Schitts Creek alum Emily Hampshire apologizes after she and a friend dressed up as Johnny Depp And Amber heard for Halloween.
“I want to address one of the most thoughtless, insensitive and ignorant things I have ever done,” Hampshire, 42, wrote in a statement shared via Instagram on Wednesday, November 1. “For Halloween, I stupidly thought it would be funny to dress up as Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.”
She continued, “I am deeply sorry and ashamed for putting something so horrible out into the universe. Domestic violence is never funny. These are real issues with real people and I REALLY regret my actions. In the future I will do better. I’m very sorry.”
Hampshire removed photos of themselves dressed as Depp, 60, complete with drawn tattoos and accessories referencing the actor’s 2022 defamation case against his ex-wife Heard, 37. The Hampshire friend feigned tears in the snaps and donned a white top reminiscent of the one Heard wore as she cried on the stands in May 2022.
A plastic turd could be seen in Hampshire’s jacket pocket, a nod to Depp’s claim that he discovered “human feces” on his bed in 2016 after a fight with Heard. The Canadian actress also posed with a bottle of wine, which some social media users interpreted as a reference to Heard’s claim that Depp sexually assaulted her with a bottle of liquor in 2015.
“Wow. This is obviously in bad taste, but the wine bottle prop? Gross,” one Reddit user wrote.
Others believed that the time for the controversial costume had come and gone when a jury found in Depp’s favor in June 2022, awarding him $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
“It really is a special kind of depravity to keep the costumes going a year and a half later. @emilyhampshire clearly felt the need to take on this task,” wrote an X user (formerly Twitter).
Another person shared a similar sentiment via Reddit. “Well, this is insanely disappointing. Even though it’s not offensive, this costume comes so late to the party,” they wrote.
Depp first sued Heard, whom he was married to from 2015 to 2017, in February 2019 over her December 2018 op-ed The Washington Post. Heard described himself in the piece as a survivor of domestic violence, but did not mention Depp by name.
After the jury ruled in Depp’s favor, the actor shared a lengthy statement noting that he was “truly humbled” to have his “life back.” He concluded his message with: “The truth never fades.”
Depp’s legal victory came three years after a judge ruled against him during his 2020 defamation trial The sun. (Depp sued the British publication over an April 2018 story that cited allegations Heard had previously made, detailing 14 different incidents of abuse.) The judge ruled in October 2020 that The sunDepp’s allegations against Depp were “substantially true.”
Depp and Heard officially settled their defamation case in December 2022 Aquarius actress called it “a very difficult decision” in an Instagram statement at the time.
“It’s important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so, my life as I knew it was destroyed,” Heard wrote, calling it “the vilification.” [she] confronted on social media” an “amplified version of the ways in which women are revictimized when they come forward.”