Kate Moss will testify for Johnny Depp at Amber Heard defamation trial, reports say

Kate Moss will testify for Johnny Depp at his defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, reports have said.

The defamation trial between Mr Depp and Ms Heard began on Monday 11 April in Fairfax, Virginia following Mr Depp’s lawsuit against his ex-wife in March 2019. Mr Depp is arguing that she defamed him in a December 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post titled “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”.

Ms Moss, 48, is set to take the stand via video link on Wednesday, the New York Post and People magazine reported.

Mr Depp’s legal team appeared to celebrate when Ms Heard mentioned Ms Moss earlier in the trial.

Legal observers said at the time that this could give Mr Depp’s legal team the opportunity to quash the suggestion that he pushed Ms Moss down a set of stairs during their relationship, which lasted between 1994 and 1997.

According to the New York Post, California entertainment lawyer Mitra Ahouraian said that “that’s one mistake that [Ms Heard] made, was bringing up Kate Moss, which potentially opened the door to [Mr Depp’s team] bringing [Ms Moss] on as an impeachment witness”, adding that Ms Moss could be “saying ‘This never happened’”.

“Amber mentioned an ex of Johnny’s that clearly she felt was not supportive of him, which couldn’t be further from the truth”, a Depp source told the paper.

“There’s nobody that’s ever really been able to take care of me. Johnny did for a bit,” Ms Moss told Vanity Fair in 2012. “I believed what he said. Like if I said, ‘What do I do?’, he’d tell me. And that’s what I missed when I left. I really lost that gauge of somebody I could trust.”

While on the stand earlier in the trial, Ms Heard discussed a time when she alleges Mr Depp “[swung] at” her sister while she had her back to a staircase, which she says reminded her of another incident during which she alleges Mr Depp allegedly pushed Ms Moss down a staircase.

Ms Heard said during Mr Depp’s 2020 trial against The Sun in the UK, per The Associated Press: “He was about to push her down the stairs and the moment before that happened, I remembered information I had heard that he pushed a former girlfriend — I believe it was Kate Moss — down the stairs.”

After Ms Heard mentioned Ms Moss in her testimony as part of the US case, Mr Depp’s attorney Ben Chew was seen giving an apparent fist pump, prompting speculation that the mention of Ms Moss could benefit Mr Depp’s legal team in some way.

Broderick Dunn, an attorney based in Virginia, told Fox5 that “since Heard brought up Depp’s alleged prior bad acts, she may have opened the door to her own”.

In her 2018 op-ed, Ms Heard wrote that “like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept quiet — I did not expect filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn’t see myself as a victim”.

“Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out,” she added at the time.

While Mr Depp isn’t named in the piece, his legal team argues that it contains a “clear implication that Mr Depp is a domestic abuser”, which they say is “categorically and demonstrably false”. Mr Depp is seeking damages of “not less than $50m”.

Ms Heard has filed a $100m counterclaim against Mr Depp for nuisance and immunity from his allegations.