate Moss, a former girlfriend of Johnny Depp, testified via a video link at the libel trial involving Mr. Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.Credit...Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersBy Julia Jacobs
May 25, 2022Updated 7:17 p.m. ET
Lawyers on each side of the defamation case between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard worked on Wednesday to undermine the credibility of the other as the trial wound down and the moment approached when the jury would be tasked with deciding whether to believe that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard, she abused him or mutual abuse occurred.
Mr. Depp’s legal team brought forward testimony from the British model Kate Moss, a former girlfriend, to rebut a rumor Ms. Heard had alluded to earlier in court suggesting that Mr. Depp had pushed Ms. Moss down the stairs in the 1990s. And Ms. Heard’s team confronted Mr. Depp with a series of text messages in which he appeared to use vile language in reference to women, writing in 2016 that Ms. Heard was “begging for total global humiliation.”
Mr. Depp said that message reflected his shock that Ms. Heard was making false allegations about him, but he denied sending a pair of separate messages that included the words, “I need. I want. I take,” in reference to a woman.
“You read it right but I did not write that,” he said, later calling the texts “grotesque.” “Perhaps someone else had my phone.”
ADVERTISEMENTContinue reading the main story
A lawyer for Mr. Depp, Benjamin Chew, questioned Ms. Moss in response to a detail from Ms. Heard’s testimony earlier in the trial. Ms. Heard described a fight in 2015 in which, she said, she struck Mr. Depp because he had swung at her sister while she was standing at the top of a staircase.
“I just, in my head, instantly think of Kate Moss and the stairs and I swung at him,” Ms. Heard said.
Ms. Moss denied that Mr. Depp had ever pushed her down the stairs.
In Ms. Moss’s brief testimony over a video call, she told the jury sitting in Fairfax County, Va., that she recalled slipping down the stairs at a resort in Jamaica during their relationship, which she said lasted from 1994 to 1998.
“There had been a rainstorm and as I left the room I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back,” Ms. Moss said. “He came running back to help me and carried me to my room and got me medical attention.”
“He never pushed me, kicked me or threw me down any stairs,” Ms. Moss said.
Ms. Heard had also discussed that “rumor” in testimony at an earlier trial in Britain in 2020, a case also associated with the question of whether Mr. Depp had physically abused his wife. In that case, Mr. Depp sued a British tabloid company and editor after The Sun newspaper called him a “wife beater” in a headline. The judge in that case found that Mr. Depp had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly during their marriage and that he had put her “in fear of her life.”
Ms. Moss did not testify during the proceeding in London. But Mr. Depp’s legal team chose to call her as a witness in Virginia after Ms. Heard again referred to Ms. Moss in the courtroom. When she did, on May 5, Mr. Depp’s lead lawyer, Mr. Chew, pumped his fist, appearing to celebrate the mention, which opened the door for Ms. Moss to be called to testify about her relationship with Mr. Depp.
Johnny Depp returned to the stand on Wednesday to continue testifying in the libel case he has brought against his ex-wife, Amber Heard.Credit...Pool photo by Evelyn Hockstein/EPA, via ShutterstockThe jury is expected to get the case by the weekend. Technically the members are empaneled to determine whether the reputation of either member of the former couple has been damaged by false statements about their tumultuous relationship. To do so, jurors will have to decide whether either side presented credible evidence that abuse had occurred.
Another witness for Mr. Depp on Wednesday was Beverly Leonard, who said she saw Ms. Heard get into an altercation with a companion in 2009, when Ms. Leonard was working at an airport in Seattle. Ms. Leonard said Ms. Heard grabbed the other woman and pulled a necklace off her before she stepped between them. (Ms. Leonard was a police officer at the airport and arrested Ms. Heard on suspicion that she had assaulted her then-partner, Tasya van Ree, according to court papers. Ms. Heard was not charged, and Ms. van Ree called the situation “over-sensationalized.”)
Under cross-examination, Ms. Leonard, an unexpected witness, acknowledged that she had reached out to Mr. Depp’s team on Tuesday night, offering to testify. A lawyer for Ms. Heard, Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, questioned whether she had done so to “get on television,” but Ms. Leonard denied that.
Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber Heard
Card 1 of 6
In the courtroom. A defamation trial involving the formerly married actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard is currently underway in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia. Here is what to know about the case:
The case. Mr. Depp brought a defamation case against Ms. Heard in an effort to clear his name from domestic abuse allegations that she has made against him and that he denies. The jury is also considering a countersuit from Ms. Heard, who claims that Mr. Depp defamed her when his former lawyer said her domestic abuse claims were a “hoax.”
Ms. Heard’s op-ed. Mr. Depp’s suit was filed in response to an op-ed Ms. Heard wrote for The Washington Post in 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Though she did not mention her former husband’s name, he and his lawyers have argued that she was clearly referring to their relationship.
The end of their marriage. Ms. Heard filed for divorce in 2017, just over a year after the pair had married. She also obtained a temporary restraining order against the actor after accusing him of hitting her. She later withdrew that claim, and in January 2017, the couple agreed to a $7 million divorce settlement.
An earlier defamation case. The trial follows another case Mr. Depp brought in London in 2020 against The Sun newspaper, which called him a “wife beater” in a headline. In that trial, a judge found that there was evidence that he had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly.
The domestic abuse claims. In the 2020 trial, Ms. Heard accused her former husband of assaulting her first in 2013, after they began dating, and detailed other instances in which he slapped her, head-butted her and threw her to the ground. Mr. Depp has since accused her of punching him, kicking him and throwing objects at him.
Ms. Heard, 36, has accused Mr. Depp, 58, of repeated physical abuse, as well as several instances of sexual assault, and has said she only ever hit back in defense of herself or her sister. Mr. Depp has denied ever hitting or sexually assaulting Ms. Heard, and has described her as the abuser in the relationship.
ADVERTISEMENTContinue reading the main story
Earlier in the trial, Ellen Barkin, with whom Mr. Depp was also romantically involved in the 1990s, called him a “controlling” and “jealous man,” recounting an incident in a Las Vegas in which, she said, Mr. Depp threw a wine bottle across a hotel room. She said there had been a fight going on between Mr. Depp and other people in the room, but she could not remember the cause of it.
The Virginia case was sparked by a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, in which Ms. Heard said her career suffered after she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” The article did not mention Mr. Depp by name, but he has asserted that its allusions to their relationship “devastated” his acting career.
The seven-person jury is also considering Ms. Heard’s countersuit, which says Mr. Depp defamed her when the lawyer representing him at the time made statements to the British tabloid The Daily Mail saying that her abuse accusations were a hoax.
Ms. Heard has testified that Mr. Depp’s rages were fueled by his drug and alcohol use and triggered by his suspicions that she was having affairs, which she has repeatedly denied. Mr. Depp, she said, would punch, slap and kick her, and had torn out clumps of her hair and sexually assaulted her with a bottle.
Over four days of testimony earlier in the trial, Mr. Depp described Ms. Heard as someone with a “need for conflict” and a “need for violence.” He said she had lashed out at him physically over a number of issues, including a potential postnuptial agreement, her desire for Mr. Depp to abstain from drugs and alcohol, and his tardiness to her 30th birthday dinner.
On Wednesday, one of the texts that Mr. Depp was confronted with included his saying of Ms. Heard in 2016, “I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion, or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market.”
Mr. Depp said the text portrayed his anger at the false accusations that turned him into “scum” in the eyes of many.
Support independent journalism. See subscription options
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