Johnny Depp trial – live: Amber Heard accuses actor of sex assault as he calls

ICYMI: Explosive new allegations were made by Amber Heard about her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, during the opening arguments of his defamation trial.

Ms Heard’s attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, claimed that Depp sexually assaulted Ms Heard using a liquor bottle during a black-out drunk episode.

Depp was visibly skeptical as Ms Bredehoft made the claims, and shook his head “no” after her comments.

Now the actor’s team has issued a statement in response to the “erroneous” claims.

“These fictitious claims were never made at the onset of Amber’s allegations in 2016, and only advantageously surfaced years later once she was sued for defamation after noting in her op-ed that she was a victim of ‘sexual violence.’ Words are key in a defamation case and conveniently, this allegation only came after that. This follows a pattern of her elaborate, erroneous claims which have continued to change and evolve over time for the purpose of Hollywood shock value of which Amber has mastered and used to exploit a serious social movement.” a spokesperson for Depp told The Independent.

ICYMI: In a statement on Saturday, Heard said she was continuing “to pay the price” for being a woman “speaking out against men in power” and that she was dissapointed her and Depp’s life would again play out in front of a court.

“I never named him,” said Heard on Saturday. “Rather, I wrote about the price women pay for speaking out against men in power.”

“I continue to pay the price, but hopefully when this case concludes, I can move on and so can Johnny,” she added of her former husband, who she said she has “always maintained a love for”.

Heard’s lawyers will likely argue that she is “immune” from liability during the trial because her opinion article in The Washington Post was a matter of public concern.

The article, which was published in 2018, was titled: I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change. It did not name her ex-husband.

ICYMI: Johnny Depp’s sister says Amber Heard called him “old and fat” and that the actor’s family was “devastated” at his marriage to her.

Christi Dembrowski made the claims as she took the stand as the first witness in the multi-million dollar defamation trial in Virginia, in which Depp claims that a 2018 article on domestic violence she wrote for The Washington Post implied he was an abuser.

ICYMI: The high-profile legal disagreement between Depp and Heard was depicted in a TV documentary series last year on Discovery Plus, which sought to reveal the reasons behind the pair’s two “polarised perspectives”.

The programme – Johnny v Amber – was also billed as the story “of the breakdown” of Depp and Heard’s relationship, including “how it tipped into the celebrity court case of the decade”.