Amber Heard and Johnny Depp’s divorce was a very private matter played out in public, but one person who claims to have witnessed firsthand what went on behind closed doors was the former married couple’s friend close friend and long-term houseguest, iO Tillett Wright.
Author and TV host iO, who once phoned the police on Johnny after hearing a fight between the Hollywood couple, spoke with the Sunday Times Magazine about the high-profile pair, and contrary to claims that Heard profited from her short union, Tillett Wright says the 30-year-old actress actually lost money due to her marriage.
Tillett Wright said he moved in with Johnny and Amber after a tough breakup which left him feeling suicidal and lived with the pair for a few years. While he said he and Johnny were once “like brothers” he has only managed to maintain a friendship with Heard since the high profile split.
Tillet Wright, who earlier this year penned a blog post called “I called 911 because she never could…”, told Sunday Times Magazine he has felt morally compelled to speak out about the situation.
“I’m not ever going to be one of them – I’m not ever going to be an A-list celebrity,” said iO. “But I chose to get involved in that situation because it was imperative to say what I thought was right”.
During his interview gay rights activist defended Heard saying she only got about a sixth of what she could have been awarded, and added that the actress “paid all her own legal fees.”
Tillett Wright, who claims to have witnessed Depp abuse Heard, also talked about The Pirates of the Caribbean star forgivingly.
iO said: “People are very rarely bad people. People have things happen to them, and people have pain that they’re trying to get around.
“Everybody is trying to dance with their pain and sometimes it’s, who do you stab in the process? It’s what you do about having stabbed them that’s the delineation between people you can have in your life and people you can’t.”
iO also added that he was the target of relentless online abuse from Depp’s fans who, among other things, branded him a “f–king gender-fluid liar,” and a “cancerous feminist”.
Since the weekend’s interview was published Tillet Wright has taken to Twitter to say that the interview he gave was not supposed to be centred on his friends’ marriage and called the angle of the story “absolutely disgusting”.