Johnny Depp Mistakes Court For Movie Set, Tells Cinematic Tale of Meeting Amber Heard (Someone Misses the Spotlight)

“Can you please tell the jury how you met Ms. Heard?” Simple enough question, right? Not for Johnny Depp.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star seems to have mistaken the courtroom of his defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard for a movie set and used his turn on the stand to perform a name-dropping, circle-jerking, never-ending monologue.

Instead of just stating the date and the location of the first, fateful meeting with the woman that was to become his allegedly abusive wife, Depp went on a 13-minute, long-winded tale of his initial encounter with Heard, his co-star in The Rum Diary.

The story went a little something like this:

It was a dark and stormy night in 2008. Hunter Thompson and I were going through some of his manuscripts. You know Hunter Thompson, right? Or maybe I should say, “Hunter S. Thompson,” as the public knows him. We’re pals, so I just called him Hunter Thompson. Anyway, I found this old, weathered, neglected manuscript in his collection called ‘The Rum Diary.’ It’s considered his long-lost novel. In fact, the only novel he ever wrote, which is weird, because it’s basically just his real diary.

So I showed it to Hunter, who said, “Read it to me.” I can’t read, but my assistant can, so I had her read it to us. It was amazing! Even Hunter didn’t realize how incredible his own writing was. Luckily for him, I showed him the light.

“This is a movie, you know,” he told me. I was like, “Duh. I know. I’m an actor. And I’m going to star in it.” I also offered to produce, even though everyone knows producing is bullshit.

He got all excited about it – in fact, he got a “broner” while we were talking about it. I was flattered. Sadly, Hunter committed suicide shortly thereafter. I think it was because he realized I wasn’t that good of an actor. But it didn’t matter. I knew every angle of the book and how to turn it into a blockbuster movie. That’s my thing, in case you didn’t know: blockbusters.

Blah blah blah financing. Blah blah blah directors. Then I ripped Bruce Robinson out of retirement – kind of like how Amber later ripped out my finger. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Bruce had been auditioning girls – whoops, I guess we say “women” now, don’t want to get canceled – for the part of Chenault, basically the hot chick of the film. There were starlets who were up and coming; there were well-known actresses who were old and crusty. Hunter was very against stunt casting. For the nubes out there, stunt casting means casting famous people. Because why would you want to do that? I’m the star of the film, obviously. Everyone else should be an unknown.

So Bruce mentioned he had been auditioning an actress named Amber Heard. He auditioned her five times. He said he wasn’t sure about her acting abilities. I said, “It doesn’t matter if she’s good. It only matters if she’s hot. Even better if she’s crazy.”

He asked me to read with her for the role. I said, “Bruce, you know I don’t know how to read. How about I just meet her and see how she behaves and reacts? That’s all she has to do in the movie anyway; behave and react. Acting isn’t that hard.”

We made an appointment and she came to my office. I took one look at her and I thought, “Yeah. That’s the Chenault Hunter wants. That’s the one. She could definitely kill me. She’s sweet as pie. Pleasant. Intelligent. Literate. Very good taste. It was a match made in hell.”

OK, that’s not a verbatim transcript of what he said. But it’s pretty close (and it’s the more entertaining version). You can bore yourself to death watching the real-life testimony. We guarantee you’ll look as dead inside as Heard does by the time you get to the end.

Poor Johnny. Even more than suffering this alleged abuse and getting his finger whacked off by his ex, what we really pity him for is how desperately he misses the Hollywood spotlight.

Cover Photo: JIM WATSON / Contributor (Getty Images)