Not Everyone Is Laughing at The Fall Guy’s Amber Heard Joke
A few years ago, it wasn’t rare to encounter a cringeworthy joke about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s highly scrutinized defamation trial. Now, it seems like not everyone is done laughing about the domestic-abuse allegations at the center of the case.
The latest example comes via Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt’s new movie, The Fall Guy. Though the film doesn’t hit theaters until Friday, it’s already facing criticism after the trailer included a “joke” that mentions Heard and Depp. In the scene, Hannah Waddingham’s character walks into a disheveled trailer and says “It’s like Amber and Johnny were just in here” to Blunt’s character, per People. The comment seemingly refers to the chaos seen after Depp threw a glass and smashed cabinets while screaming at Heard — a moment that was captured in a video that played in court during the trial.
Heard and Depp got married in 2015 and split up a little over a year later. In 2018, Heard wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about domestic violence, in which she described herself as a “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Though she didn’t name Depp in the piece, Depp sued her for defamation in 2019. While Depp lost a similar case in the U.K., a U.S. jury ordered Heard to pay him more than $10 million in damages.
On Twitter, viewers called the line “disappointing” and “cheap” and yet another example of people making light of domestic violence. The Cut has reached out to Universal Pictures, the distributor of The Fall Guy, for comment, and we will update this post if we hear back.
Related