Actress Amber Heard (L) and actor Johnny Depp attend the "Black Mass" premiere during the 2015 ... [+]
The memeification of Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard continues on TikTok, as hordes of enthusiastic fans attempt to flatten an ugly, complicated situation into a binary narrative of unhinged aggressor versus saintly victim.
Given the fact that the trial pits two Hollywood celebrities against one another, and has been live-streaming on various platforms since April 11, the trial has exploded into a culture war battleground, as the public projects their own personal experiences into the murky allegations of domestic abuse.
In the court of public opinion, Depp is coming out on top, enjoying the support of a dedicated fanbase, who have been enthralled by his onscreen adventures for decades; it’s as though Captain Jack Sparrow himself is on trial, rather than the stranger who played him. Heard, whose acting performances never permeated public consciousness the way Depp’s did, doesn’t seem to be supported by a rabidly enthusiastic fanbase.
As a result, Depp’s fans have been hard at work, collecting footage from the trial and splicing it up to create simplistic narratives, that often frame Depp as the charming, lovable hero of this story.
The details that have emerged thus far don’t exactly paint either party in a flattering light, but treating a domestic abuse case as though it's a sports game has led to some deranged speculation going viral online, especially on TikTok.
While some of these videos are so exaggerated that they can be best described as fan fiction, others have transcended into outright conspiracy theories.
One such theory went viral on TikTok a few days ago, proposing that Amber Heard’s lawyer is secretly a hardcore Johnny Depp fan, and presumably, only took the job in order to sabotage her own client.
The “evidence” for the theory consists of footage from Depp’s Lone Ranger movie premiere in London in 2013, where dedicated Depp fans waited for the actor to appear. One of the fans waiting in the crowd is an unidentified woman with short brown hair, who some TikTokers believe to be Heard’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft. One of the first videos to spark conspiratorial speculation has been viewed 2.9 million times, and has inspired several other copycat videos.
That’s it - a passing resemblance is all the evidence needed to connect the dots. It’s the kind of freakish “plot twist” that would only happen in a movie, far removed from the ugly reality of the situation.
Of course, the public doesn’t know either of these people - we can only judge them based on their performances and public personas; it’s certainly not a suitable space to discuss the nuances of domestic abuse.
As the trial is being increasingly viewed like a sordid piece of fiction rather than a messy, tragic situation, a dysfunctional relationship that festered off-camera, the leap from fanfiction to unhinged conspiracy theory is alarming, but perhaps, inevitable.
