Johnny Depp took three days in 2018 for an interview. The result: a bizarre conversation about money, drugs, and Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes, which Depp shot into the sky from a cannon. Yes, really.
This article was first published in June 2018 and is now updated.
“Are you here to hear the truth? It’s full of deceit” – this is how the portrait of Johnny Depp in the music magazine “Rolling Stone” begins. He spoke to journalist Stephen Rodrick for 72 hours. Wine and joints is about Depp’s life. And the actor and musician apparently really decided to unpack back then.
Johnny Depp gives bizarre interview
It’s about his finances, his family, alcohol and drugs, and his failed marriage to actress Amber Heard.
He wants to make things right. Depp is said to have earned around $650 million from his films over the past few decades. He apparently squandered most of it, according to allegations by his ex-business manager Joel Mandel. Mandel and “The Management Group” have responded to a lawsuit by Depp – he accuses the company of fraud – with a counterclaim. (A year after the “Rolling Stone” portrait, Depp settled out of court with “The Management Group”. In the current trial against Amber Heard, Joel Mandel again played a role.)
Depp’s finances
“Wine is not an investment if you drink it immediately after buying it” – just one of the wittily worded accusations of his former financial advisers. He spent $75 million on 14 homes and a whopping $3 million to shoot the ashes of his late idol Hunter S. Thompson into the sky from a cannon.
Depp also spent $7,000 to buy his daughter a sofa from the set of reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Private flights alone would have cost $200,000 a month. The 58-year-old actor vehemently contradicts two of the rather absurd allegations in an interview. “It’s insulting to say I spent $30,000 a month on wine because it was way more,” says Depp. “And by the way, it didn’t cost three million to shoot Hunter up the damn sky. It was five million.”
Depp had a close friendship and a love of drugs with the author. In 1998, Depp starred in the 1998 novel adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Mandel accuses Depp of “shopping addiction”. That could be proven if Depp were examined, the manager said.
The relationship with his mother
With his first money, Depp bought his mother Betty Sue a house, he says in the interview. She was probably “the meanest person in the world,” as he revealed in his eulogy at her funeral.
And although she regularly hit him during his childhood, it becomes clear that the relationship with her, while special, was close. After Betty Sue passed away in 2016, the rest of his family still didn’t move out of the home Depp bought for his mother. “They think that I will take care of them forever and that the house is theirs now. But I never promised that,” he explains.
Marriage to Amber Heard
“I was as down as I could have been,” Depp admitted in an interview with “Rolling Stone” about his split from Amber Heard. His music would have distracted him. “I poured myself a vodka in the morning and started writing until the tears filled my eyes and I couldn’t see the piece of paper anymore,” he admits. “I was trying to figure out what I did to deserve all this,” he says.
Apparently he doesn’t see himself as guilty. The lawsuit against his former management is based on ignorant tactics. They would have sorted out his finances, lost money and left him in the dark about it.
Quelle: “The Rolling Stone”
