A third wheel? Amber Heard took heat on the stand during her ex-husband Johnny Depp’s ongoing defamation trial against her, this time over her relationship with James Franco.
The Aquaman actress, 36, was cross-examined on Tuesday, May 17, about the events that led to Franco, 44, entering her home the night before she filed for divorce against the Sweeney Todd star, 58.
While Heard originally claimed that she did “not know when James came over,” the Drive Angry actress later confirmed the event, explaining why she felt comfortable having the 127 Hours actor in her home.
“He was my friend. And he lived next door, quite literally next door,” she told Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez during the trial. “And I, frankly, had exhausted my support network with my usual friends and was happy to welcome as much friendship at that time as I could possibly get.”
In her testimony, the Texas native revealed that she had become “close friends” with the Freaks and Geeks alum after the pair filmed multiple movies together. Heard went on to claim that Depp would routinely get jealous and accuse her of having affairs with her costars.
“[Johnny] was mad at me for taking the job with James Franco,” the Danish Girl star alleged during her May 5 testimony. “He hated James Franco and was already accusing me of kind of secretly having a thing with him in my past, since we had done Pineapple Express together.”
Heard previously claimed that her marriage with the Kentucky native took a turn for the worse after she was cast in The Adderall Diaries with Franco in 2015 while Depp was off filming Black Mass in Boston.
“He had already been upset with me and accused me in many arguments about not telling him about scenes that I had, if I had a kissing scene,” she said during her May 5 questioning. “Any sort of romantic scene, and [if] I wasn’t explicit about what I was going to do, then I was accused of having withheld information and hiding it from him. So I didn’t want the fight, of course, I didn’t want the argument, but I had to kind of eggshell tiptoe around how to tell him when I had any sort of scene like that.”
Heard added that she tried not to “engage” during heated conversations with the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas actor but he would allegedly pressure her to tell him if Franco “slipped her the tongue” during kissing scenes. According to Heard, Depp would also allegedly say “really disgusting things about my body.”
Depp, for his part, confirmed that he believed Heard was having an affair with the Spring Breakers star during his April 21 testimony.
The actor is suing Heard for defamation over a 2018 op-ed piece she wrote for The Washington Post in which she detailed her survival as an alleged domestic abuse victim. While the actress didn’t name Depp in the piece, his legal team has argued that based on her previous allegations of abuse, people associate him with the op-ed and it has slandered his reputation in the industry.
“Never did I myself reach the point of sticking Ms. Heard in any way, nor have I ever struck any woman in my life,” the Corpse Bride star said during his April 19 testimony. “It’s been six years of trying times. It’s pretty strange when one day you’re Cinderella, so to speak, and then 0.6 seconds later you’re Quasimodo. I didn’t deserve that, nor did my children, nor did the people who have believed in me for all these years.”
