The Baffling Response to Kate Moss Testifying About Johnny Depp
A segment of the internet is hoping she gets back together with him, suggesting nostalgia is more powerful than disturbing allegations about his treatment of women thatthis trial has brought to light.
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Kate Moss appeared briefly at the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial to say that he didn’t push her down some stairs in Jamaica in the nineties, and the baffling result has been people on social media wishing for them to get back together.
The entire testimony was only about three minutes. Moss was called to the stand to address earlier statements by Heard that she had heard a rumor that Depp pushed Moss down the stairs when they were dating in the nineties. Heard said she hit Depp because he had tried to hit her sister while she was standing near the top of a staircase. “I just, in my head, instantly think of Kate Moss and the stairs and I swung at him,” she explained.
On Wednesday, Moss said, “There had been a rainstorm and as I left the room I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back… And I screamed because I didn’t know what happened to me and I was in pain. And he came running back to help me and carried me to my room and got me medical attention.” She added, “He never pushed me, kicked me, or threw me down any stairs.”
Depp and his lawyer’s reactions to Moss have been obsessed over by Depp fans. When Heard first mentioned Moss, Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew appeared to pump his fist in the courtroom because the remarks opened the door for Moss to be called to testify. Her appearance was voluntary, though Heard’s legal team successfully objected to Chew’s question about Moss’s motives for appearing on the stand, so we will probably never hear from the famously private model about why she did.
Scroll through the top tweets about Moss and the trial, and you’ll find people reveling in how she proved Heard was “lying” and feels enough loyalty to Depp after all these years (they dated from around 1994 to 1998) to have made the appearance. Depp fans have also decided that he “lit up” when her face came onto the screen. There was enough of this sentiment going around for the Daily Mail to post a whole story about how people want them to get back together:
This conclusion that they should rekindle their relationship — based on romanticized notions of him not pushing her down the stairs — is baffling after what we’ve already heard about Depp’s behavior throughout this trial. But such is the power of nostalgia and the public’s refusal to believe a woman daring to cast a treasured celebrity in a damaging light.
Let’s consider the type of man we have learned Depp to be from this trial. Just yesterday, Heard’s lawyers asked Depp about text messages he wrote in August 2016 to his then-talent agent. (“Mollusk” refers to Elon Musk, whom Heard was dating at the time.)
As we can see, these texts say that Heard is “begging for total global humiliation” and that “[s]he’s gonna get it.” They go on to describe her as “this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mush, pointless, dangling overused flappy fish market” and “that 50 cent stripper.” The message continues, “I can only hope that karma kicks in and takes the gift of breath from her.”
This is just one text message, which Depp did not deny writing. It wasn’t the first in the trial in which Depp alluded to Heard’s death. In messages presented earlier, Depp wrote to actor Paul Bettany, “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!!” And, “I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead.”
This is the man people are wishing upon Kate Moss?
Heard has also alleged that during a trip with friends to Hicksville Trailer Palace in Joshua Tree, California, Depp ripped her dress off and performed a “cavity search” on her. She recounted another incident in which he allegedly sexually assaulted her with a bottle.
This is the man people are wishing upon Kate Moss.
The fandom for Depp and equally passionate hatred for Heard manifesting primarily on social media has been well-documented throughout the trial. Evidence like the above texts does nothing to dissuade Depp fans, who obsess over seconds-long moments in the proceedings as evidence that their point of view is right. These include the time Heard wiped her face with a tissue and seemingly paused while a photographer was taking a picture (which supposedly supports the view that she’s disingenuous). Or when Depp, who has been doodling during the trial, such is his apparent regard for the proceedings, “lit up” at the appearance of Moss (which supposedly supports the view that there’s still a spark there or that he’s not a bad guy, never mind that this is probably a pretty standard reaction to the presence of Kate Moss).
Many trial viewers have visceral memories of images of Kate Moss and Johnny Depp as a couple. These defined our idea of what was cool in the nineties. Hearing their names in the same sentence is likely to conjure that paparazzi image of them young and holding hands with matching rumpled hair and black leather jackets. Or that famous photoshoot by Annie Leibovitz of them on an unmade bed, Moss naked, Depp clothed and lying on top of her with his eyes closed, re-upped by the @90sanxiety Instagram account in November of 2020.
They were young, gorgeous, and at the top of their respective fields. Of course there was intrigue around them as a pair then. We also didn’t know details about their relationship — not really, anyway — and there was no social media when they were together. Singular images of them or any celebrity couple had a greater chance of becoming meaningful because content was in much shorter supply so each piece of it mattered more. When Moss and Depp were dating, these photos weren’t thought of as “content.”
Now, for some, any intrigue around Depp has been erased by a trial that has scraped his private text messages and Heard’s unflattering private photos and video footage captured during their relationship, among other evidence, and laid him bare as a person we never saw in movies or on red carpets or in sexy photo shoots. One doesn’t have to be a fan of Heard in order to also not be a fan of Depp after all of the disturbing evidence that has come up in this trial. One doesn’t have to take Moss saying that Depp helped her when she fell and hurt her back, which is what many would expect a romantic partner to do, as proof that every other damaging thing we have heard about Depp is false.
But it is the glamorous, mysterious, nostalgic idea of Depp from photos and films — powerful scraps of his existence but scraps all the same — that seems to supersede everything else much of the public has now heard about him. This image is helped by Heard being widely perceived as unlikable, an image Depp’s lawyers had every incentive to cultivate. (One fan even turned up to the courthouse dressed as human fecal matter — a reference to Depp accusing Heard of defecating on their bed, which Heard denied.)
Images allow people to believe what they want to believe, in this case, that Johnny Depp is a great romantic partner — the kind Kate Moss shows up for! — and that anything so much as suggesting the opposite is fabricated. It’s harder for many people to question the idealized Annie Leibovitz portrayal of Depp than the deeply flawed one presented by Heard.
The fashion industry understands the power of images perhaps better than any other. Perhaps that’s why Dior retains its contract with Depp, the face of their Sauvage fragrance. I realize this is a men’s fragrance, and that Christian Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri probably doesn’t work on it. But it’s hard to watch this trial and Depp apologists tweeting the hashtag #ThankYouDior for not dropping him as a face, and view the brand as feminist, despite Chiuri’s many efforts to position it that way through her women’s collections.
A corporation like LVMH, which owns Dior, may simply see that Depp — the man who wrote in a text message that he would drown and burn his ex and “fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead” — can still sell product. Because such a large segment of the public would rather see him not as Heard’s abusive ex, but rather as the guy who’s had rumpled hair since the nineties, who may be rich and famous but is also happy to vacation in a trailer park in the desert. It’s the same image of Depp that Dior has been pushing since he became the face of Sauvage in 2015.
The guy who just can’t take the city so he heads for the desert, where he buries some of his jewelry. It sounds dumb, but the ads work because people are able to, in some way, believe them.
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Celeb/stan culture has seriously warped people's brains. Good points about Dior and how its refusal to drop Depp is at odds with its feminist rebranding. It's also kind of baffling to me ... Depp, while once cool/fashionable/aspirational, seems at odds with what Dior would want to be - he's in objectively bad movies that do poorly in the box office, a ridiculous dresser, puffy ... I don't get it!