



Johnny Depp — “alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent” in a major new Rolling Stone profile focusing on the actor’s legal and financial woes — has, according to the article, made $650 million on films that netted $3.6 billion. “Almost all of it,” says the magazine, “is gone.”

The piece, titled “The Trouble With Johnny Depp” and written by Stephen Rodrick, details Depp’s lawsuits against The Management Group, run by Depp’s longtime business manager Joel Mandel and his brother Robert, for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. “The suit cites, among other things, that under TMG’s watch Depp’s sister Christi was given $7 million and his assistant, Nathan Holmes, $750,000, without his knowledge, and that he has paid the IRS more than $5.6 million in late fees.” The suit seeks more than $25 million from TMG, accounting for tens of millions it claims TMG illegally took for its commission, plus any additional damages the court sees fit.

Among the article’s highlights:

-The Mandels deny all wrongdoing and are countersuing, alleging, among other things, that Depp has a $2-million-a-month compulsory-spending disorder, offering bons mots like, “Wine is not an investment if you drink it as soon as you buy it.” Depp concocted “malicious and false allegations” against the company, according to TMG’s countersuit, because TMG had filed a private foreclosure notice on one of Depp’s properties;

-Depp’s closest confidant these days is Adam Waldman, a 49-year-old lawyer the actor met less than two years ago. “Waldman seems to have convinced Depp that they are freedom fighters taking on the Hollywood machine rather than scavengers squabbling over the scraps of a fortune squandered.”

-A constant in Depp’s business, the magazine writes, was older sister Christi, who managed his day-to-day affairs and who did not participate in the Rolling Stone article. In 1999, she and Depp sought a bigger management company, and Depp now says he chose Robert and Joel Mandel, brothers who ran TMG, because the actor saw in Joel a kindred spirit. “He was a nervous wreck,” says Depp. “He was pouring sweat. He was broken.” (TMG disputes the portrayal).

-On Harvey Weinstein: “He flips through the news and comes across a report on Harvey Weinstein. He shakes his head and calls him an asshole for burying his film Dead Man because director Jim Jarmusch refused to give up his contractually mandated final cut. ‘He was a bully,’ says Depp. ‘Have you seen his wife? It’s not a wide range. It’s not like he went, ‘I must go to the Poconos to find some hairy-backed bitch.'” Later, Depp says of Weinstein, “The image that took my breath away was Harvey Weinstein, a goliath Shrek thing, bending down to put on his daughter’s raincoat.”

-On Donald Trump: At last year’s Glastonbury Festival, Depp, “perhaps drunkenly,” asked, “Can we bring Trump here? . . . When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” Depp now says he “was trying to connect it to Trump saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, but it didn’t come out right.”

-Waldman contacted Rolling Stone to get the ball rolling on the profile. “He pointed to what he perceived to be an anti-Depp story in The Hollywood Reporter, where the Mandels were cast as eminently reasonable men who repeatedly tried to warn Depp about his precarious financial positioning. Nobody from TMG was quoted, but Waldman was convinced its fingerprints were all over the story.”

–Rolling Stone cites a Business Insider story claiming that Waldman has been paid more than $2.3 million for his work on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and Russian oligarch with strong ties to the Russian president. “Meanwhile, Deripaska became a bit player in the Russian-collusion scandal when it was reported by The Washington Post that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort offered to give Deripaska private briefings on the campaign shortly before the GOP convention.”