Johnny Depp Criticized Journalists in Call With Influencer Before Trial
- Johnny Depp had a phone call with Instagram influencer Jessica Reed Kraus ahead of his defamation trial against Amber Heard, Kraus said.
- Kraus has gained hundreds of thousands of followers while posting about the trial, often criticizing Heard.
- She told Insider that celebrity friends of Depp checked in with him throughout the trial.
Throughout Johnny Depp’s trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, Jessica Reed Kraus diligently posted about it on Instagram.
Watching testimony from the courtroom in Fairfax County, Virginia, Kraus posted daily updates with an unabashedly pro-Depp perspective to her hundreds of thousands of followers. Her support for the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor has become a boon for her account, @houseinhabit, which now sits at just under 1 million followers. That number roughly doubled during the trial, according to the social media statistics tracker Socialblade.
On Tuesday, Kraus revealed that she had spoken to Depp at the start of the trial. During an hour-and-a-half-long conversation, he had shared his “musings on the death of journalistic integrity” and told her he appreciated her work, Kraus wrote in a Substack post.
“‘I don’t know you’ he says, ‘but I know, just by the words you use and the aesthetic in your work, that I trust you,'” Kraus wrote, quoting Depp. “He touches briefly on the Rolling Stone article that shredded his reputation and ruined his trust in media. A betrayal he hasn’t yet recovered from.” The widely-read 2018 profile, which Depp was interviewed for, covered the actor’s legal and financial difficulties.
They also talked about Depp’s “tendency to trust the wrong people, and the trouble it’s caused him in various periods throughout his life,” according to Kraus’ account.
Kraus wrote on Substack that she was connected with Depp through “an old friend of Johnny’s,” who she met through Instagram. Kraus and the friend, who she wouldn’t name, later met in person and spent time together during the trial, she told Insider. Sometimes, she got to overhear FaceTime calls between Depp and his friends.
During the trial, Kraus stayed at the same hotel as Depp’s legal team. At one point, she posted photos to Instagram of Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew in the hotel elevator wearing shorts and a Hollywood Vampires T-shirt.
She met Depp, Kraus told Insider, at a cocktail party that was held at the hotel after he testified, and snapped a picture of him. A source close to Depp confirmed the veracity of Kraus’ photo.
The defamation trial lasted six weeks, and details about Depp’s and Heard’s turbulent relationship and Hollywood lifestyles dominated the internet. As Depp and Heard came and went from the courthouse, throngs of Depp’s fans lined the street, holding up signs and shouting words of support and encouragement.
Kraus said Depp didn’t understand the scale of attention the trial was receiving.
“He’s so naive,” Kraus said. “He didn’t even understand, on those phone calls, how viral every part of the trial was, because he is not really on social media.”
Celebrities called Depp to check in with him during the trial, Kraus said
Depp has so far not conducted any interviews with media organizations following the jury verdict in early June, though Chew and another one of his attorneys, Camille Vasquez, have spoken to several outlets. Heard sat down for an interview with NBC News’s “Today” show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, where she said she believes more evidence might have swayed the jury to reach a verdict more in her favor.
In their 90-minute conversation at the start of the trial, Kraus and Depp talked about their mutual love of books, discussing Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace, she wrote in her Substack post. He also told her he uses a typewriter to write and outlined “a revolution that would entail burying our cell phones and laptops to [sever] our obsessive dependency on them,” she wrote.
Read More: Johnny Depp Criticized Journalists in Call With Influencer Before Trial