Johnny Depp’s lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard following her op-ed in The Washington Post led to a media blitz and televised defamation trial. The plaintiff’s daughter Lily-Rose Depp kept quiet throughout — and plans to keep it that way.
“When it’s something that’s so private and so personal that all of a sudden becomes not so personal…I feel really entitled to my secret garden of thoughts,” the 23-year-old actor told Elle in an interview published Wednesday.
“I also think that I’m not here to answer for anybody, and I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life,” Lily-Rose continued, “whether that’s my family members or my boyfriends, whatever.”
Lily-Rose was well aware of the social media storm surrounding her father’s trial in Virginia earlier this year. Heard had publicly alleged since 2016 that Depp physically abused her during their relationship, which began in 2011. Depp claimed at trial he was the one being abused.
Depp filed his suit following Heard’s 2018 opinion piece and said he had lost lucrative roles as a result of her allegations. He argued these were clearly directed at him despite Heard not naming him in the article. The trial saw jurors award him with $15 million in total damages.
Lily-Rose, who’s fielded accusations of being her father’s “nepo baby” after she started acting, said “the internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things,” and added her unconventional childhood was “the only thing that I know.”
“We spend a lot of time on the internet, and you start to feel like it’s this parallel universe where people in the public eye are just an animal in a zoo or a statue, and you can say whatever the fuck you want to them, even though you wouldn’t say it in person,” Lily-Rose told the magazine.
Heard announced her intentions of appealing the Virginia verdict in June. Depp has since returned to the spotlight with an appearance at MTV’s Video Music Awards and in Rihanna’s “Savage x Fenty” fashion showcase.
Lily-Rose, meanwhile, is simply trying to carve out a path of her own, and is “really ready to be defined for the things that I put out there,” she said.
Cast in HBO upcoming series “The Idol,” Lily-Rose will star as a fledgling pop star opposite The Weeknd.
“I’ve just been raised in a manner that has taught me that privacy is something that’s important to protect,” Lily-Rose said. “I am here to do my job, and what I really want to put out into the world is my work.”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.