Paul Bettany is setting the record straight about his past association with Johnny Depp. In a new profile with The Times, published as he promotes his Marvel series VisionQuest, the 55-year-old actor addressed the infamous 2013 text messages exchanged between himself and Depp about Depp's ex-wife, Amber Heard — messages that were later made public during Depp's 2020 libel case against The Sun in London, TheWrap reports.
"I hadn't spoken to Johnny in years when that happened, and I haven't spoken to him since," Bettany told The Times. "I was being painted as this close friend of a guy I hadn't spoken to in years and, honestly, amid all the shit two celebrities threw at each other, that bit was the most odd." He said he chose to stay silent at the time because everyone around him believed it was "probably a nothing burger."
The texts in question saw the pair joke about "drowning" Heard to prove she wasn't a witch. Depp's message read: "Let's drown her before we burn her!!!" Bettany's reply, in what he described as dark English humor, discussed "the English course of action" of a drowning test. NME reports the messages were read aloud during the trial, which Depp ultimately lost.
BuzzFeed reports the comments have sparked backlash, with many noting that even if Bettany wasn't close with Depp at the time of the trial, the exchange suggests they were when the texts were sent. Just Jared also covered the interview, in which Bettany said, "I've been married 23 years and, for what I do, I live an incredibly quiet life."
The Times profile was pegged to Bettany's Marvel series VisionQuest, which brings the WandaVision trilogy to a close. But it is the Depp comments dominating the conversation, with the interview reigniting debate about the 2020 trial and the texts that became some of its most scrutinized evidence.
Bettany previously told The Independent that having a decade of his private messages scoured by lawyers was "an unpleasant feeling." His latest attempt to contextualize the exchange has instead reopened the discussion — proof that in the age of screenshots, private jokes can have a very long public afterlife.
Photo: PhilipRomano (CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)