We talked about it on episodes 3, 5, 6, and 7. Sarah got herself to the Virginia courthouse to see the scene first-hand, on just-dropped episode 12. Now we want to hear from you!
A few possible topics: Who wins this trial? What happens to each star’s career? What does our cultural fixation with this case tell you about American culture/media/the ongoing battle between the sexes? And what questions do you still have? Which parts aren’t sitting right?
Share your thoughts, insider tips, and curiosities below. Play nice, fight fair xx
Sorry to go on about this, but there is one recording of AH taunting and cackling at JD about "21 Jump Street" and how washed up he is. It's so disturbing and cold and cruel. It sounds like nothing an abused person would dare to do to their abuser. I can't get it out of my head. (This was during day 2 of Camille Vasquez's cross of AH this past week.)
First encountered Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1985ish before he hit pay dirt 21 Jump. I think 21 was also on after my bedtime the first few years so I never got to into it, but I would have been more Team Peter than Team Johnny because muscular shoulders.
As far as JD and AH - I think they are 2 very damaged people from abusive backgrounds with serious attachment issues (join the club) who found each other at the very wrong moment. It seems JD was in a serious drug and alcohol fueled downward spiral (possibly also a broken hearted heart) personally and professionally. Too cope and try to fill the holes, he throws himself into an intense romance with a gorgeous young actress. Wouldn’t be the first guy to try to heal himself in the arms of beautiful woman. But as we all know, using an outside thing to cope with with really serious pain doesn’t work. Eventually, it comes out sideways, and when it did, unfortunately JD was with a woman who had her own parental war wounds and insecurities which were triggered in a nuclear fashion when he became unavailable and distant. I’d be willing to bet when Johnny was high, on the nod, or disappeared on her, it triggered (excuse the use of a tired word) an intense feeling of abandonment and thing in her desperate not to be abandoned went full red alert using whatever she could to keep his attention, including becoming abusive herself. Negative attention is still attention. Whatever keeps him in the room even if it is to have a physical altercation. From there, they feed off each other and things escalates. I’m also willing to bet, Sarah, AH is both a little delusional and manipulative, and probably unconsciously so, for the most part. I think she is embellishing JD’s bad behavior and minimizing her own. I still really don’t know if JD was physically abusive (certainly verbally) but I think AH really believes he was because his absences felt (though feelings are always truth) like the worst pain in the world to her. She felt justified in doing whatever she could to get his attention. I think its going to take her longer to see her responsibility in this than him, and I think she’s got a good chance of winning the case. I hope she gets a really good therapist at some point for her daughter’s sake. I wonder if this is JD’s rock bottom. Ok - e’nuff armchairs psychologizing from me.🙂
I wasn't aware of the trial until Sarah mentioned it in an earlier episode here. Since then, I've been a bit too consumed with it (way-too -late nights watching the recorded trial on YouTube Law&Crime Network which I'd never heard of). I came into it just curious, not a lifelong fan of JD and haven't seen any of his movies (but I will go watch some now), so I wasn't biased, at first. If you look at YouTuber "IncerdiblyAverageaBrian" (?) and his in-depth analysis (video clips, photos documents, etc., that I think are available online via the Fairfax County Court), especially his FIRST TWO videos analyzing the Dec 15 2015 penthouse incident, it's really hard to believe AH's stories. It's sad because if she was in fact a victim of DV, her case is shrouded in doubt because of what appear to be a lot of embellishments if not untruths and false testimonies given by herself and her friends...
Anyway, today's episode, Sarah and Nancy, is the best conversation I've heard yet about this case. And I can't wait for the rest of your in-person interviews and observations about the trial, Sarah!
So glad you've come on this strange adventure with us. The YouTube element here is fascinating. I will watch more of IncrediblyAverage's coverage, I did watch one of the videos you're talking about and found it eye-popping. I'm also very curious where those audio leaks are coming from, how these YouTubers are getting material nobody else has, and why. There is SO MUCH about this trial that points toward a sea change in the media, and the absence of the establishment media on the topic just stuns me. -- SH
I am really new to this whole case, but I think that the stories/coverage have been around for a long time (at least since when AH filed and made the restraining order public). I think the coverage weighed heavily against JD., and they needed to try to get their side heard by pointing out things that weren't admissable in the UK case because, as AH was only a witness during that trial, her testimony was taken on its face during that trial, and her testimony didn't have to be proven by evidence. So JD's defense was trying to bring evidence to light (leaked it?) to counter the narrative repeatedly reported on during the UK trial, the 2018 op-ed piece, TMZ articles, etc. etc. Anyway, still so sad. We shouldn't be privy to any of this. I'm sure this has been hell for both sides.
(Wait! Sorry, I have to say one more thing.) Re "the material that nobody else has": I think everyone DOES have access to it I think that the material is on record at the Fairfax County Courthouse (ie it didn't have to be leaked). Some YouTubers (Internet Journalists, I've heard them called, which I think is fair if you look at their videos) dug in to that material to analyze the timeline of allegations...
Ugh! One more apology from me--I just listened again to a podcast ("legally dirty blonde") and she says that some of the audio recordings from the UK trial WAS leaked to the press (eg to the Internet Journalists) after JD lost that case, and that was a no-no. (The guy who leaked it was JDs attorney for the UK trial, and bc he leaked it he wasn't allowed to rep JD in this current trial.) I'm going to shut up now!
Just popping in to say that I randomly have been driving back and forth through Fairfax co this and next week and obviously timing my listening of smoke em to those drives
I completely agree about Peter DeLuise *swoon 😍. I'm not sure about Johnny not winning his case though. It seems more likely to me that his "abuse" of her was more like lashing out when the drugs he was on lowered his inhibitions. I don't think any of it was right, but I think it was more in response to her treatment of him as opposed to him being an abusive person which so many people close to him say he never was before. Thank you for posting the Rolling Stone article, I hadn't seen that one before.
Oh! Peter DeLuise was such a charmer. And the Rolling Stone article actually became a topic in the trial on Thursday. Depp had solicited the piece himself, hoping to get more of his own story told. I still haven’t read it, and need to.
Sorry to go on about this, but there is one recording of AH taunting and cackling at JD about "21 Jump Street" and how washed up he is. It's so disturbing and cold and cruel. It sounds like nothing an abused person would dare to do to their abuser. I can't get it out of my head. (This was during day 2 of Camille Vasquez's cross of AH this past week.)
First encountered Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street in 1985ish before he hit pay dirt 21 Jump. I think 21 was also on after my bedtime the first few years so I never got to into it, but I would have been more Team Peter than Team Johnny because muscular shoulders.
As far as JD and AH - I think they are 2 very damaged people from abusive backgrounds with serious attachment issues (join the club) who found each other at the very wrong moment. It seems JD was in a serious drug and alcohol fueled downward spiral (possibly also a broken hearted heart) personally and professionally. Too cope and try to fill the holes, he throws himself into an intense romance with a gorgeous young actress. Wouldn’t be the first guy to try to heal himself in the arms of beautiful woman. But as we all know, using an outside thing to cope with with really serious pain doesn’t work. Eventually, it comes out sideways, and when it did, unfortunately JD was with a woman who had her own parental war wounds and insecurities which were triggered in a nuclear fashion when he became unavailable and distant. I’d be willing to bet when Johnny was high, on the nod, or disappeared on her, it triggered (excuse the use of a tired word) an intense feeling of abandonment and thing in her desperate not to be abandoned went full red alert using whatever she could to keep his attention, including becoming abusive herself. Negative attention is still attention. Whatever keeps him in the room even if it is to have a physical altercation. From there, they feed off each other and things escalates. I’m also willing to bet, Sarah, AH is both a little delusional and manipulative, and probably unconsciously so, for the most part. I think she is embellishing JD’s bad behavior and minimizing her own. I still really don’t know if JD was physically abusive (certainly verbally) but I think AH really believes he was because his absences felt (though feelings are always truth) like the worst pain in the world to her. She felt justified in doing whatever she could to get his attention. I think its going to take her longer to see her responsibility in this than him, and I think she’s got a good chance of winning the case. I hope she gets a really good therapist at some point for her daughter’s sake. I wonder if this is JD’s rock bottom. Ok - e’nuff armchairs psychologizing from me.🙂
This is quality analysis. -- SH
Well said - NR
I wasn't aware of the trial until Sarah mentioned it in an earlier episode here. Since then, I've been a bit too consumed with it (way-too -late nights watching the recorded trial on YouTube Law&Crime Network which I'd never heard of). I came into it just curious, not a lifelong fan of JD and haven't seen any of his movies (but I will go watch some now), so I wasn't biased, at first. If you look at YouTuber "IncerdiblyAverageaBrian" (?) and his in-depth analysis (video clips, photos documents, etc., that I think are available online via the Fairfax County Court), especially his FIRST TWO videos analyzing the Dec 15 2015 penthouse incident, it's really hard to believe AH's stories. It's sad because if she was in fact a victim of DV, her case is shrouded in doubt because of what appear to be a lot of embellishments if not untruths and false testimonies given by herself and her friends...
Anyway, today's episode, Sarah and Nancy, is the best conversation I've heard yet about this case. And I can't wait for the rest of your in-person interviews and observations about the trial, Sarah!
So glad you've come on this strange adventure with us. The YouTube element here is fascinating. I will watch more of IncrediblyAverage's coverage, I did watch one of the videos you're talking about and found it eye-popping. I'm also very curious where those audio leaks are coming from, how these YouTubers are getting material nobody else has, and why. There is SO MUCH about this trial that points toward a sea change in the media, and the absence of the establishment media on the topic just stuns me. -- SH
I am really new to this whole case, but I think that the stories/coverage have been around for a long time (at least since when AH filed and made the restraining order public). I think the coverage weighed heavily against JD., and they needed to try to get their side heard by pointing out things that weren't admissable in the UK case because, as AH was only a witness during that trial, her testimony was taken on its face during that trial, and her testimony didn't have to be proven by evidence. So JD's defense was trying to bring evidence to light (leaked it?) to counter the narrative repeatedly reported on during the UK trial, the 2018 op-ed piece, TMZ articles, etc. etc. Anyway, still so sad. We shouldn't be privy to any of this. I'm sure this has been hell for both sides.
(Wait! Sorry, I have to say one more thing.) Re "the material that nobody else has": I think everyone DOES have access to it I think that the material is on record at the Fairfax County Courthouse (ie it didn't have to be leaked). Some YouTubers (Internet Journalists, I've heard them called, which I think is fair if you look at their videos) dug in to that material to analyze the timeline of allegations...
It's crazy because it's all I seem to hear about on podcasts!
Ugh! One more apology from me--I just listened again to a podcast ("legally dirty blonde") and she says that some of the audio recordings from the UK trial WAS leaked to the press (eg to the Internet Journalists) after JD lost that case, and that was a no-no. (The guy who leaked it was JDs attorney for the UK trial, and bc he leaked it he wasn't allowed to rep JD in this current trial.) I'm going to shut up now!
We just talked about this on the epi we recorded today! Sarah has some deets
Just popping in to say that I randomly have been driving back and forth through Fairfax co this and next week and obviously timing my listening of smoke em to those drives
We best get recordin’!
P.s. The YouTuber's handle is "Incredibly Average" (not "Brian").
First, I had a huge crush on Peter DeLuise during his 21 Jump Street years.
I’ve been following this case on the periphery. I’ve had a lot of empathy for Johnny Depp ever since reading this 2018 Rolling Stone profile. Brutal. https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/the-trouble-with-johnny-depp-666010/
I don’t think he deserves to win this defamation case (they both sound pretty abusive) but I’m glad he brought amber down with him.
I completely agree about Peter DeLuise *swoon 😍. I'm not sure about Johnny not winning his case though. It seems more likely to me that his "abuse" of her was more like lashing out when the drugs he was on lowered his inhibitions. I don't think any of it was right, but I think it was more in response to her treatment of him as opposed to him being an abusive person which so many people close to him say he never was before. Thank you for posting the Rolling Stone article, I hadn't seen that one before.
Oh boy. That RS article. Enjoy! 🥴
Oh! Peter DeLuise was such a charmer. And the Rolling Stone article actually became a topic in the trial on Thursday. Depp had solicited the piece himself, hoping to get more of his own story told. I still haven’t read it, and need to.
I didn’t know that! It worked. Team Johnny 🤘🏼
The other week at work I realized I could have been called to jury duty for the Depp / Heard trial. What a crazy experience that would be.
Had a similar thought. If I still lived in FFX county, could have been called.
Sorry for the poor grammar and sentence structure. Typing on my phone.