Camille Vasquez, the attorney who successfully defended Johnny Depp during the actor’s internationally publicized defamation trial last year, has said she hopes she inspires fellow Latina professionals trying to establish themselves in their fields.
“I was able to accomplish something on a national stage when people might have not thought of me as the first choice for the job,” Vasquez told Hispanic Executive magazine in a recently published interview. “I was given the opportunity because I was the best person for the job. I was the hardest working, and I was the most prepared. I hope what translates here is that if you work hard and find some opportunities, you can rise to the occasion.”
Vasquez’s remarks came a little more than a year after she helped Depp win $5m in punitive damages and $10m in compensatory damages from his ex-wife and fellow actor Amber Heard. The case centered on a 2018 Washington Post opinion piece in which Heard suggested Depp had abused her, prompting him to sue her for defamation.
In the interview with Hispanic Executive, Vasquez addressed her frequently impassioned exchanges with Heard during the trial last year, saying they stemmed from her “being an advocate and being a friend” of Depp.
“I had the opportunity to confront someone that had committed so many wrongs toward my client, and I was able to be his voice in that moment,” Vasquez said, despite Heard’s insistence that the verdict unduly wronged her. “It was a chance to demonstrate all the inconsistencies in [Heard’s] testimony and reveal who the real bad actor was. It was something I will never forget, and I thank Johnny for trusting me to do it.”
The daughter of Cuban and Colombian parents, Vasquez – a partner at the Brown Rudnick law firm – said she believed her lack of familiarity with Depp’s work helped her connect with the star of the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise as she took over the case pitting him against Heard.
“I still haven’t seen, probably, most of his films,” Vasquez said of her client. “Not that I’m not a fan, but I just wasn’t a super-fan.”
The Fairfax, Virginia, jury which sat over the Depp-Heard trial essentially found that the actors and former spouses had defamed each other. But their verdict substantially favored Depp, who was married to Heard from 2015 to 2017.
Depp was ordered to pay Heard only $2m after she filed a countersuit accusing him of defaming her by calling her abuse claims a “hoax”. Heard initially appealed the verdict but in December agreed to drop that effort as part of a legal settlement.
The Aquaman star said the settlement was “not an act of concession” but rather an “opportunity to emancipate” herself from a years-long dispute on terms to which she could agree.
During the trial prior to the verdict, Vasquez registered numerous successful objections that blocked Heard’s lead attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, from establishing facts that were favorable for her client. She also successfully attacked Heard’s credibility, presenting a series of photos taken after the actor’s abuse allegations which showed her physically unscathed.
Vasquez’s performance during the televised trial drew tens of millions of views on social media, and her name became a commonly used hashtag.
She said it helped her to keep the case in perspective despite the worldwide attention it received.
“This sounds cliche, but you do have to understand that these are still real people with problems,” she said to Hispanic Executive. “Some of them might seem bigger or more expensive, but they are still problems that affect a person, the human being, the same way that they affect you.”
English (US)