Depp vs Heard, who is right in the controversial trial that just started?

The first week of the defamation trial filed by Johnny Depp against his ex-wife Amber Heard has shown some details of what his ephemeral and stormy marriage was. The trial is a legal drama where claims and counterclaims of domestic abuse, manipulation, obsession, drug addiction, and alcoholism have surfaced in a Fairfax, Virginia courtroom.

Depp and Heard were married for three years and now put on their show sitting 15 feet apart and separated by lawyers and a deep expanse of resentment.

Depp requests compensation of 50 million dollars from Heard, as he claims that he slandered him in an article written in 2018 for The Washington Post. The actor insists that his ex-wife falsely portrayed him as a domestic abuser and as a result, he is blacklisted in Hollywood.

In his complaint, the 58-year-old actor claimed that Heard, 35, made a series of accusations “designed to shock” and “manipulate” by misusing the #MeToo movement that denounces abuse against women.

However, Heard countersued for $100 million , arguing that Depp is a “revenge-obsessed ex-husband” who beat, kicked and sexually assaulted his wife with a bottle of vodka.

What has been said in the first hearings between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard?

The Kentucky-born actor lost a libel suit against The Sun newspaper in 2021 , after a British Supreme Court judge ruled it was “substantially true” that Depp hit his ex-wife.

However, the trial in the US has other overtones, since most fans support the actor’s version, while the trial is broadcast live to millions of people.

In addition, the trial has brought together other Hollywood celebrities and the US jet set: actors James Franco, Paul Bettany and tycoon Elon Musk are on Judge Penney Azcarate’s list of witnesses. His testimony joins that of employees, friends, doctors and psychotherapists who add elements to this celebrity scandal.

Heard appears in the room with a cold face, as she listens to the daily attacks on her character and her treatment of her husband. Depp, for his part, resisted the disqualifications of a series of witnesses who accused him of being violent. Instead, he brought Kate James, Heard’s assistant from 2012 to 2015, to testify on his behalf, who described him as “a total southern gentleman.”

Both sides also allowed the testimony of relationship counselor, Laurel Anderson , to testify that both Heard and Depp had family histories of domestic violence and incidentally, air intimacies of the couple’s relationship.

“Depp had been well controlled for decades before he met Heard,” Anderson said. “With Ms. Heard, it was triggered. They engaged in what I saw as mutual abuse. On more than one occasion, Heard initiated incidents to prevent Depp from leaving, due to her fear of abandoning her.”

The trial is expected to last seven weeks and, like a good story, the protagonists are preparing the ground to give their own testimonies about what happened during their relationship.

Depp intends, before testifying, to show his ex-wife as an intriguer to debunk his accusation of being a victim of his abuse.

Heard’s alleged libel, Depp’s lawyers say, “follows a pattern of his elaborate and erroneous claims that have been reworked to shock Hollywood and, in the process, exploit a serious social movement.”