Amber Heard is opening up about the ramifications of the highly publicized trial against her ex-husband Johnny Depp in an upcoming documentary.
“I didn’t understand it could get so much worse for me as a woman, using my voice,” Heard, 39, reportedly says in Silenced, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, January 24, per Variety.
“This is not about me. I have lost my ability to speak,” she continues in the film. “I am not here to tell my story. I don’t want to tell my story. In fact, I don’t want to use my voice anymore. That’s the problem.”
Heard is one of numerous subjects of the documentary helmed by Australian director Selina Miles, which ignites an “anger born not out of helplessness, but of clarity,” a synopsis reads.
“From Amber Heard’s public scrutiny, to Catalina Ruiz-Navarro’s fight for press freedom in Colombia, to Brittany Higgins’ struggle within Australia’s political establishment, Silenced reveals a global pattern: When women speak out, powerful systems move to discredit and punish them,” the synopsis continues.
In 2018, amid the rise of the #MeToo movement, Heard wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she claimed she was the victim of domestic violence during her time with Depp — though she never named him explicitly in the article. Heard also claimed she lost Hollywood jobs as a result of speaking out about her experience.
“Imagine a powerful man as a ship, like the Titanic,” she wrote in 2018. “That ship is a huge enterprise. When it strikes an iceberg, there are a lot of people on board desperate to patch up holes — not because they believe in or even care about the ship, but because their own fates depend on the enterprise.”
Depp, 62, later sued Heard for $50 million, arguing she defamed him in the article more than once, resulting in him losing movie roles. Heard countersued Depp for $100 million.
On June 1, 2022, a jury ruled that Heard had defamed Depp on three occasions in the op-ed and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Heard was also awarded a portion of her counterclaim against Depp due to comments his legal council made regarding her abuse allegations, calling them a “hoax.” She was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.
The trial became a culture moment, with clips of Heard and Depp’s testimony gaining more than 27 million views on TikTok alone. The trial also further fueled the debate over domestic violence allegations and the influence of social media.
After the trial, Heard moved to Spain with her daughter, Oonagh Paige. She later welcomed twins, Ocean and Agnes.
“I get to be a mom, like, full time, you know?” Heard told Today’s Savannah Guthrie in a June 2022 interview following the trial. “When I’m not having to juggle calls with lawyers.”
When asked what she would tell her daughter one day about her experience of coming forward, Heard told Guthrie, “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.”
Heard shares a similar sentiment in the documentary.
“It gives me strength seeing other people take on the fight,” she tells the cameras. “Women brave enough to address the imbalance of power. Looking at my daughter’s face as she grows up and slowly starts to walk into this world… I believe it can be better.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.
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