Amber Heard has landed her first acting role since her former husband, Johnny Depp, won a high-profile defamation lawsuit against her.
The 39-year-old Texas-born actor will join the ensemble cast for Spirit of the People, a new play by Jeremy O. Harris that will premiere at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in July.
The cast will also feature 13 Reasons Why star Brandon Flynn, Ato Blankson-Wood, James Cusati-Moyer, Amandla Jahava, Emma Ramos, Julian Sanchez, Zachary Booth, Tonatiuh, and Lío Mehiel.
According to the official description, Spirit of the People “confronts uncomfortable truths about land and what it means to destroy it.”
Slave Play playwright Harris told Variety of his new project: “I wanted to challenge myself. The play is half in Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish. The play has a significant level of prose within it. I’m not a prose writer. I’m trying a lot of different things.”
Heard’s most recent screen credits include 2023’s In the Fire and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, although both projects were filmed prior to the televised legal trial in 2022.
Heard and Depp divorced in 2017. She had filed divorce proceedings a year earlier, citing irreconcilable differences and alleging domestic abuse. Depp subsequently brought a libel action against British newspaper The Sun over their description of him as a “wife beater”, which he lost.
However, in 2023, he won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Heard after a jury ruled her 2018 article in The Washington Post was defamatory. The piece had been headlined: “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”
The article did not mention Depp by name, but his lawyers argued that it falsely implied he physically and sexually abused Heard while they were together. After six weeks of evidence and roughly 13 hours of deliberation, jurors returned a verdict in favor of Depp.
Earlier this week, Depp said there were “three people” in particular who did him “dirty” during the trial with Heard.
“As weird as I am, certain things can be trusted,” the Pirates of the Caribbean star told The Sunday Times. “And my loyalty is the last thing anybody could question. I was with one agent for 30 years, but she spoke in court about how difficult I was.
“That’s death by confetti, these fake motherf***ers who lie to you, celebrate you, say all sorts of horror behind your back, yet keep the money – that confetti machine going – because what do they want? Dough.”
During the trial, Depp’s former agent Tracey Jacobs, with whom Depp worked from 1988 to 2016, claimed some studios had become “reluctant to use” Depp because of his tardiness on set. The actor denied this.
He continued to single out “three people” in particular, stating: “I’ll tell you what hurts. There are people, and I’m thinking of three, who did me dirty. Those people were at my kids’ parties. Throwing them in the air.”
The Edward Scissorhands star did not name anyone specifically. The court case became a point of contention in Hollywood, with several celebrities taking sides. You can find a list of stars who supported Depp here, and those who supported Heard here.
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