As the drama of the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial continues, the name of Elon Musk came up Monday in court.
The Hollywood star is suing his ex-wife over a 2018 Washington Post Op-Ed in which the actress described herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
Depp claims that although he was not named in Heard’s Op-Ed, she falsely implied that he was a domestic abuser, which deeply damaged his career.
He is suing her for $50 million.
So how does Musk come into this?
Before Heard began testifying this month at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, outlets such as the New York Post’s Page Six and the United Arab Emirates’ National were running headlines reminding readers that Heard and Musk were briefly in a relationship after her divorce from Depp.
The billionaire’s name has come up a few times in the trial, Newsweek reported. He was also named on Heard’s witness list, according to the U.K.’s Independent.
But on Monday, Heard herself brought up Musk during her testimony.
She said that in 2016, Depp stood her up at the Met Gala in New York City even though they were still married at the time.
The actress said his absence led her to have a conversation with Musk at the event.
“So I ended up going by myself. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if he’d show up on the carpet or if he’d show up at the hotel before. I had no way of knowing,” Heard said.
“I got out of the car and walked the red carpet by myself, escorted by someone on Ralph Lauren’s team, and I sat next to an empty place setting for Johnny that they cleared as soon as we realized he wasn’t,” she said. “He effectively stood me up on the red carpet.”
Heard said she ended up near Musk.
“I was standing in line right in front of a gentleman. It was Elon [Musk]. I didn’t recognize him until we started talking,” the actress said. “And he reminded me that we had met once before.
“He was with his mother. He seemed like a real gentleman, he was really nice. He sat next to me, he sat kind of in a nearby table, and we got to speaking that night and then eventually became friends.”
Later, a month after her divorce from Depp in 2017, Heard and Musk began dating. But they broke up in 2018, the Independent reported.
The former spouses’ agent, Christian Carino, also previously testified at the trial that Heard was dating Musk around the same time that she was also trying to reconcile with her husband.
In earlier statements in the trial, Heard’s lawyers claimed that Depp had been “obsessed” with Musk.
