Photo : Presley Ann ( Getty Images )

When you spend enough time trawling through the loose garbage pile of rotting fish heads, angry former associates, and just general, all-purpose dirt-baggery that is the carny-heavy legal circus eternally orbiting actor Johnny Depp, you’re eventually forced to develop a sort of hierarchy of alleged scumbag offenses. On the one side, you’ve got stuff like his feud with Australia about the perils of foreign dog importation—a little “Don’t you know who I am?!”, certainly , but basically benign. On the very far other side, meanwhile , are the allegations of domestic abuse levied against him by his now ex-wife Amber Heard—allegations that have recently become the center of a whole other lawsuit separate from their eventual, supposedly amicable settlement, with Depp suing Heard for defamation after she penned an op-ed about being a survivor of domestic violence, despite the fact that the piece in question never mentions him by name. Heard then responded by releasing further details of the alleged abuse.


But Amber Heard is, of course, just one of several people that Johnny Depp is currently— or was previously— suing or being sued by, including his former managers at The Management Group (sued and countersued, eventually settled), a location manage r on last year’s City Of Lies who said Depp assaulted him (still pending, as far as we can tell ), and former lawyer Jake Bloom, who Depp is currently suing for—depending on who you ask—either some alleged financial bad faith dealings, or for his urging of Depp to settle with Heard, instead of engaging in a messy legal battle that would inevitably drag his name even further through the mud.

Now, Bloom is responding to the suit by inevitably dragging Johnny Depp’s name even further through the mud, with THR reporting that the lawyer has just issued deposition notices to a whole bunch of Depp’s more powerful current and former friends, including his sister Whitney, Heard herself, and *sigh*, Elon Musk, because of course Elon Musk would inevitably be wrapped up in this clusterfuck. (He and Heard had a brief romantic relationship after she and Depp split up.) For our purposes tonight, though, the most interesting name on Bloom’s list of names is former Warner Bros. chairman Kevin Tsujihara ( who’s been having an extremely dicey year, legal-wise, himself, hence the whole “former chairman ” thing ) who, the lawyer alleges, Depp tried to pressure into blacklisting Heard from the studio’s films—and specifically, her starring role opposite Jason Momoa in Aquaman.


Heard has spoken in the past about being blacklisted in the wake of her allegations against Depp, asserting in her Washington Post piece that she witnessed parts being re-c ast to remove her from films , and doubts raised about her presence in the 2018 superhero blockbuster. (Which is kind of nuts if it was actually being considered , since she’d already appeared as Atlantean badass Mera in Justice League at that point. For what it’s worth, there’s currently no indication that Tsujihara even considered acceding to Depp’s supposed demands. ) Bloom, apparently, is aiming to prove that he wasn’t the only person giving Depp legal advice about the divorce at that time, despite the fact that he’s the only one being hit with a malpractice suit—but there’s definitely a subtext here that the lawyer is trying to shed some light on Depp’s character, for anyone who had somehow not already made up their minds about the general character of Johnny Depp.

Meanwhile, Depp’s current lawyer, Adam Waldman—the same guy who’s also suing Heard on his behalf, accusing her of propagating an “abuse hoax, ” which, great, very cool —is accusing Bloom of running stall tactics, calling irrelevant witnesses, trying to change the public perception of what this particular legal battle is about, and anyway, yeah : On the wider scale of General Johnny Depp Legal Fuckery, we’d rate this one about a 7.