Johnny Depp Speaks out Against Cancel Culture

Johnny Depp says “no one is safe” from cancel culture. Speaking at a press conference at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, Depp spoke out against the movement. “It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgment based on what essentially amounts to polluted air,” he told reporters, per Deadline.

“It’s so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe,” Depp, 58, said. “Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe.” He continued, “It takes one sentence and there’s no more ground, the carpet has been pulled. It’s not just me that this has happened to, it’s happened to a lot of people. This type of thing has happened to women, men. Children have suffered from various types of unpleasantries. Sadly at a certain point they begin to think that it’s normal. Or that it’s them. When it’s not.”

Depp’s appearance comes before he’s set to receive the Donostia Award at the film festival. The honor was met with controversy, with Cristina Andreu, the president of Spain’s Association of Female Filmmaker and Audiovisual Media telling the Associated Press that the honor “speaks very badly of the festival and its leadership.” Andreu said, “[It] transmits a terrible message to the public.” Depp was honored last month by another European film festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic.

Depp’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, previously accused the amid their 2016 divorce, which he denied. In November 2020, Depp lost his libel case against , the outlet that called him a “wife-beater.” The court upheld the outlet’s claims as being “substantially true.” After the loss, Depp agrees to exit the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts.

In August, a Virginia judge ruled that Depp was allowed to pursue his defamation suit against Heard over a 2018 Washington Post in which she wrote about surviving domestic violence. The judge denied Heard’s supplemental plea to dismiss Depp’s defamation case against Heard after he lost the libel case in the U.K., stating that there are noticeable differences between the evidence in each case.