Over the course of seven weeks last year, my television viewing reached an obsessive and compulsive level.
But it wasn’t down to a global sporting event or a new reality show – it was the trial of Johnny Depp V Amber Heard. The once married and madly in love couple were suing and counter-suing each other. Johnny was claiming $50million in damages after his former wife defamed him in an article where she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse.
Meanwhile, Amber filed a counterclaim against her ex for $100million in damages, accusing him of allegedly orchestrating a ‘smear campaign’ against her and describing his own lawsuit as a continuation of ‘abuse and harassment’. And it was all being captured on television.
My days and nights were punctuated by viewing the trial in its entirety. Often, late into the night I would Facetime friends and colleagues to talk about the day’s events. Pouring over who was right, who was wrong, all the socials – it was intense.
Even though I’m a single mum who runs my own production company, as well as being an Bafta award-nominated Director and Executive Producer, I was so committed to ring fencing all this time for the trial – but why?
As the days went on, I wondered, if we shifted the gaze within, what does this behaviour say about us? What did it say about being alive in 2022/23, how we communicate and, ultimately, how all these changes affect truth and justice in our society?
It was these questions that ultimately prompted me to make a documentary series about the trial. I wanted to look at us all as a whole – as a filmmaker I don’t set myself apart at all from the people on social media I was observing during this series. They are me and I am them.
It is important to note that from the outset I never wanted to make a series which picked a side, which dived deep into ‘he said, she said.’ At the end of the day, there is a clear verdict here – that is not in dispute. Plus, as a BBC trained filmmaker, impartiality has been burnt into my soul since I was 21, and something I applied at the core of this series.
Once we licensed the court footage – and started to watch each moment again – I realised that to see their testimony of the same events side by side (which we couldn’t do during the trial) shifted perspective again – and made it almost harder to see what the truth could be.
Both Amber and Johnny passionately believe their own truth. Ultimately there are three truths at play here – his truth, her truth and THE truth. Often, in life, those three elements are intertwined. Here we had two people fighting against defamation and attempting to rebuild careers and lives – with us all watching.
It was important to me, from the very start, to establish their love story – to remind us that this relationship started as an earnest and passionate romance. In the first episode, we see them clearly showing they once had great love for one another. It was relatable insofar they started with hope – the breakdown of the marriage descended into animosity – something many of us sadly experience or witness in our lives. This isn’t just reserved for Hollywood couples, however the ensuing trial did seem to be only the domain of Hollywood.
I chose not to shoot interviews, instead, to focus on editing the court footage alongside reaction to it – from traditional media to the endless comment on socials, in particular TikTok. I wanted to show points where assumptions are made, and the truth is not necessarily sought out. I started the series worrying about this and ended it believing that there is a personal responsibility in us all with the choices we make to find our information and news.
Younger generations are platform agnostic; they won’t necessarily seek out a certain type of fact-checked information. The democratisation of journalism, reportage, news is not a bad thing either – however, if someone gets all their news from TikTok, then they need to have the truth filter, the fact check filter, within them. With the advent of information – and misinformation – via social media, we have all become our own news anchors, and need to treat that role with responsibility every now and again.
With Depp V Heard, Tiktok, YouTube, Twitter, TV and podcasts all became our other narrative for the case and at points it left me wondering, with a televised trial, is it truly ever possible again to have a jury unaffected by socials – even when sequestered (which this jury were not).
The constant noise, the opinions of every single person (myself included) without always looking at the evidence and the facts in the way a legal team or jury feels potentially destabilising to me, and to us as a society.
In many ways, the democratisation of the media and discourse is excellent but there is a dangerous side, which is having unqualified people wading in without all the facts and potentially influencing verdicts.
In terms of MeToo, Depp V Heard was a challenging and confusing case. Just when you thought MeToo survivors and victims would support the woman they didn’t, and vice versa. Equally if a man is wrongfully accused, that is terrible. Again, it all snakes back to who do you believe – and how do you believe what anyone says? How do you cut through the noise? Looking at the evidence is all you can truly do.
As we made the documentary, we did everything we could to be balanced, not take sides, and instead draw analysis of a trial that was taken over by the social media world. Which is why even though it’s called Depp V Heard, it isn’t really about Johnny and Amber. It is about everyone else – and what everyone else, me included, did with the trial.
Depp V Heard is available to stream on Channel 4 now.
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