Sharon Osbourne has weighed in on the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation case, which drew to a close on Wednesday at Fairfax County Courthouse, in Virginia, with the Pirates of the Caribbean star winning the trial. The jury awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages, while Amber won one of her three defamation countersuit allegations against her ex-husband, with the jury awarding her $2 million.
As previously revealed, Johnny filed a lawsuit against Amber for $50 million for her 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, where she claimed to have been a survivor of domestic abuse. While the article made no mention of Johnny, his legal team contended that it was heavily implied their client was physically and sexually abusive throughout their relationship in the written piece — a claim which the father-of-two, of course, has strongly denied.
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Sharon Osbourne Didn’t Think Johnny Would Win The Defamation Case
Sharon, who attended Johnny’s show at the Royal Albert Hall in London earlier this week, expressed that she couldn’t be happier about the unanimous verdict, though she didn’t initially think he would win. The former talk show host called in to her friend Piers Morgan’s show, Uncensored, as she recalled her shocked reaction upon finding out the trial’s outcome. “Wow, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I mean, I wanted Johnny to win but I didn’t expect him to.” Sharon continued by asserting that “he wouldn’t have gone this far, if she didn’t push and push and push… she wanted to destroy him. She knows the game, she knows how it goes.”
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“Johnny’s got a huge price on his head, the world loves him. The world really did want him to win and he’s won and that’s it. She could have backed out somehow, she could have got to him, there could have been something to save it going on.”
In a statement following Wednesday’s verdict, Johnny shared his gratitude in a moving post shared on Instagram, affirming that the jury had given him his life back six years after his world was turned upside down with the allegations made by Amber about his character. The Charlie of the Chocolate Factory actor said that his family and friends were all affected by the events that occurred in 2016, the same year he would split from his ex-wife and a heap of abuse accusations were made against him.
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Amber, too, had a few words to share in her own statement, which read, “It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”
“I believe Johnny’s attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of Freedom of Speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the UK. I’m sad I lost this case.”