Johnny Depp said ‘f*** you’ to Hollywood after being dumped from 'Fantastic Beasts' franchise

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Johnny Depp is sounding off on losing his role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise after his ex-wife Amber Heard accused him of abuse.

Depp won his defamation suit against Heard in 2022, but before that legal victory he had lost a libel case against British tabloid The Sun in November 2020 after suing the outlet for publishing a 2018 article that referred to him as a “wife-beater.”

That courtroom setback caused the three-time Oscar nominee to lose his part as Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter spinoff series.

Depp had shot for one day on the third instalment, 2022’s The Secrets of Dumbledore, when Warner Bros. asked him to drop out of the film.  

“It literally stopped in a millisecond, like, while I was doing the movie,” Depp told The Telegraph in a new interview. “They said we’d like you to resign. But what was really in my head was they wanted me to retire.”

But instead of quietly stepping away, Depp decided to fight back in order to preserve his reputation and career.

“F*** you,” he told the newspaper of his reaction to getting fired. “There’s far too many of me to kill. If you think you can hurt me more than I’ve already been hurt you’re gravely mistaken.”

Depp decided to fight back and sued Heard because if he didn’t speak up “then I wouldn’t have been me.”

“Of course, everyone tells you, ‘Don’t do it. You’re crazy,’” he recalled. Depp said his experience afterwards led to him being “shunned, dumped, booted, deep-sixed, cancelled” in Hollywood.

But he took legal action against Heard in 2022 after she wrote a 2018 Washington Post op-ed following their 2016 split in which she called herself as a survivor of domestic abuse.

Intimate details involving Depp and Heard’s personal lives were revealed at the trial, which streamed online for all the world to see.

Depp told The Sunday Times last month that he had people telling him to avoid a trial and “all the hit pieces, the bulls***” that would ensue. But he was determined to have his day in court.

“I knew I’d have to semi-eviscerate myself. Everyone was saying, ‘It’ll go away!’ But I can’t trust that,” Depp told the Times. “What will go away? The fiction pawned around the f***ing globe? No it won’t. If I don’t try to represent the truth it will be like I’ve actually committed the acts I am accused of. And my kids will have to live with it. Their kids. Kids that I’ve met in hospitals. So the night before the trial in Virginia I didn’t feel nervous. If you don’t have to memorize lines, if you’re just speaking the truth? Roll the dice.”

Throughout the six-week trial in the spring of 2022, jurors and people watching at home online got a peek into the couple’s extravagant and sordid relationship.

During her testimony, Heard claimed that Depp attacked her multiple times including on their honeymoon.

Jurors eventually sided with Depp, finding Heard guilty of defamation and awarding the Finding Neverland star $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Heard’s countersuit against Depp was also partially successful, as he was found guilty on one count of defamation through his former lawyer Adam Waldman.

After both parties appealed the verdicts, the pair agreed to a settlement in December 2022, with Depp’s camp saying that the deal included a $1-million payment from her to him which was donated to charity.

With his reputation cleared, Depp has headed back to work, signing on to play King Louis XV opposite co-star and director Maiwenn in Jeanne Du Barry and directing Modi – Three Days on the Wing of Madness, with Riccardo Scamarcio in the lead and Al Pacino co-starring.

He’s also in the midst of shooting Marc Webb’s thriller Day Drinker with Penelope Cruz.

Depp also reflected in his chat with the Times about being betrayed by former friends as he referred to himself as “a crash test dummy” for the #MeToo movement. But he was determined to move forward with a clean slate.

“Look, none of this was going (to) be easy, but I didn’t care,” he told the British outlet. “I thought, ‘I’ll fight until the bitter f***ing end.’ And if I end up pumping gas? That’s alright. I’ve done that before.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com