On April 25, 2022, during the Johnny Depp defamation trial, Depp’s attorneys called on Depp’s butler, genteel Ben King. Until this point in the trial, Depp had been portrayed as a “drunken, cocaine-fueled menace who beat women.” King presented a different story. Depp’s butler, who managed the home where the couple stayed in Australia during the 2015 filming of the fifth instalment of the “Pirates” franchise, described how Depp’s then-wife Amber Heard threw a vodka bottle at him, smashing his finger against the edge of a bar in the house. King testifies that he found Depp’s severed fingertip in a tissue on the floor of the bar along with a broken bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. Amber Heard was defeated in her defamation suit, and the jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages.
