Amber Heard conceded that ex-husband Johnny Depp brought her “total global humiliation” — while insisting that she still loves the actor she accused of shocking sexual and physical abuse.
“Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I love him,” Heard, 36, told NBC News in her first interview after being ordered to pay her Hollywood superstar ex $10.4 million for defamation.
“I loved him and all my heart. And I tried the best I could to make a deeply broken relationship work,” she said of their “ugly” and “very toxic” marriage.
“And I couldn’t,” she told Savannah Guthrie in a clip that aired Wednesday on the “Today” show.
“I have no bad feelings or ill will towards him at all,” she insisted of Depp.
“I know that might be hard to understand, or it might be really easy to understand — if you’ve ever loved anyone, it should be easy.”
Still, she admitted that the trial fulfilled Depp’s promise in a text message that she would see “total global humiliation” if she pressed ahead with her accusations.
“I know he promised it … it feels as though he has,” she said after pausing and sighing.
“Of course, I took for granted what I assume was my right to speak,” she said of her op-ed about being a survivor of domestic violence.
She insisted that the Washington Post “op-ed wasn’t about my relationship with Johnny,” rather to engage in the “cultural conversation that we were having at the time” with #MeToo.
“It was important for me not to make it about him, or to do anything like defame him,” she insisted of the piece that led to her downfall.
“I had lawyers, teams of lawyers, review all the drafts of this,” she said.
Asked if she wanted Depp to be canceled, she insisted, “Of course not. Of course not. It wasn’t about him.”
But now she is “scared” that he could come after her again, she admitted.
“I’m scared that no matter what I do, no matter what I say or how I say it, every step that I take will present another opportunity for the sort of silencing,” she said.
“Which is what I guess a defamation suit is meant to do. It’s meant to take your voice,” she said.
She said she now plans on focusing on being “a mom full time, where I’m not having to juggle calls with lawyers.”
Asked what she would tell her daughter about her high-profile loss, she said, “I think no matter what, it will mean something.
“I did the right thing. I did everything I could to stand up for myself and the truth.”
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