Johnny Depp’s pal Doug Stanhope broke his silence about the defamation lawsuit Amber Heard filed over the explosive op-ed he wrote for TheWrap, in which he claimed that the actress was blackmailing her estranged husband.
Stanhope, 49, was a guest on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show on Monday, June 20. “First of all, I blame you for this because last time I was on I misspoke and called her Amanda Heard instead of Amber, and you king of all media should have had some five second delay that corrected that,” he quipped to Stern. “I think the whole lawsuit is just about calling her Amanda on your show.” He joked that Legalzoom.com is defending him in the case. “Anything that I say, they can twist my words,” the comedian complained. “It’s such a bulls–t suit.”
He went on to detail his side of the story about the article, and how it went viral after it was posted on TheWrap on May 29, six days after Heard filed for divorce from Depp. “I put it on my website. The title was ‘At a Loss for Words’ … whatever it was. TheWrap got it as an exclusive, however that worked, and said, ‘Amber Heard Is Blackmailing Johnny Depp — This Is How I Know.’ I didn’t write that f–king title. I didn’t put that stupid tabloid title in there. I’m a better writer than that, so I don’t know if it’s hinged on that, I don’t know how much of it is spite.”
While Heard called the piece “highly defamatory,” Stanhope said that the Alice Through the Looking Glass actor was happy with it. “I had no contact with [Depp] until he texted me after that went out and said, ‘Hey, thanks for being honest.’ He didn’t know that was going out. I was a little petrified because it kind of made him look like a bitch. ‘Cause he was kind of a bitch,” he said.
Although he admitted it “still feels like name-dropping,” Stanhope maintained that he didn’t write the op-ed for publicity, and said the lawsuit is comical to him because he doesn’t have millions of dollars to lose. “The idea of some Hollywood supermodel lady winning all of my s–t … She would be locking the doors driving down my street even without seeing a person. I live on the Mexican border in this dirty pothole-riddled neighborhood.”
Stanhope still stands by what he wrote, and repeated his allegations from the article on the radio show. “I visited him that day,” he said of May 21, the day Heard says Depp hit her with a cellphone during a violent argument. “He was alluding to the fact that she was going to do something like this. She didn’t come out until a week later that that happened. But it happened that night, and he was alluding to she’s going to do something like this.”
“I think what she’s trying to do is make me shut the f–k up,” Stanhope concluded. “Because I can’t say anything about it, and now I’m talking more.”
As Us Weekly previously reported, Heard, 30, filed a defamation lawsuit against Stanhope on Friday, June 3. “Defendants engaged in this scheme to try to divert public attention away from the true facts regarding Depp which caused their marriage to fail, namely, that Depp repeatedly abused Heard throughout their marriage, at times to the point of her fearing for her life,” Heard’s attorneys wrote in court documents obtained by Us.
Stanhope alleged in the column that Depp confided in him and another friend, Bingo, that the Danish Girl actress was planning to leave him and plotting to blackmail him. “He opened up in the most vulnerable of ways that it was not only his mother [that was upsetting him], but that Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn’t agree to her terms. Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it,” he wrote.
A rep for Stanhope previously had no comment. Us Weekly also reached out to Heard’s rep for comment.
