Has Johnny Depp Changed the #MeToo Game?

A s a matter of law, Johnny Depp’s defamation suit against Amber Heard strikes me as ridiculous and damaging to his own interests. Depp’s reputation has been severely harmed by the many degrading and salacious revelations about their marriage in the two trials he caused to occur, first two years ago in London and now this spring in Virginia.

I don’t see how a jury could possibly find Heard committed defamation for accurately stating, in a 2018 Washington Post essay that didn’t even discuss Depp, “Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse.” But it strikes me now that Depp isn’t really trying to win a legal case. He’s trying to win in the court of public opinion.

What Depp seemingly hopes to prove is not that Heard defamed him but that she’s a rotten person and habitual liar who abused him. Mission accomplished! Public discussion of the case is tilting heavily to his side. TikTok, the platform of choice for teens, has practically become an outside publicity shop for Depp. After she undermined his career — he was fired from a planned Pirates of the Caribbean movie a few days after her piece was published — he’s doing a pretty fair job of taking her down with him.

Following the revelations in Virginia, who will want to work with this lady? Unlike him, she isn’t especially talented. True, she has already filmed the first sequel to the unspeakably terrible blockbuster Aquaman, but few will miss her if she gets written out of Aquaman 3: Spongebob Attacks. Warner Bros. — which fired Depp from its Fantastic Beasts series — may well decide it doesn’t need the publicity headache of continuing to employ Heard. Studio execs must be starting to wonder whether the next Aquaman flick could trigger a series of bitter and loud anti-Heard demonstrations. Maybe the public thinks Warner has backed the wrong partner in this saga, or at least that the pair are equally deserving of being canceled on character grounds.

I doubt Depp’s trial will stop the reckoning with sex-related abuses of power in Hollywood — just in the last month, Frank Langella, Bill Murray, and Fred Savage have all gotten canceled over allegations of misconduct — but if his secondary motive is to demolish the “Believe all women” standard, he’s doing a fine job of that. Anyone who argues in the future, “Women never lie about this stuff” will be soundly and sharply rebutted with a mention of Heard’s name. A single counter-example to a series of claims, if it is sufficiently salient, can dog the lot of them. How many other women out there accusing men of bad behavior have, behind the scenes, been as horrible as Amber Heard? Is it proper that there is usually no due process whatsoever offered a man when his reputation gets blown up by a woman alleging sexual misconduct?

As though eager to make himself a metonym for all the Hollywood men canceled for misbehavior, Depp had the gumption (and the money) to get himself his day in court, twice, and to methodically prove that he himself was the victim of a sustained campaign of marital abuse. He has provided persuasive evidence that, for instance, Heard threw a bottle at him so hard that the glass shattered and severed one of his fingers. Say, Warner Bros., do you condone this disgusting act of violence? Moreover, though Heard got emotional on the stand, so much adverse information about her had already come out that it was reasonable to wonder whether this professional actress was in fact acting as she described her alleged victimization. If Heard is acting up a storm while talking about being abused, though, how many other women making similar claims might be doing the same?

Depp is causing millions to wonder whether we let #MeToo go too far. The scales of justice aren’t thrown away when it comes to murder or terrorism, nor should they be. Did we throw them away when it comes to allegations of sexual misbehavior and domestic abuse? Many of the charges coming out of Hollywood and the media industry did not rise to the level of criminal complaints — neither Langella nor Murray nor Savage has been charged with a crime — but does that mean these and other men deserve no public airing of the accusations and no chance to redeem themselves? Is it fair to destroy a man’s reputation and livelihood based on whispers made behind closed doors?

I don’t pretend to have the answer. Employers are generally free to fire people based on their best judgment without having to publicly establish that anyone did anything wrong, and I wouldn’t want the courts stepping in to adjudicate every hiring and firing. But we need more transparency in these matters involving public figures. Men who have been publicly linked to sexual wrongdoing have no court to which to appeal and perhaps no hope of altering perceptions. It’s reasonable to wonder, after the details of the Depp-Heard relationship came to light, how many men are being ruined by murky allegations whose underlying truths may be considerably more complicated than whatever She Said.