Johnny Depp Says Daughter Lily-Rose Refused to Attend his Wedding to Heard for ‘Several Reasons’

Johnny Depp is suing actress Amber Heard in a legal battle which has been dragging on for years. Depp and Heard first married in 2015, and they divorced the following year. Then in 2018, Heard published an op-ed indirectly accusing her ex-husband of domestic abuse as well as “sexual violence.” Depp then sued Heard beginning in 2019 for defamation.

In April of 2022, the Depp v. Heard case began anew after years of contentious legal battles between the actor Johnny Depp, 58, and his ex-wife Amber Heard, 35. While Depp’s legal team has described Heard as a compulsive liar, Heard continues to claim that Depp is a domestic abuser.

On Wednesday, Depp testified that his daughter Lily-Rose, now 22, decided to skip the couple’s wedding in 2015 located on Depp’s private island in the Bahamas. Taking the stand in Fairfax, Virginia, Depp detailed why his daughter- whom he shares with ex-wife Vanessa Paradis- chose to be absent from the small ceremony.

"My daughter Lily-Rose did not come to the wedding. She and Ms. Heard were not on particularly great terms, for several reasons," Depp said.

When asked if there was any alcohol served at the wedding, “Yes. There was alcohol served at the wedding. There was champagne, accoutrements,” Depp stated. Then, when asked if there were any drugs at the wedding Depp said a “number of people were taking MDMA”. When asked who was partaking in MDMA (also known as ecstasy or molly), Depp named his ex-wife, before adding “All of her gang were partaking in the MDMA.”

Depp was then asked what drug he was using while his newlywed partied it up with friends on MDMA after their nuptials, to which he said, “I smoked marijuana. And, uh- I don’t remember drinking. I don’t remember that I was drinking then… I’m pretty positive at that point I wasn’t partaking in alcohol.”

In 2018 The Sun published an article in which writer Dan Wootton called Depp a “wife-beater.” Depp took legal action against the tabloid in July 2020 in which he denied allegations of abuse, but was unsuccessful in his libel lawsuit and lost in November 2020. The court upheld the tabloid’s claims as “substantially true”.

The 2020 trial revealed some of the more intimate- and often vile- details of the contentious relationship between the two actors, including when Heard allegedly defecated in their bed after he told her he was leaving her.

On Heard’s 30th birthday in April, 2016, the two had gotten into an argument in which Heard launched into a “verbal barrage” against Depp after he was late to a dinner party in celebration of Heard’s birthday. During the argument Depp claims she hit him.

He says he chose not to engage with her and instead grabbed her by the shoulders and sat her on the bed, and told her he was leaving her. Depp claims Heard punched him several times in the face as he tried to leave. The following day Depp’s cleaning lady sent his bodyguard Sean Bett a photo of the couple’s bed.

"On my side of the bed was human fecal matter," Depp testified on Wednesday. "I laughed. It was so outside, it was so bizarre and so grotesque that I could only laugh."

Heard said their dogs were responsible for the poop on the bed, which Depp says he found ridiculous. "I lived with those dogs for many years," Depp said. "That did not come from a dog. It just didn't."

Heard’s legal team alleges that Depp had a three-day, alcohol-fueled blackout while in Australia in 2015 and “abused and sexually assaulted Amber, all because she had the courage to confront him about his drinking.” While his legal team argues that Heard threw a vodka bottle at Depp during a vacation the couple took in Australia in 2015, in response to him asking her to sign a postnuptial agreement.

After Heard had allegedly finished pelting Depp with nonstop insults in response to his request for a postnuptial agreement, the actor snuck downstairs and broke his sobriety by drinking a few shots of vodka. Heard then threw the vodka bottle at Depp which broke, according to Depp, and severed the tip of his finger.

"What I felt was heat. I felt heat and I felt as if something was dripping down my hand," he recalled in court. "I looked down and realized the tip of my finger had been severed. I was looking directly at my bones sticking out."

It was also revealed during the same 2020 trial that Depp gave his then 13 year-old daughter Lily-Rose cannabis as a “responsible parent.” He said he didn’t want his daughter to go “into some paranoid tailspin and I knew that the marijuana I had myself, that I smoked myself, is trustworthy.”

Depp explained during the 2020 trial that he had told his daughter: “Please do me the honor of coming to me when you are ready, when you really feel you are ready, because I don’t want your first experience in this world to be with people you don’t know, taking things you don’t know, that I can’t trust, so it’s a safety issue.”

Depp’s lawyers then leveled against those emails by revealing a video that had been sent by an “anonymous source” revealing that Heard had allegedly assaulted her sister, Whitney Henriquez. The footage shows Henriquez during the filming of a reality TV show, with one person gesturing towards her cheek and arm, saying “did you get in a fight? I can’t believe Amber beat your ass.”

Depp originally filed his $50 million lawsuit in March 2019 in response to Heard’s op-ed piece she wrote for the Washington Post in which she detailed surviving domestic abuse, though she did not mention Depp by name in the article.

Heard has yet to take the stand in the 2022 case, but her lawyer Ben Rottenborn said that her legal team will reveal evidence that proves Heard suffered domestic abuse by Depp.

"Amber did suffer sexual violence at the hands of Depp,” said Rottenborn. “You will hear in the most graphic and horrifying terms about the violence that she suffered. You'll hear that straight from her. She will get on the stand and she will tell you that. It happened.”

Depp said he is suing Heard because he hopes to “clear the record” in reference to the allegations being made against him.

"Since I knew there was no truth to it whatsoever, I felt it my responsibility to stand up not only for myself in that instance, but stand up for my children, who at the time were 14 and 16." Depp is also father to Jack Depp, 20, whom he also shares with ex-wife Vanessa Paradis from their 14-year partnership.

Paradis has praised her ex-husband in the press, saying Depp is “a kind, attentive, generous, and non-violent person and father.” Paradis was not called by Depp’s legal team to take the stand during his previous legal battle with The Sun, so there’s no telling if they will pursue her to testify in the 2022 case.

But Paradis had claimed Heard’s allegations of abuse as “false facts,” adding, “This is nothing like the true Johnny I have known and, from my personal experience of many years, I can say he was never violent or abusive to me.”

Depp said on Wednesday that he stayed in his marriage with Heard despite her alleged abuse because his own father stayed in an abusive marriage, and he “didn’t want to fail.”

“I thought maybe I could help her. I thought maybe I could bring her around. Because the Amber Heard that I knew for the first year, tear and a half was not this, suddenly this opponent. It wasn’t my girl, she had become my opponent,” he added.

On Thursday, some light was finally shed on the contentious battle between the two actors when their former marriage counselor, clinical psychologist Laurel Anderson, told lawyers in a tape recorded in February that Heard and Depp admitted to being physically abusive towards each other.

Their Los Angeles-based therapist said that while they were in counseling in late 2015, Heard had a “jackhammer style of talking” and cut off Depp because he couldn’t keep a similar pace in his speech. Anderson added that he believed Depp had been “well controlled” for the majority of his life, but was “triggered” by Heard, as both had been the victims of abuse growing up.

Anderson said the couple engaged in what she sees as “mutual abuse.” The couple's former therapist described Heard’s abuse as a “point of pride,” saying that she would hit Depp in order to get him to stay in the room during an argument, which “triggered” him.

On Thursday, the court also heard from Amber Heard’s former personal assistant Kate James, who worked for her between 2012 and 2015. James described Depp as a “peaceful, shy, quiet” person. She said he was a “Southern gentleman” and “always completely passive”.

“It did not seem like the perfect relationship to me based on a lot of insecurity on her behalf, which seemed to cause confusion in the relationship, maybe the age gap was an issue because of their different interests,” James said. “She didn’t like hanging out in his house with his friends because it was boring and they’re all old men playing guitars and it wasn’t interesting to her.”

James then described her former employer in a less flattering light, saying Heard had spit in her face, was often intoxicated, and added that she was dramatic and emotionally abusive. “She screamed at me once in person,” James said, before adding that she was abusive towards her sister as well, adding that Heard treated her sister like “the dog that you’d kick.”

Heard posted to her social media before the trial in Virginia, writing “Johnny is suing me for an op-ed I wrote in the Washington Post, in which I recounted my experience of violence and domestic abuse. I never named him, rather I wrote about the price women pay for speaking out against men in power. I continue to pay that price, but hopefully when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny.”

“I have always maintained a love for Johnny and it brings me great pain to have to live out the details of our past life together in front of the world,” she added.

Heard has also filed a $100 million counterclaim against her ex-husband for claims of defamation against her, in which she says she has been smeared by Depp and his legal team as a liar.