Johnny Depp says texts to Paul Bettany about Amber Heard were 'Monty Python' joke

dailystar.co.uk:

Johnny Depp has told a court that he is "ashamed" of texts which he sent to actor Paul Bettany in which he spoke of burning and drowning his ex-wife Amber Heard.However, the 58-year-old actor claimed the messages were a joke based on a Monty Python sketch and an attempt at "irreverent and abstract humour".Depp was speaking in Virginia as the $50million (£39.6m) libel trial, in which he's suing Heard for defamation, moved into its third week.The case is over an article the Aquaman actress wrote for The Washington Post in 2018, which Depp claims falsely implies he physically and sexually abused her during their marriage.Depp told the court he had a close friendship with Bettany and, in 2013, had written in a text to him: "Let’s burn Amber."Let’s drown her before we burn her.

I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead."Depp added that he had connected with Bettany over their "abstract sense of humour" in dealing with difficult situations, and claimed that the comments were never "intended to be real.""As these are private texts there was a lot … in context," he said. "It's important to know none of that was ever intended to be real. "For example, the text that is about burning Ms Heard is directly from the Monty Python film The Holy Grail and the scene about burning witches and then drowning the witches."This is a film we'd all watch when we were 10 – it's just irreverent and abstract humour."The court heard that the relationship between Bettany and Heard was "abominable" and that she viewed him as a "threat" due to the timing and closeness of his and Depp's friendship.Depp claimed: "Ms Heard despised Mr Bettany mainly because we had become such close friends and for her he was a threat and would take.