Four months after Johnny Depp’s interview with Rolling Stone, GQ UK profiled the actor where he talked about his ex-wife Amber Heard, his financial troubles, and his alleged clashes with Disney.
In the profile, Depp also says he managed to sneak in a dirty reference into the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, and no one at Disney noticed until the film came out on DVD.
Depp has had a rough couple of years. He’s been in financial trouble and was accused of domestic abuse by Heard (Depp has denied all of the accusations). The accusations, in the #MeToo era, however, led to backlash over his starring role in an upcoming “Fantastic Beasts” movie.
See below for six revelations from the GQ profile.
1. Tim Burton Is Currently Staying With Him at His Complex
As the journalist enters Depp’s French compound, he notes that he passes the famous director and his family, who are on their way to go on a boat trip. Apparently, Burton has been staying with Depp for the past few weeks.
2. He Snuck The Term ‘Dirty Sanchez’ Into the First ‘Pirates’ Film
Depp said he managed to sneak the term “Dirty Sanchez” into the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, and the reporter wrote that “it’s unfathomably gross and a term for an obscene sex act that couldn’t be less suitable for inclusion in a $300m Disney film about a pirate, itself based on a family-friendly theme park ride in Florida.”
“Yeah, I [said] it in ‘Pirates’ and they never caught it when it went out to the theatres,” Depp said. “They caught it when it went to DVD. I did it because I wanted to see who would be the one at Disney to find it…”
A spokesperson for Disney has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
3. In General, Depp Says He Had a Bad Relationship With Disney
“Disney hated me,” he said. “[They were] thinking of every way they could to get rid of me, to fire me. ‘Oh, we’re going to have to subtitle him.’ ‘We don’t understand Captain Jack Sparrow. What’s wrong with him?’ ‘What’s wrong with his arms?’ ‘Is he drunk?’ ‘Is he mentally f—ing stupefied?’ ‘Is he gay?’”
He added, “They asked me, ‘Is he gay?’ and I answered the question over the phone. It was a lady called Nina Jacobson from Disney at the time and she asked me a couple of questions and then said, ‘What is it, Johnny? Is he gay?’ My tendency, of course, is to be irreverent so I said, ‘Nina, didn’t you know all my characters are gay?’ That was a pretty abrupt end to the conversation. And I just continued shaping Jack the way I believed was best.”
A spokesperson for Jacobson has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.
4. He Thinks Hollywood Is “This Vile F—ing Circus”
Depp said he believes there’s a bigger conspiracy about the troubles surrounding his finances and his marriage, and called the industry “this vile f—ing circus.”
After talking about The Management Group and his legal battle with his former business managers Joel and Robert Mandel, he said, “But did it stop all the power mongers in Hollywood who were interested in shutting me up? Big money was being thrown about. People suing me at every opportunity. I mean, it’s all so obvious. Listen, I know I was never going to be Cinderella – I know this and accept it. But it felt like within a very, very short period of time that suddenly this version – for lack of a better word – of Cinderella had been immediately turned into the beast. He’s Quasimodo.”
He added, “I could feel people look at me differently, because of the accusations towards you. And then people start putting things in magazines: ‘He’s insane. He needs to take a sanity test…’ You know, ludicrous stuff. But the only thing that I could do was know what I still know. Ultimately, the truth will come out in all of this and I will be standing on the right side of the roaring rapids.”
5. He Denies Assaulting Amber Heard
In the profile, he talked about the tape TMZ released that showed Depp filling a glass with red wine and grabbing the phone of his now ex-wife, Amber Heard.
“The tape that came out, or the tape that someone made, that miraculously appeared on YouTube, taken from someone’s phone,” he said. “That was not Downtown [LA, where he lived with Amber Heard]. She [Heard] wanted to make like it was recent. It was an older video and [what happened in it] had to do with finding out that I had lost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Heard has accused Depp of domestic abuse, but the two have since settled out of court.
“To harm someone you love? As a kind of bully? No, it didn’t, it couldn’t even sound like me,” he said. “So, initially, I just kept my mouth shut, you know? I knew it was going to stick on me and it would get weirder. Keep going, you know? Go nuts. I ain’t going to get into a pissing contest with someone about it. Spit out what you need to spit out and, you know, my attorneys will take care of the rest. I never went out and spoke about the s—.”
He added that the way his kids heard of the accusations was probably the most troubling part.
“To take away future earnings that are for my kids, you know?” he said. “I do this s— for my kids, man. How could someone, anyone, come out with something like that against someone, when there’s no truth to it whatsoever? I’m sure it wasn’t easy for my 14-year-old boy to go to school, you know what I mean? With people going, ‘Hey, look at this magazine, man. What, your dad beats up chicks or something?’ Why did he have to go through that? Why did my daughter have to go through that?”
He added, “She was at a party the next day. Her eye wasn’t closed. She had her hair over her eye, but you could see the eye wasn’t shut. Twenty-five feet away from her, how the f— am I going to hit her? Which, by the way, is the last thing I would’ve done. I might look stupid, but I ain’t f—ing stupid.”
6. He Had a Dark Childhood
Depp said he took up writing and has written 300 pages, with about 300 more pages to go.
“My childhood was dark,” he said. “My mum wouldn’t edit. There was no editing. She would say what she meant, what she felt, in that instant. No matter how wrong it might have been even, or how hideously evil it was in the moment, she didn’t edit. It came out: bleurgh! She was out of her mind, obviously, and she didn’t know what the f— she was doing. She got four kids and she hated the world. Was there f— loads of verbal abuse? Yeah, man. Was there f— loads of physical abuse? Yes. And never-ending, to the point that pain, physical pain, was just a given. But the last four, five years that I was involved, let’s say… Well, that was quite a dark time too.”
Read the entire profile here.