Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard analysis. Who is telling the truth?
Their words reveal a lot
I’ve been asked by a reader to take a look at the ongoing trial where Johnny Depp is taking on Amber Heard. The trial looks like a pointless mess, two wealthy people determined to drag themselves up by putting the other person down.
The testimonies of the two protagonists differ greatly in style. Depp is slow and thoughtful, taking time to consider his words and choose them carefully. Heard is more emotional, taking much less care with her words, her energy is mostly going into her movements.
This site is all about the words, so let’s strip everything else away and look at them. I wanted to look at how they each described the same incident and what can be learned from the words they used to describe it.
When we’re looking for the truth when someone is recounting events, we want to see:
- Ownership with lots of use of personal pronouns like I
- Events recalled in the past tense
- A straight line to the truth with as few needless words as possible
- Low usage of words which seek to persuade us something was bigger or smaller than it factually was
- The correct perspective. Told from experience of being there, not as if it happened on a screen in front of us
- No storytelling with skips in time like (“and then”) or explainers (“and something … so, something”)
Also, bear in mind this is court testimony. Depp and Heard have told these stories many times before, they may well have rehearsed them and had coaching on how to present their “facts”.
Let’s go.
The Boston Plane Incident in Johnny Depp’s words
I had taken two of these opiates, these Roxicodones. I can tell you now—some of you may be very well aware of this, opiates are extreme downers. So If you have enough opiates in you, you'll essentially go on what’s called ‘the nod.’
This is pure storytelling. Depp is asked about an incident on a plane, but starts talking about what happened before he got on the plane. It’s important to him to set up events from this earlier point.
He very much wants to make sure we’re aware of the effects of this drug. Firstly, by convincing us “I can tell you now” and then socialising it “YOU may be very well aware of this”.
My worry with this part is that Depp doesn’t explicitly say what effect the drug had on him. He only tells us what the drug would do to “you”. To some extent, he’s socialising here, getting us to picture ourselves being affected by opiates, so we can empathise. However, I’d have preferred to hear from him how it made him feel on that day. He doesn’t tell us this.
Make a note here that he can tell us the exact number of pills he took, “I had taken two of these opiates”.
You’ll just drop into sleep. I’ve heard the words blackout used, and there’s a grave difference between a blackout from alcohol abuse. ’Cause that is a person who has ingested enough alcohol to render them, they can still behave, and they can still stand and talk and scream and yell and cry and do whatever they do and never remember a thing.
Depp continues talking about “you” relating to the drugs. When he switches to alcohol, his words become more distant still, he talks about how alcohol affects “a person” and “they”.
Watching the trial, I got the impression that Depp was very open about his troubles with drink and drugs. Looking at the words he uses in this section, he talks about these things, but uses few personal words and talks about them in general terms and create distance between himself and the substances.
He doesn’t say why he feels his mentioning of alcohol is relevant, but he must feel it is, as he mentions it. The behaviour he associates with excess alcohol is the behaviour he will later accuse Heard of carrying out on the plane. (Heard accuses him of similar behaviour and a lot more).
Blackout
And generally, they’re always embarrassed by it. Blackout is a very, very different animal to the opiate, taking you into dreamland.
I’ll start with a small point here. People can “generally” do something, or they will “always” do something. “Generally … always” can’t be true.
The distance between Depp and the topic continues, “they’re” and “you” tell us nothing about him.
Depp has now set the scene with numerous words before he moves on to the incident he has been asked about. He wants us to believe he’s taken two pills that will make him sleepy and inactive. His behaviour will not be as if he consumed alcohol to excess.
But, he doesn’t say that. He only talks about other people, never himself.
He feels his job is done in scene setting, and he can move on. Depp indicates this with his first word in the next section. “So”.
So, when I arrived on the plane, I was not feeling any pain and I knew that she was ready for some kind of brawl. And I sat on the plane, drawing. I was drawing in my notebook.
He’s talking in the past tense which is a sign of truthfulness, and it’s fairly straightforward. He refers back to his set-up with “I was not feeling any pain”.
We still have Depp in storytelling mode, though. He’s “drawing” which feels like he’s trying to portray himself as an artist, sensitive, introverted and soft. He says Heard is “ready for some kind of brawl” which implies the opposite of those qualities.
“Brawl” is an interesting word choice. If he has used “fight” we could take that as verbal or physical. “Brawl” is purely physical.
Buttons
Um, she would verbally heckle, hassle, accuse, poke, prod, physically, you know, poke, poke and prod psychologically, emotionally.
Depp moves back to the language of generics here. He says what Heard “would” do rather than what she did do on this occasion.
I found the ordering of the words intriguing here. They seem to reflect how Depp felt rather than how Heard acted. First he felt verbally got at, then physically attacked, which affected him psychologically and then emotionally.
The short action words here “heckle, hassle, accuse, poke, prod,… poke and prod” evokes images of buttons being pressed rapidly.
And finally, the one thing I learned is if you’re gonna hide some place from somebody, go straight into the bathroom. So, I walked back into the back of the plane. I grabbed a pillow and I went into the bathroom, locked the door and laid down on the bathroom floor and went to sleep. And that’s where I remained for the rest of the flight.
Here we have the “and…so” pattern of storytelling. “And finally, … So I walked back”. This indicates he’s selling us a story, something he wants us to believe happened. It is not necessarily a sign of deception, but it’s a data point.
Much more straightforward is the events he describes as he goes to lie down. He recounts these in a linear form that makes sense. He walked to the back of the plane, got a pillow, went into the bathroom, locked the door and laid down. In deceptive recounting, you’ll often find things out of order. For example, here if he said, “went into the bathroom, lay down on a pillow I’d picked up earlier and locked the door” we could question if this really happened. However, he’s straight with us here.
I could tell you now that I was not drinking to excess, certainly not. And if I had, I’d probably been in the bathroom hugging porcelain as opposed to sleeping on a pillow.
Earlier on, Depp told us exactly how many opiate pills he’d taken. Here, he sets out the amount he’d drunk in vague terms and stated in the negative. Again, this is an indicator that he is hiding the exact amount of alcohol he consumed.
He begins this statement with, “If I could tell you now”. This is indirect, why “if”? Why only “could”? Why not be direct and say, “I was not drinking to excess”? The “certainly not” is a convincer, added in to convince us that he wasn’t drinking to excess, why does he feel that is needed? And “drinking” evokes images of more than one drink.
Finally, he mentions the pillow again. This feels like more picture painting, similar to the mentions of “drawing” to give us an image of softness and sensitivity.
Conclusion on Johnny Depp
He is seeking to portray that he was out of it, sleepy and docile. But he doesn’t say that directly. He appears to be evasive in his word choice around alcohol.
This is not as straightforward as I would expect a truthful telling to be. I don’t believe his state was as placid as he would like us to think. I don’t believe he didn’t have excess alcohol. I do believe that Amber annoyed or angered him with her actions. I do believe he is attempting to hide some events that happened on the plane.
I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for a fact what the truth is. However, Depp’s words have enough markers in them to suggest that he is seeking to downplay things and hide events. While I don’t think he’s being entirely honest, I don’t believe he is being dishonest either. He appears to me to be limited in what he is saying.
Before we look at the other side of events, a quick word. This post took around 15 hours of work to put together. And it’s yours for free, so if you find it valuable, please consider helping out but sharing the content or subscribing to the newsletter to get more free articles like this.
Thank you.
What words does Amber Heard use to describe the same incident?
Let’s take a look
The Boston Plane Incident in Amber Heard’s words
I didn’t realise at the time that I had already become really sensitive to these little changes because my life changed depending on what he was on. He gets on the plane and I just knew, every cell of my body, something was wrong.
Heard lets us in on her thinking process much more than Johnny Depp does. Here she tells us she “didn’t realise” something “at the time”. Later, she says, “I knew…something was wrong”. Often I find people sharing their thinking reassuring that they are being truthful, but that is mostly when they are doing it in the present. When it’s about past events, it’s not usually needed.
Towards the end of this section, Amber talks in the present tense, “He gets on the plane”. She also uses needless words to persuade us of what was going on, “I just knew, every cell of my body, something was wrong”. She could have said “I knew something was wrong” and convey the same meaning. So, why add the extra words? Is she not convinced her story is strong enough when stated in simple language? Is it fabricated and therefore, as it doesn’t feel real to her, she thinks that she needs to “strengthen” her words, so the audience believe her?
The last indicator of deception I spotted in these words are when she says she was “really sensitive to these little changes”. We have both a maximiser (“really”) and a minimiser (“little”) very close together. I’ve noticed this technique often appears in deceptive story telling.
That’s quite a lot of deceptive indicators for one short paragraph. It’s not proof she is lying, but it gives us a clue as to what is going on behind her words.
There is one line I find utterly believable in all of this, it has no needless words in it and no sense of persuasion at all, “my life changed depending on what he was on”.
Musical chairs
He comes up to me and doesn’t say a word to me, but just goes and sits in a different seat across from me.
He doesn’t say anything to me, but he’s looking at me. He’s got his glasses on, and he takes them off in this kind of aggressive manner.
This is Heard in story telling mode. Setting a scene for maximum impact. However, it’s all in present tense. She uses present tense to describe past events more than anyone I’ve studied in the past 12 months. I’ll speak about why that could be later.
The line about the glasses is a good indicator of storytelling. She doesn’t need to tell us he had his glasses on, stating he took them off would let us know he was wearing them. And how do you take off glasses in an aggressive manner? We’ll never know because it was only a “kind of” aggressive manner. That means we can categorically say it wasn’t done in an aggressive manner, if it were, she would have said so and not qualified it.
We take off, and at some point, he’s asking me what’s wrong with me, do I have something to tell him. ‘You wanna talk to me about your day yesterday?’
The words “at some point” show there is a jump in time. This conversation didn’t happen as they took off. So, what happened in the time between take off and the “asking” that she’s skipped? Well, it looks like they started talking because she doesn’t say words like “eventually he spoke to me” or “he began to speak”.
Amber doesn’t mention any of her actions. Only Johnny Depp’s.
And we have much more present tense here.
What are the reasons that someone could be using so much present tense to talk about past events?
- She could be lying and making this all up; therefore she’s “seeing” this for the first time and that is why it is in present tense
- Some abuse victims will lock their experiences away deep inside. When they tell their stories they will have feelings very similar to when they were abused so will use present tense.
- Amber Heard may know this and be doing it for effect
- This could be how she tells stories in general
I’ve watched a few promotional interviews with Amber Heard, and she does not play around with tenses as she does in this testimony. I can rule out the last possibility as unlikely, the others are all possible.
Drunk
I already know that he’s drunk, I already know he’s using. He reeks of weed and alcohol. His breath smells so bad. I could anticipate that there was a no-win situation here. There was no me talking myself out of this or talking him down
We have more of Heard talking to us about how she was thinking here. She talks about what she “knows” and what she “anticipate”s. Why not say “He was drunk, he was using, I could smell it. I was in a no-win situation”?
I was polite. I made sure to answer the minimal amount that I could. I moved slowly. I was trying to be polite but not engage because there was no win
Twice here, she mentions being “polite”. The words we repeat show what is important to us. Sometimes it is what is significant to us internally and because it is important we talk about it a lot. Other times, what we repeat is what we really want to make sure people hear, we repeat it to ensure our intended message hits home.
What is happening here? Well, “polite” is a strange word to use when talking about a partner. Polite is a word we use when referring to how we treat strangers, or it’s a value we try to instil in our kids. So, I’d suggest that Amber really wants us to get the impression she was polite. Or rather, she wants us to think she wasn’t rude to Depp. In this conversation, no one has accused her of being rude or impolite, so why is it important for her that we realise she was “polite”?
The second time she says, “I was trying to be polite”. Trying means attempting to do something, but not (yet) succeeding. In her words, she wasn’t being polite all the time.
Moving slowly comes up here, and it will come up again. So for now, it is noted.
Overall, this section feels like Amber is trying hard to say “I didn’t do anything wrong”. If she didn’t do anything wrong, she could say it outright using those words. Why the need to paint a vague picture when she could be more direct?
And again, she talks about being in a “no win” situation. That’s twice now. Once, I could pass off as a figure of speech. Twice, it becomes more significant. Was she trying to keep everything calm? Was she hoping to keep the plane trip drama and stress-free? Or was she attempting to “win”?
Moving slow
He’s asking me questions and I know to not engage. I’m being polite, but not engaging. Moving slowly. Eventually, he went from ‘do you have something to tell me’ to ‘tell me how much you like it, did he slip you the tongue?
We see “polite” again and “moving slowly”. As with polite, I want to know why she wants us to know she was moving slowly, especially as she hasn’t been accused of moving quickly.
This might work with polite. She is trying to give the impression she was calm and measured, that she wasn’t inflammatory. Why not just state that? This is another potential deception indicator, she tries so hard to make us believe she was calm, it’s highly possible that she wasn’t.
We have another jump in time with the word “eventually”. What happened during this time?
It went from asking me about how my kissing scene went or how the sex scene went to asking me what James Franco had done in the scene, to being really explicit about my body ... he was saying really disgusting things about my body, about how I liked it, how I responded. And then he started just straight-up taunting me. ‘I know you liked it’. He called me a go-getter. He called me a slut.
If I didn’t know the context, this first part of this section reads like it is describing a caring husband checking in on how his wife is doing.
Heard has given some graphic evidence during this trial, but in this section she is very coy about what she alleges Depp said that was explicit or disgusting. It’s also the first time I have ever heard “go-getter” used as an insult.
There are numerous strong allegations Amber makes about Johnny. This section is one of the weaker ones (I’m not saying the behaviour she describes is fine or condonable). Unusually, it’s all in the past tense.
In front of
This is happening with his security and assistants on the plane. I remember I felt – I struggle to be able to tell you how embarrassed I was, because he was speaking to me in front of people in this way.
This section introduces another theme of this slice of testimony. Heard is more upset by the fact people saw the abuse she alleges she was subjected to, than the abuse itself.
I remember getting up so slowly. I didn’t want to aggravate him. I didn’t want to give him any excuse to pounce on. I didn’t want to upset him. I didn’t want him to flip a switch and get worse
She’s moving slowly once more. This time, Amber gives more reason for the slow movements. It seems she feels moving quickly would “aggravate him” and “upset him”.
Amber’s recounting of events is punctuated by jumps in time. In the section above, she gets up slowly. In her next words, below, she appears to be sitting down and the use of “at one point” suggests that it is later on from when she got up slowly.
Slap
He sits down in front of me at one point, and because I’m not answering him, I was looking out of the window, and he slaps my face. His friend is in our proximity. It didn’t hurt my face, I just felt embarrassed that he would do that to me in front of people. It was the first time that anything like that had happened in front of somebody.
The priority again here is that other people can see the abuse rather than the abuse itself. The slap is downplayed, why? A slap is a slap and a vile thing to do to anybody. The real issue to Heard seems to be that it happened in front of somebody.
However, Amber doesn’t say anyone saw it. The friend was “in our proximity”, “it happened in front of people”. She doesn’t explicitly say that anyone could or did see what happened.
Am I being picky? Pickpockets steal wallets in front of people yet no-one sees anything. The plane’s pilot could be considered to be in their proximity, but wouldn’t have seen anything. Why choose those words when others would have been more direct and stronger?
And what is she “not answering”? She doesn’t say. This is a further indication that Heard is hiding details of this incident. Having been at pains to tell us how “polite” she has been, this is a tacit admission that something unknown and unsaid has changed and, as she is “not answering”, she is no longer being polite.
Chair
I get up, slowly again, and I just resolved to sit the rest of the time at the front of the plane. And as I get up, he kind of kicks the swivel chair into my hip. I look at him, and he asks me, ‘What? What are you gonna do about it?’
This part isn’t being told in a linear order, which is an indicator deception might be taking place. Look at the steps in the order she reveals them:
1) she gets up
2) she resolves to sit at the front, it’s highly likely she resolved this before getting up
3) she gets up again. As she has already got up before, it’s not clear how this is possible, this is a worry.
4) he “kind of kicks the chair”
Away from the strange ordering, the “kind of kicks” the chair sets off alarm bells. Did he kick it or not? Why say “kind of”? Is it that “nudged”, “pushed”, “knocked” or something else would be more accurate but as an allegation of Depp kicking her is coming, Amber wants to demonstrate that he was previously violent with his feet?
This section contains more of her usual themes. She moves slowly again and while she manages to quote the words she claims Johnny used, she doesn’t mention any words of her own. It is possible she was silent, but she doesn’t say that, so we shouldn’t assume it.
I just stared at him... I wanted him to see me. I felt like there was a blackness in his eyes. It didn't feel like him."
I am walking away slowly, he tells me 'hurry the fuck up', I look at him one more time, I wanted to penetrate the monster and see the man I love.
Heard tells us lots about her emotions here, more specifically about how she felt about Depp.
I have a problem with her claiming Depp said, “hurry the fuck up” as she was walking way. “Hurry” is a word we generally use when we want something to come to us. “I wish the weekend would hurry up”, “why can’t the food order hurry up and get here”. It’s possible he said it sure, but it is less likely than alternative phrases wishing something would move away from us.
The kick
I walk away and feel this boot in my back. He just kicked me in the back.
This is the second time she has walked away in this telling. This is more evidence of her non-linear story telling and an indicator deception could be happening.
Remember I said this is a story she’s told a good few times before? This telling may be lacking realism due to that, but… when you get kicked in the back is the first thing you think about “I feel a boot in my back”? Or is it emotional like shock, surprise or more violently physical like a blow, a hit?
I fell to the floor, I caught myself on the floor and I just felt like I was looking at the floor of the plane for a long time. I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe – did he just kick me?
Amber doesn’t say what caused her to fall to the floor. I would expect to hear that she was knocked to the floor or “the kick made me fall over”. As she doesn’t say the kick made her fall, we can’t assume that it did.
Amber again fills us in or her thoughts process “I thought to myself”, why does she need to tell us this? Why isn’t it something more direct like “I couldn’t believe he had just kicked me”?
There is another deception indicator. She says she is thinking, “did he just kick me?” But she already says she knows she was kicked due to feeling the boot in her back and saying “he just kicked me in the back”.
Both these parts can’t be true.
No one
No one said anything. No one did anything. You could hear a pin drop on that plane. You could feel the tension.
This part has a high probability of being deceptive. You can’t hear a pin drop on a plane which is flying, it’s too noisy. Yes, she used a cliché or a figure of speech but people who are telling events truthfully, in general, have their own words to recount the story and don’t resort to clichés.
The “no one did anything” part is also deceptive. The cynics reading will want to stay with this for a bit. People did do something, they breathed, they blinked, they say there. What she means is that people did nothing she wanted them to do like helped her, protected her or restrained Depp.
The other thing people did was ignore the situation from this telling. However, again, Heard does not tell us that anyone saw the incident or was aware of it. The words she has used cast doubt on whether anyone was aware of what she alleges happened.
But no one did anything. And I just remember feeling so embarrassed that he could kick me to the ground in front of people. And more embarrassing, I didn’t know what to do about it. I got up and I walked to the front of the plane. I sat down and I just looked out of the window.
We finish with more embarrassment about his happening “in front of people” and an absence of anger that she was physically assaulted.
Amber says Depp kicked her “to the ground”. Earlier she says she was on the “floor”, which is accurate as she was on a plane in the sky. Ask yourself when you last described the floor of the plane as “the ground”.
Several times in this story, including in this section, Heard says, “I remember” or “I just remember”. This worries me, she’s being asked to tell past events so everything she tells us is a memory, why the need to flag it? It would be less concerning if she told us that she only remembers some things or can’t remember other details. A high use of “I remember” like this is another indicator that deception may be taking place.
Missing
Often I like to look at the words that I would expect to hear, or the words I think are missing. Heard gives me quite a few:
- She doesn’t mention anything she said once. She does quote Depp’s words frequently, but does not tell us one thing she said.
- She expresses no anger at the fact she was verbally and physically abused
- She tells us of no other interaction she had on this flight.
Conclusion on Amber Heard
There are many indicators of deception in these words. Enough for me to conclude that deception is highly likely to be happening. She’s hiding large passages of time and is too keen to minimise her behaviour and tell us how level-headed and nice she was being.
So, who is telling the truth?
I can’t tell you the truth of this incident. I wasn’t there. By analysing their words, I can conclude neither Depp nor Heard is stating everything with full honesty.
I believe Depp wasn’t as placid as he says he was. I’d say Heard wasn’t trying to defuse the situation calmly, as she says she was.
In all these words, there is only one use of the word “we”. This suggests that at the time of this incident, the relationship had already broken down. They considered themselves separate entities who did little in unity. It was Amber who said “we” and if you look back in her words, the “we” she refers to may not even be her and Depp.
Both are trying to minimise their behaviour, downplay their individual parts in events, and hide some happenings on the flight. While Depp attempts to deflect away from his state on the day, Heard seeks to maximise Depp’s involvement, in these parts we see deceptive indicators.
As is usual, I suspect the truth is somewhere between the two very different versions of the story, but, having analysed their words, I believe the truth is closer to Depp’s version than Heard’s.
If you hold a gun to my head and ask what I think happened I’d say that both had excess alcohol, both were involved in a verbal fight and it’s highly likely there was some physical element too, on both sides.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
