As far as celebrity court battles go, the six-week legal row in 2022 between Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, actress Amber Heard, was a pop culture juggernaut reminiscent of the O.J.
Like the Simpson trial, when the former NFL star was acquitted of the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and her friend, Depp v. Heard offered fodder for cable news channels and tabloids alike.
But not only that — it may also be a warning ahead of the dozens of elections worldwide set for this year, said Alexi Mostrous, the investigative journalist behind the podcast Who Trolled Amber?, made with producer Xavier Greenwood and released by London-based Tortoise Media.
But social media was the driving force in turning public opinion against the Aquaman actress and possibly even the outcome of the trial itself, Mostrous suggested, noting that the jury hadn’t been sequestered.
Working with researchers to comb through about a million tweets sent in the lead-up to the U.S. trial, Mostrous said they found “inauthentic activity” from accounts operating in far-flung countries like Thailand and Spain.
According to a February article from Vanity Fair, the actor’s team is in talks with the Saudi government to secure “an annual seven-figure deal for him to attend events and shoot films in the country.”
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