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    Tom Shales, TV Critic Both Respected and Feared, Dies at 79

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    An incisively funny Washington Post columnist, he earned nicknames like Terrible Tom and had the clout to make or break shows.Tom Shales, the Pulitzer Prize-winning television critic for The Washington Post whose scalpel-sharp dissections of shows he deemed dead on arrival earned him nicknames like the Terror of the Tube, as well as a reputation for the power to make or break shows, died on Saturday in Alexandria, Va. He was 79.James Andrew Miller, a longtime collaborator and friend, said he died in a hospice facility from complications of Covid.Despite toiling in a political town far removed from the coastal capitals of the entertainment industry, Mr. Shales wielded enormous influence during his three-decade career, starting in 1977, as The Post’s chief television critic.Those whose fortunes were tied to the small screen considered him both a kingmaker and a high executioner in an era when network television’s hold on American culture was so tight as to be almost crushing.“He has been called brilliant, thoughtful, incisive and screamingly funny,” Time magazine observed in 1981, christening him “Terrible Tom, the TV Tiger.” “Also, vicious, infuriating, cruel and unfair. NBC president Fred Silverman no longer returns his calls. His thrice-weekly Washington Post TV column, ‘On the Air,’ syndicated in 59 other newspapers, causes teeth-gnashing in Hollywood and heartburn in Manhattan’s network headquarters.”To celebrate Mr. Shales’s 25th anniversary at the newspaper, The Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham, arranged a party at her house that was attended by the likes of Dan Rather, Connie Chung and Conan O’Brien. Ms. Graham explained the star-studded turnout in a single word, according to a report in Washingtonian magazine: “Fear.”No wonder. Delivering prose so colorful it seemed to be written in neon, he had the power to devastate.In a 1987 review of “The Morning Program,” CBS’s latest attempt to compete with the “Today” show, he wrote that “some TV shows seem to call less for a review than an exorcism.”“Watching it was like waking up and finding the house overrun with last night’s party guests,” he continued, “most of them stewed to the gills and gabby as all get-out.”In a 2005 column about ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” he wrote that it seemed like little more than an assemblage of “scenes from medical shows of the past already restaged ad infinitum and ad nauseam,” and that it was “a ‘new’ show only in the sense that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was a new man.”After he teed off in 2003 on the Fox teenage drama “The O.C.” as a “moody, moon-faced trifle,” the show fired back with a hospital scene featuring a patient named Tom Shales, who is incontinent. “I consider it an honor,” Mr. Shales said in an interview with the Page Six gossip section of The New York Post. “It’s a TV critic’s only shot at immortality.”He was a magnet for furious phone calls from sitcom stars and network titans. “So-and-so would call, and he’d tell me, ‘Get on the other line, this is going to be good,’” Mr. Miller, who worked on the television team at the Post with Mr. Shales in the 1980s, said in a phone interview. “This person literally would be just cursing him out for 20 minutes, and he’d be sitting there trimming his fingernails. If you hooked him up to an EKG, there would be no movement whatsoever.”While Mr. Shales’s reviews could be acidic, his indignant salvos came from a place of passion. In a 1989 interview with the public radio host Terry Gross, he recalled his thoughts as a child when his family finally got a 14-inch RCA set in a mahogany console: “This was a miracle, this was the Second Coming and nirvana all rolled into one.”At 13, he wrote a school paper outlining the steps he planned to take to become a television columnist when he grew up. “He formed this bond with the medium so early,” Mr. Miller said. “It was the love of his life.”When Mr. Shales would do one of his brilliant takedowns, Mr. Miller said, “he wasn’t trying to destroy the show or the writers.”“He was just angry because he knew it could be better. He had no patience for people who were phoning it in or reaching for the lowest common denominator.”The shows he loved, he loved. In 1990, he called “Twin Peaks,” the director David Lynch’s eerie and unsettling small-town drama, “a captivating blend of the existential and the pulpy, the surreal and the neo-real, the grim and the farcical.” “Twin Peaks,” he added, “is new age music for the eyes.”In a 2006 column, he wrote that David Simon’s gritty HBO crime drama “The Wire” “might be the most authentic epic ever seen on television.” “You go to ‘The Wire’ not to escape,” he added, “but to be immersed in a world where madness and sanity can seem interchangeable.”As Mr. Shales told Time: “People who respect TV are the ones I respect. It’s the ones who wipe their feet on it whom I probably write nasty things about.”Thomas William Shales was born on Nov. 3, 1944, in Elgin, Ill., one of three children of Clyde Shales, who ran a towing service and body shop, and Hulda (Reko) Shales, who managed a clothing store.He served as co-editor of his high school newspaper and went on to become the editor in chief of the campus newspaper at American University in Washington, where he graduated with a degree in journalism in 1968.His first full-time job in journalism was at The D.C. Examiner, a free tabloid, where his verbal gymnastics caught the attention of editors at The Post, who hired him in 1972 as a general-assignment reporter. Focusing his sights on television and popular culture, he became the chief TV critic five years later.In addition to his Post columns, Mr. Shales published a number of books, including an oral history of “Saturday Night Live,” written with James Andrew Miller. He won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1988.The job landed him in the middle of swirling controversies about the toxic state of television, with its blood-soaked detective dramas, sensationalized news shows and sex-addled sitcoms — which, in the view of many pundits, were a source of cultural rot.Mr. Shales was all too happy to wade in up to his thighs. In response to a spate of leering television movies at the dawn of the 1980s involving torture, child molestation and teenage prostitution, he wrote that “watching prime-time TV is like being trapped in Sleaze City’s tackiest honky-tonk.”“One gets a warped and depressing view,” he added, “of what it means to be alive.”His sharp-eyed takes won him a Pulitzer for criticism in 1988.While his Post column never waned in influence, Mr. Shales, who was making more than $300,000 a year thanks to his Post salary and his syndication revenues, took a buyout from The Post in 2006 after a management transition. He continued to contribute columns under contract until 2010.In addition to his Post columns, he published a number of books, including two oral histories with Mr. Miller: “Live From New York,” a history of Saturday Night Live” (2002), and “Those Guys Have All the Fun,” about ESPN” (2011).Mr. Shales, who never married or had children, leaves no immediate survivors.Having spent years in his Washington Post office with three televisions flickering nonstop, and with another three televisions glowing at his home in McLean, Va., Mr. Shales told Time that sometimes even he tuned out on the programming at hand. “After all,” he said, “only about 2 percent of what’s on is worth really watching.” More

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      The Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard Libel Case Is in the Jury’s Hands

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      After closing arguments, the judge asked a jury in Virginia to decide a defamation trial that focused as much on domestic abuse as damaged reputations.After 23 days of testimony that painted conflicting pictures of a tumultuous Hollywood marriage, lawyers for Johnny Depp and Amber Heard delivered their closing arguments on Friday, seeking to persuade the jury that their client had been the person who was abused and defamed.Mr. Depp’s lawyers asserted that their movie star client had been falsely disparaged in a Washington Post op-ed in which Ms. Heard referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”The accusations of spousal abuse that she was referencing, the lawyers argued, had ruined Mr. Depp’s life.“We ask you to give Mr. Depp his life back by telling the world that Mr. Depp is not the abuser Ms. Heard said he is,” a lawyer for Mr. Depp, Camille Vasquez, said, “and hold Ms. Heard accountable for her lies.”Ms. Heard’s lawyers countered that not only were the accusations and the op-ed entirely true, but during legal proceedings in 2020, the actress was unfairly maligned when a lawyer, who represented Mr. Depp at the time, called her abuse accusations a hoax.“In Mr. Depp’s world, you don’t leave Mr. Depp, and if you do, he will start a campaign of global humiliation against you,” argued a lawyer for Ms. Heard, Ben Rottenborn.Now, the case is in the hands of seven jurors who deliberated until Friday evening and left the Fairfax County Circuit Court with instructions to return on Tuesday.The trial has drawn widespread attention because the proceedings have been both televised and livestreamed through a pair of cameras in the courtroom, a rarity in Virginia. On one YouTube channel streaming the proceedings, called Law & Crime Network, more than one million users were reported to be watching.There has been stiff competition to fill the public seats in the courtroom, with observers — most of them fans of Mr. Depp — lining up in the middle of the night to secure a spot. On Friday morning, about 150 people waited in line to get into the courtroom, with hundreds more lining a nearby road, some of them dressed as Mr. Depp’s movie characters.Peyton Elmendorf, a 27-year-old Depp fan, said that when she first heard about Ms. Heard’s accusations, she had misgivings about defending the actor given the #MeToo movement. But now, after hearing other of the actor’s romantic partners speak positively about him, she said she felt confident voicing her support.Our Coverage of the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard TrialA trial between the formerly married actors has become a fierce battleground over the truth about their relationship. What to Know: Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are suing each other with competing defamation claims, amid mutual accusations of domestic abuse.Stan Culture in the Courtroom: The closely watched trial is a case study in what happens when complex claims are filtered through the lenses of extreme fandom. TikTok’s Hate Machine: The online commentary about the trial quickly turned into an internet-wide smear campaign against Ms. Heard. Dressing to Suggest: Both litigants appeared notably sober in their fashion choices. That is no coincidental thing.“I knew he didn’t do it,” she said.Outnumbered outside the courthouse, but unpersuaded, Dan Kim, 26, quietly held a sign nearby that said “I stand with Amber.” He called it “crystal clear” that Mr. Depp had abused Ms. Heard.Supporters of Mr. Depp outside the courthouse on Friday.Craig Hudson/Associated PressUltimately, the jury must consider the veracity and reputational impact of a narrow set of statements. But the six-week trial has encompassed testimony about a vast array of alleged incidents from Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard’s marriage.Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp of repeated physical abuse that she said often coincided with drug and alcohol use and began with his accusing her of infidelity. She has also alleged several instances of sexual assault — including an accusation that he assaulted her with a bottle in Australia in 2015.Amber Heard, talking to one of her lawyers during the proceedings on Friday.Pool Photo via Steve Helber/ReutersMr. Depp has denied ever hitting or sexually assaulting Ms. Heard and has portrayed her as the aggressor in the relationship, recalling violence from her throughout their relationship, as well as angry tirades and demeaning name-calling. Ms. Heard has denied hitting Mr. Depp except in defense of herself or her sister.Testimony about the incidents often involved sensational details: disputed affairs with celebrities, graffiti written in blood and a missing chunk of Mr. Depp’s finger that forced the fifth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie to pause production.In laying out the highlights of their evidence, Mr. Depp’s lawyers reminded the jury of witnesses who said they did not see injuries on Ms. Heard around the times she reported having them, showed a photo of him with a “shiner” that he said she gave him and replayed audio of arguments between the estranged couple in which Ms. Heard admits to having hit Mr. Depp. In one audio clip, Ms. Heard can be heard saying, “I did start a physical fight,” challenging her claim that she only hit Mr. Depp as a defense. (Ms. Heard testified that in those instances, she hit him in response to his own aggression.)His team also pointed to instances where there were no medical records or photographs to corroborate her allegations of abuse.“The ‘mountain of evidence’ that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard is simply not there,” Ms. Vasquez argued. “What we have is a mountain of unproven allegations that are wild, over the top and implausible.”Ms. Heard’s lawyers described witnesses who said she had told them about the abuse. Mr. Rottenborn played a video of Mr. Depp angrily slamming kitchen cabinets and showed jurors a text in which the actor told Ms. Heard’s father he had gone “too far in our fight.” He then showed the jury a photo of Ms. Heard with a red mark on her face after, she said, Mr. Depp hurled a phone at her. Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, another of her lawyers, reminded the jury about a forensic psychologist who testified to reviewing a therapist’s notes — which were not entered into evidence — that reflect contemporaneous reports from Ms. Heard where she complained of sexual abuse.“A ruling against Amber here sends a message that no matter what you do, as an abuse victim, you always have to do more,” Mr. Rottenborn said. “No matter what you document, you always have to document more. No matter whom you tell, you always have to tell more people.”Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More

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      Amber Heard’s Account of Abuse Challenged by Johnny Depp’s Lawyer

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      During tense cross-examination, Ms. Heard was asked why she had not presented medical records to back up her account of key incidents in which she said Mr. Depp struck her.A lawyer for Johnny Depp sought to discredit abuse accusations by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, during cross-examination on Tuesday, confronting her with audio recordings of the couple’s arguments as well as text messages and love notes that the lawyer suggested showed Ms. Heard to be an unreliable witness.As Ms. Heard finished her testimony at Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, the lawyer, Camille Vasquez, challenged Ms. Heard’s assertions that she has only ever hit Mr. Depp as a defense. Ms. Vasquez played recordings from an argument several years ago in which Ms. Heard acknowledged, “I did start a physical fight,” and called Mr. Depp a “baby.”Ms. Heard testified that in that incident, she hit him only because he was trying to “bust” into the bedroom where she was trying to hide from him.“I accused him of being a baby for complaining about me hitting him when he was trying to get through the door that I was trying to barricade,” she testified on Tuesday.Ms. Heard, 36, is locked in a tense legal battle with Mr. Depp, 58, over competing defamation claims and has spent several hours during the trial sharing her accounts of repeated physical abuse throughout their relationship, as well as multiple instances of sexual assault. Mr. Depp has denied ever hitting or sexually assaulting her and has accused her of being the abuser in the relationship.Mr. Depp sued Ms. Heard three years ago over an op-ed, published in The Washington Post, in which she called herself a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Ms. Heard countersued Mr. Depp, saying that his former lawyer had defamed her by calling her accusations of abuse a hoax.During one part of her questioning, Ms. Vasquez challenged an account of the aftermath of an incident in Australia in 2015, in which, according to Ms. Heard, Mr. Depp sexually assaulted her with a bottle and beat her while he was intoxicated on MDMA. Ms. Heard testified that after Mr. Depp’s attack, she had a bruised jaw, as well as cuts on her arms and feet from broken glass on the ground.“There is not a single medical record reflecting treatment for any of those injuries, is there, Ms. Heard?” Ms. Vasquez asked.“I didn’t seek treatment,” Ms. Heard replied.Mr. Depp has testified that he was the person injured that night when Ms. Heard threw a vodka bottle, hitting his hand and severing part of one of his fingers. Ms. Heard said he injured his finger by smashing a wall-mounted phone into “smithereens” while in a rage; Ms. Vasquez pointed to a lack of photographic evidence of the broken phone or of the injuries Ms. Heard said she suffered that night.Ms. Heard said documentation of the abuse was incomplete because she only started taking photos of her injuries “incidentally,” when she wanted to show a friend or her mother. She never envisioned a legal battle like this, she said.Ms. Vasquez also presented a love note that Ms. Heard wrote to Mr. Depp about two months after the Australia incident, which included the line, “I have seen in you the true bones of friendship and respect.”Ms. Heard said the couple had been in a “honeymoon period” at the time.As in Mr. Depp’s testimony, Ms. Heard’s cross-examination involved an airing of insults she had hurled at him during arguments. In one recording, Ms. Heard can be heard calling him a “sellout” and a “joke.” She acknowledged on the stand that she called him “horrible, ugly things,” noting that he called her names, too. (In her lawyers’s cross-examination of Mr. Depp, they brought forward several text messages to other people in which he referred to Ms. Heard using insults and obscenities, including calling her a “worthless hooker.”)Johnny Depp has argued that his career was damaged by what he characterized as a false assertion by Ms. Heard that he had been violent toward her. Pool photo by Brendan Smialowski/EPA, via ShutterstockCentral to the case is the op-ed, and Ms. Vasquez sought to establish that, even if Ms. Heard did not mention Mr. Depp by name in the piece, it was clear that the subject was their relationship. Ms. Heard confirmed that when she said she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” she was referring to getting a temporary restraining order against Mr. Depp in 2016.Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More

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      Depp’s $22.5 Million ‘Pirates’ Deal Collapsed After Op-Ed, Manager Testifies

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      Mr. Depp’s talent manager said the actor had been up to play Captain Jack Sparrow again until his ex-wife, Amber Heard, wrote an op-ed saying she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”Johnny Depp’s talent manager testified on Monday in the actor’s defamation trial that Mr. Depp lost a $22.5 million deal to star in a sixth “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie after his ex-wife, Amber Heard, published an op-ed in which she called herself a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”The exact timing of when Mr. Depp was cut from the “Pirates” franchise has become a pertinent question in the trial because Mr. Depp’s lawsuit against Ms. Heard claims that her op-ed, published by The Washington Post in December 2018, “devastated” his reputation and career.Although the op-ed does not mention Mr. Depp by name, he has argued that it clearly referred to their relationship. Ms. Heard has accused Mr. Depp of assaulting her repeatedly during their relationship, which Mr. Depp denies.At Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, the talent manager, Jack Whigham, testified that the actor had a verbal agreement with Disney to reprise his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in a proposed sixth film, but that in early 2019, it became clear that Disney was “going in a different direction.”“After the op-ed, it was impossible to get him a studio film,” testified Mr. Whigham, who has represented Mr. Depp since 2016.Lawyers for Ms. Heard have argued that it was not the actress’s op-ed that undermined Mr. Depp’s career but rather his own actions that led to bad publicity, seeking to prove during cross-examination of Mr. Whigham that Mr. Depp had, in fact, lost the “Pirates” job before the article was published.Elaine Charlson Bredehoft, a lawyer for Ms. Heard, pointed to a previous deposition by Mr. Whigham in which he said that it had been the fall of 2018 — before the op-ed was published — when he came to understand that it was becoming unlikely that Mr. Depp would appear in the next “Pirates” movie.Mr. Whigham testified that around that time, Disney had not yet made a decision about whether Mr. Depp would appear in the movie and it was “trending badly,” but he and the film producer Jerry Bruckheimer were still seeking to convince the company to keep Mr. Depp in the franchise.“We had hope,” Mr. Whigham said, “and it became clear to me in early 2019 that it was over.”In the op-ed, Ms. Heard asserted that her own career had been affected by becoming a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” saying that she was dropped as the face of a fashion brand and a movie had recast her role.The idea for the op-ed came from the American Civil Liberties Union, and a communications department employee from the nonprofit organization drafted the article, according to earlier testimony from Terence Dougherty, general counsel for the A.C.L.U. Initially, the op-ed draft referenced Ms. Heard’s relationship with Mr. Depp directly. But those references were later edited out after back-and-forth between A.C.L.U. personnel and Ms. Heard’s lawyers about a nondisclosure agreement associated with the couple’s divorce, Mr. Dougherty testified.Aside from discussions about the op-ed on which Mr. Depp’s lawsuit is based, much of the trial has focused on diverging accounts of physical abuse in Ms. Heard and Mr. Depp’s relationship. Mr. Depp testified that he has never hit Ms. Heard and that she was the aggressor, accusing her of punching him in the face and kicking a bathroom door into his head. Ms. Heard, who has not yet testified in the trial, has said in court papers that she never hit Mr. Depp except in self-defense or in defense of her sister, and that Mr. Depp tended to perpetrate violence against her when he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.Amber Heard has countersued Mr. Depp, asserting that his former lawyer defamed her by referring to her allegations as a hoax.Pool photo by Steve Helber/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Monday, Ms. Heard’s lawyers sought to undermine Mr. Whigham’s claim that Mr. Depp had a formal deal for the sixth “Pirates” movie at all.“Do you have any explanation for why there exists nothing — no piece of paper — nothing suggesting that Mr. Depp ever had a deal with Disney for ‘Pirates 6’?” Ms. Bredehoft asked.Mr. Whigham said it was not unusual for an actor to have a verbal agreement for a movie that is later put into writing.Ms. Bredehoft also pointed to other possible precursors to Mr. Depp’s reputational decline other than the op-ed, citing a headline from The Sun newspaper in Britain that called Mr. Depp a “wife beater.” That article was published in April 2018, she pointed out, and Mr. Depp sued the newspaper for it in June 2018 — both months before Mr. Whigham’s recollection of Disney’s declining interest in Mr. Depp for “Pirates.”(Ms. Heard’s potential witness list includes Tina Newman, a Disney executive.)Ms. Heard’s legal team has referred repeatedly to the defamation trial in Britain that arose from that lawsuit. But it appears that the team has been restricted from mentioning the outcome of the case, in which a judge in London ruled against Mr. Depp and found that there was “overwhelming evidence” that he had assaulted Ms. Heard repeatedly during their marriage. More

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      Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard: What We Know

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      Mr. Depp has sued Ms. Heard, his ex-wife, on grounds that she defamed him in an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post.The defamation trial in Virginia between the actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has become a fierce battleground over the truth about their relationship, with both sides accusing the other of repeated domestic abuse in what was an unquestionably tumultuous marriage.Before a seven-person jury in Fairfax County Circuit Court, lawyers have questioned witnesses about the events of what has been described as a whirlwind romance that started on a movie set and soured into a barrage of fights and physical confrontations — the details of which vary widely depending on the account.Mr. Depp, 58, sued Ms. Heard, 35, for defamation after she wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” After more than a year of legal sparring, Ms. Heard then countersued Mr. Depp, alleging that he defamed her when his former lawyer released statements saying her allegations of abuse were a hoax.Many of the allegations being aired in the courtroom have already been heard in a British case — which Mr. Depp lost — in which the actor sued The Sun newspaper for printing a headline that called him a “wife beater.”The trial, which started with opening arguments on April 12, is expected to last about six weeks.Why is Mr. Depp suing Ms. Heard?Mr. Depp’s lawsuit, filed in 2019, revolves around the 2018 op-ed written by Ms. Heard titled, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”The op-ed does not mention Mr. Depp by name, but in it, Ms. Heard wrote that two years before the article’s publication, she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”In 2016, Ms. Heard was granted a temporary restraining order after showing up to a California court with a bruised face, writing in an application for the order that Mr. Depp had thrown a phone at her face at close range. (The actor denies this.)In the application, Ms. Heard wrote that Mr. Depp had been verbally and physically abusive to her throughout their relationship, detailing a recent incident in which she said he grabbed her by the hair and violently shoved her to the ground. (Mr. Depp wrote in court papers that this was a lie and that she was the one who punched him in the face that night.)Mr. Depp’s lawsuit asserted that Ms. Heard’s abuse allegations were an “elaborate hoax” that cost the actor his career and reputation.“Mr. Depp brings this defamation action to clear his name,” the actor’s lawsuit said.What did Ms. Heard’s op-ed in The Washington Post say?The op-ed says that after she became a “public figure representing domestic abuse,” she started to experience a backlash to her career.“Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress — that I would be blacklisted,” she wrote. “A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me.”She wrote that she saw “in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” Ms. Heard was identified in the op-ed as an ambassador on women’s rights for the American Civil Liberties Union, and in court papers, Ms. Heard said the A.C.L.U. suggested that she write the article and submitted it.Although the trial has become a sprawling inquiry into the couple’s marriage, one of Ms. Heard’s lawyers, Ben Rottenborn, tried to impress upon the jury in open arguments the idea that, ultimately, the case rests on “one piece of paper” — this op-ed.Ms. Heard is countersuing, claiming Mr. Depp had conspired with a lawyer to “attempt to destroy and defame Ms. Heard in the press.”Pool photo by Jim Lo ScalzoWhy is Ms. Heard suing Mr. Depp?The jury is simultaneously considering Ms. Heard’s countersuit against Mr. Depp, which was filed in 2020.Ms. Heard’s defamation claim is against Mr. Depp, but the statements it centers on came from his former lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the British tabloid The Daily Mail that the actress’s allegations were an “abuse hoax.”Her lawsuit claims Mr. Depp has “authorized and conspired” with Mr. Waldman, who was acting on the actor’s behalf, to “attempt to destroy and defame Ms. Heard in the press.” (Mr. Waldman was not named as a defendant.)What has Mr. Depp said in his testimony?So far, Mr. Depp has testified that he had never struck Ms. Heard, nor any other woman. Instead, he asserted that Ms. Heard was the aggressor in the relationship, engaging in angry tirades and “demeaning name-calling” that would often escalate into physical violence.Johnny Depp’s Libel Case Against Amber HeardCard 1 of 6In the courtroom. More