Kate Moss explains why she spoke in favour of Johnny Depp in defamation case

Kate Moss testified in support of ex-boyfriend Johnny Depp in the defamation trial against Amber Heard in May this year. Many feel Moss’s testimony in support of the actor played a crucial role in the verdict which mostly favoured Depp. 

The six weeks long defamation trial saw Heard and Depp accusing each other of domestic violence during their marriage of nearly two years. Heard had first alleged that Depp pushed Kate Moss down the stairs during her testimony at Depp’s UK defamation trial against British tabloid The Sun for calling him a ‘wife-beater’. The actress had repeated the same point in the US trial as well alleging that she had heard of Depp pushing Moss down the stairs, which had made her strike him in a separate incident in order to protect her sister. 

Heard said that she “swung at” Depp to defend her younger sister Whitney Henriquez and was triggered when she thought about “Kate Moss and stairs”.

Now, almost two months after the verdict, the very private Moss opened up about why she spoke in favour of Depp whom she dated from 1994 till 1998. 

“I know the truth about Johnny. I know he never kicked me down the stairs. I had to say that truth,” Moss said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.

Moss, appeared virtually in court in May to deny rumours that the actor shoved her down a flight of stairs 

“I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back,” Moss said under oath in May. “He never pushed me, kicked me or threw me down any stairs.”

In November 2020, Depp lost that UK libel lawsuit case and the court upheld the outlet’s claims as being “substantially true”. In March 2021, Depp’s attempt to overturn the decision was overruled. 

During the U.S. trial where Moss testified, Depp`s lawyer Camille Vasquez asked during cross-examination, “You didn’t expect Ms. Moss to testify that that never happened, did you?”

“Incorrect,” responded Heard.

“I know how many people will come out of the woodwork to be in support of Johnny. It is clear by this courtroom how many people will do that.”

Heard added, “Everybody who was around in the ’90s knew that rumour. I had heard that rumour from multiple people.”

“Of course, that’s what flashed through my head when my violent husband not only swung for me but all of a sudden swung for my sister. Of course, I thought of that.”

“I did not expect her to show up or not expect her to show up. It didn’t matter,” Heard said of Moss.

“It doesn’t change what I believed at the time when we were on the stairs and I thought he was gonna kill my sister by pushing her down the stairs.”

While the jury found the actress defamed Depp in her 2018 op-ed and awarded him over $10 million, they sided with Heard on one of her three counterclaims, finding that Depp defamed her via comments made by his attorney Adam Waldman in 2020.