Johnny Depp didn’t feel fantastic about having to give up a major role.
More than four years after his abrupt exit from the Fantastic Beasts franchise, the actor revealed what was really going through his mind when Warner Bros. asked him to step aside from the series’ third installment.
“F–k you,” he recalled thinking in an interview with The Telegraph published July 5. “There’s far too many of me to kill. If you think you can hurt me more than I’ve already been hurt, you’re gravely mistaken.”
The studio made the decision days after the 62-year-old lost his libel case against The Sun in November 2020, a case that centered upon an article labeling him as a “wife beater” in reference to his marriage to ex Amber Heard. While Depp denied the claim, a judge ultimately ruled that the tabloid’s portrayal of the actor was “substantially true.”
While Depp triumphed in a separate defamation lawsuit against Heard in 2022, his loss in the U.K.’s High Court brought his involvement in the Harry Potter spinoff franchise to a screeching halt.
