The actress spoke with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie in a two-part interview this week.
Amber Heard doesn't have hard feelings for Johnny Depp following his defamation lawsuit win against her earlier this month. In part two of Heard's sit-down interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, the 36-year-old actress opened up about her personal feelings for Depp despite their highly-publicized legal battle.
"Absolutely. I love him. I loved him with all my heart," Heard told Guthrie of her ex-husband, whom she divorced in 2016. "I tried my best to make a deeply broken relationship work. I have no bad feelings or ill will toward him at all."
Their six-week trial began a little over three years after Depp filed his $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard in March 2019 following the Washington Post op-ed she wrote which detailed how she was the victim of domestic violence. While Depp's name was not mentioned in the article, the piece came out as their contentious 2016 divorce continued to make news headlines. Depp ultimately won the case when the jury unanimously sided with him and awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
Heard told Guthrie she knows she wasn't a "likeable" or "perfect" victim. "When I testified, I asked the jury to just see me as human," she explained.
"I took for granted what I assumed was my right to speak," Heard said of being fearful of speaking out following the trial. "I'm scared that no matter what I do, no matter what I say, or how I say it, every step that I take will present another opportunity for this, sort of, silencing."
While the jury agreed that Depp was defamed by Heard, the actress says the op-ed was not about him, despite that it alluded to that.
"The op-ed wasn't about my relationship with Johnny," she said. "What the op-ed was about was me loaning my voice to a bigger, cultural conversation that we were having at the time."
"It was important for me to not make it about him," Heard added. "Or to do anything like defame him. I had lawyers -- teams of lawyers -- review all the drafts of this."
Earlier in her conversation with Guthrie, Heard shared that she didn't think she was fairly represented on social media during the trial.
"I think [the] vast majority of this trial was played out on social media," she said. "I think that this trial is an example of that gone haywire, gone amok and the jury’s not immune to that." Heard noted, "I think even the most well-intentioned juror -- it would have been impossible to avoid this."
"Even if you think that I'm lying," she continued, "you still couldn’t tell me, look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation."
Depp's legal team, however, felt social media did not play a part in his success in court. "My view is that social media played no role whatsoever," Depp's attorney Ben Chew told Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos last week. "This was a decision made by the jury on the evidence presented by both sides, and as Camille said, it was overwhelmingly in Mr. Depp's favor."
You can stream part of the special edition of Dateline tomorrow on Peacock. The special will air at 8 p.m. ET Friday on NBC.
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