Johnny Depp wrote of drowning and burning his girlfriend in messages to actor Paul Bettany, the high court in London was told on Wednesday.
Texts sent during his relationship with actress-model Amber Heard were said to be “very damaging” to his libel case against The Sun.
The former couple met on the sets of the 2011 film The Rum Diary and married in February 2015. Next May, Heard obtained a restraining order against Depp after accusing him of abuse, which he denied. The couple settled their divorce out of court in 2017, with Heard donating her $7 million settlement to charity.
Depp, 56, is suing the publishers of The Sun and its executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an article which alleged that he had been abusive to Heard. The Sun and The Times, London, are part of News UK.
At a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday, attended by Depp, Justice Nicol was told that 70,000 text messages were “accidentally” disclosed to the defendants by the actor’s former legal team. The messages included texts sent to Marvel star Bettany in November 2013, in which Depp wrote: “Let’s burn Amber.” Another read: “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!! I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.”
Adam Wolanski, QC, representing The Sun, said that in a further text to Bettany in May 2014, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor wrote: “I’m gonna properly stop the booze thing darling . . . Drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA... Ugly, mate . . . No food for days . . . Powders . . . Half a bottle of whiskey, a thousand red bull and vodkas, pills, two bottles of champers on plane and what do you get . . .??? An angry, aggro Injun in a f***in’ blackout, screaming obscenities and insulting any f*** who got near . . . I’m done.”
David Sherborne, representing Depp, said there was “no single smoking gun” in any of the evidence disclosed so far that supported Heard’s claims that Depp was violent.
Depp’s libel claim arises from an article in The Sun in April 2018 under the headline “Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be ‘genuinely happy’ casting wife-beater Johnny Depp in the new Fantastic Beasts film?”
