Amber Heard was grilled about donating her $7 million divorce settlement during her post-trial interview with Today co-host Savannah Guthrie last week—with the actress declaring that she “shouldn’t have had to have donated” at all.
During the week’s long defamation trial between Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp, it emerged that Heard had not yet donated the full settlement to charity, as she had previously pledged.
Guthrie questioned Heard about being “caught in a lie” and questioned whether this raised doubts about her “credibility” to the jury.
“Do you think to the jurors sitting there that was you getting caught in a lie?” Guthrie asked.
During the trial, Depp’s attorney, Camille Vasquez, said during cross-examination: “So as of today, you have not donated—paid—$7 million of your divorce settlement to charity, right?”
Heard conceded: “I have not been able to fulfill those obligations yet.”
The former couple reached a $7 million divorce settlement in August 2016. Heard announced that she would split the entire payout equally between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
She also said during her testimony that she uses the terms “pledge” and “donate” interchangeably.
The ACLU also testified that it had so far received less than half of the $3.5 million payment promised by Heard.
The jury was also shown Heard’s appearance on a Danish TV show in October 2018, where she confirmed that “$7 million was donated in total.”
“You had promised to donate $7 million of your divorce settlement to charity,” Guthrie questioned Heard during the Dateline special.
“It was revealed at trial that you haven’t done so yet, however, they played a tape where you state on air that you have donated it,” Guthrie said before later adding: “You say donated you know that everybody thinks you’d donated—not that you’ve pledged it.”
Heard pushed back to say that “so much of the trial” was used to try to “cast aspersions” on her credibility.
“I don’t know because so much, I feel like so much of the trial was meant to cast aspersions on who I am as a person, on my credibility, to call me a liar in every way you can,” she said.
Guthrie responded: “That was the trial, it was a credibility contest—that was it.”
Heard replied: “This is another one of those examples if you pull back and you think about it, I shouldn’t have had to have donated it in an attempt to be believed.
“I shouldn’t have had to earmark the entirety of it in order to—”
The host interjected to say: “You shouldn’t have but once you said you did.”
Heard responded: “Right and that was where it was intended to go.”The NBC interview comes after Heard’s high-profile court battle with Depp, who sued her for $50 million over a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post, in which she said she was a domestic abuse survivor—a claim the jury found to be false and defamatory.
Following a six-week trial, the jury on June 1 awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
Heard, who had countersued for $100 million, was awarded $2 million after it was found that Depp’s former attorney, Adam Waldman, had made defamatory comments about her.
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