The defamation lawsuit between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has gripped the world since the outset of April. In the beginning, it all started with Heard castigating her ex-husband for abuse, which he quickly denied. After making those claims, he filed his own lawsuit against Heard, claiming damages for defamation and an attempt to correct the record for his alleged slander.
For the past few weeks, Johnny Depp has been cross-examined; recently; Amber Heard has taken the stand. The public has understood more about her role in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom thanks to the numerous questions she’s fielded on the stand.
Mera’s role in the upcoming DCEU sequel is said to have been cut down due to her character’s possible hospitalization and the controversy surrounding it. However, Warner Bros. ‘s President of DC Films, Walter Hamada, debunked those assertions in court. According to him, discussions about recasting or reducing her role were brought on by concerns about her co-star, Jason Momoa. In addition to Johnny Depp’s testimony, Amber Heard’s ex-husband, Tom Hanks, also testified.
There has been testimony on the hold about how much work Heard may have failed to spot out on because of all the legal wrangling—comparing the requirement for her performance to Spidey’s Zendaya herself.
Zendaya and the Amber Heard Scandal: What’s the Deal?
The Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard defamation lawsuit is still raging. The two parties involved in the dispute have been battling it out in court for weeks now.
Currently, the two stars are still locked in a legal showdown in the courtroom. It has recently become more common to discuss Heard’s public image and future career in contrast to other actors in superhero blockbuster movies when discussing Spidey’s star Zendaya.
Amber Heard’s legal team estimated a $50 million loss in damages as a result of Johnny Depp’s accusations against the actress.
Kathryn Arnold, an entertainment industry consultant, compared Heard’s celebrity status and demand to that of Spidey’s Zendaya, the star of Spider-Man: No Way Home, in summarizing the reason for those losses.
In an attempt to disprove those claims, Depp’s lawyer argued that comparing the two actors is an unfair comparison.
On the stand, Arnold was told by the lawyer that the comparison was illogical:
“You indicated that another person that you compared Ms. Heard with is Zendaya, a person so famous she goes by one name. She’s been on the Disney channel since 13 years old, she’s won an Emmy, she was singing and dancing and swinging from trapezes in The Greatest Showman. She’s now been in multiple Spider-Man movies, she’s 10 years younger than your clients, but this is a person you deem comparable.”
On the other hand, Arnold pointed out that “[she] said that they were comparable [and].” claiming that Zendaya was simply being used as a “reference point:”
“Well, as I was explaining to you how I chose them, when you look at superhero characters, there’s not that many to pull from, so I just tried to work on pulling characters that were in superhero movies that were about the same age range within 10 years, as you noted to me thank you, and also just where her career would have gone. I said that they were comparable, that they are not identical, so you can just look at what their career has done, either before that superhero movie, then in others, or in the one that they were in, and then you look at where her career should have gone even though she may not have been at the stature of a Zendaya at that time. You can still look at it as a comparable trajectory at what happens when you’re in a blockbuster movie. It’s just a reference point; it’s not meant to be identical, they are not meant to be the same people, they do not even have the exact same career. It’s meant to be a reference point, simple as that.”
Table of Q-Scores The Amber Heard Case
A Q score chart was used by Depp’s legal team to make their point. How popular celebrities are, and how disliked they are, are depicted in the graph.
“Q scores are a measure of how well a celebrity, it could be a cartoon character, a sports person, how well they are known, how well they are liked, and how much they are disliked. It’s an industry-standard tool that’s used. It’s not just focused on the movies that they are in, but it’s focused on them as actors, but also what’s happening in their personal lives come into play as well.”
It’s clear from the graph, which showed “Winter 2019 Q scores [Aquaman but before the lawsuits],” how far behind actors like Zendaya, Gal Gadot, and others in popularity Heard is.
While Heard is three times less positive than her Aquaman co-star Jason Momoa, she is nearly three times more negative compared to her co-star.
In addition, Depp’s legal team provided a Social Media Overview, which shows the number of followers the accusation comparable actors have on various social media platforms. It is the intention of Depp’s legal team to demonstrate that Heard’s popularity on social media pales in comparison to that of stars like Spidey’s Zendaya and Gal Gadot.
Obviously, Zendaya isn’t related to anyone or anything associated with Johnny Depp or Amber Heard in any way, shape, or form. Who knows if they’re even friends at this point?
Even though she was widely popular, she became an essential criterion on both sides of the case because she was so popular. The Q charts for 2019 show, however, that Amber Heard does not appear to be on the same level of general fame as Zendaya.
To be honest, this isn’t that shocking. After all, even without all of the controversy, the Aquaman franchise is nowhere near Spider-Man’s popularity level. Anyone with ties to the MCU seems to benefit from an automatic boost in power. In addition to her status as an icon attained through endorsement deals with fashion, makeup, and perfume labels, Zendaya has seen enormous popularity thanks to her roles in works like Dune and Euphoria.
We can only hope that this comparison of Zendaya’s fame will be the last time her name comes up in connection with the confusing case.