Johnny Depp would like you to know that he’s not staging a comeback — mostly because, as he told The Sunday Times on Saturday, “I didn’t go anywhere.” He’s been busy directing films, painting skeletons, sipping red wine under a Hunter S. Thompson poster in Soho, and, more recently, positioning himself as a victim of cancel culture and, somehow, the #MeToo movement.

“I was like a crash test dummy for MeToo,” he told the paper. “It was before Harvey Weinstein.” The quote came buried under layers of aesthetic melancholy and disdain for modern Hollywood, but it didn’t take long for the internet to call out what many saw as the core problem with Depp’s narrative: it simply doesn’t hold up.

Let’s break this down. Depp’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, accused him of abuse in 2016 — a year before The New York Times published its Pulitzer-winning exposé on Weinstein, the catalyst most historians of the movement consider its public launch. But even setting aside that timeline, Depp’s assertion doesn’t square with his own story. In court, he claimed that Heard weaponized her accusations to gain #MeToo relevance. If she was, as he argued during the 2022 Virginia trial, “seeking fame,” how could Depp simultaneously have been the movement’s unknowing test subject?

This is what people online have latched onto in the wake of his new interview. As one X user wrote, “Weird how during the trial, he claimed that Amber wanted MeToo fame… and now it’s that he was a pre-test crash dummy. Cannot keep his narrative straight even now, just says whatever he needs to so he can victimize himself.”

The victim claim also rings false to many who observed Depp’s life during and after the trials. Yes, he lost his Fantastic Beasts role in 2020. But even in the thick of it, Depp was still starring in movies (Minamata, Jeanne du Barry), fronting Dior campaigns, playing guitar with his band Hollywood Vampires, and being awarded lifetime achievement prizes in Spain. In 2025 alone, he’s directed a new film, Modi, acted alongside Penélope Cruz in Day Drinker, and booked five different projects — all filmed in Spain, which also happens to be where Heard now lives. Some fans have even raised concerns about the frequency of Depp’s appearances in her adopted country, calling it, quote, “extremely creepy.”

Meanwhile, Heard — who moved to Madrid in 2023 to focus on raising her daughter — has largely stayed out of the public eye. She was awarded $2 million in her countersuit against Depp’s attorney, but endured widespread harassment online and in person, with Depp’s fans reportedly camping outside courtrooms and screaming threats.

This context has not been forgotten. Reddit commenters have responded to Depp’s latest claims with blunt disbelief: “Can this man just go away please,” one wrote. “You won one of your lawsuits in the most heinous and retrograde way possible. Why do you still have to paint yourself as some wronged victim??”

And yet, that’s the through-line of Depp’s narrative — a story shaped less by consistency than by a persistent desire to cast himself as misunderstood, unfairly judged, and deeply wronged. Even as his Dior ads air, his artwork sells for millions, and Hollywood producers line up to toast him, he insists on seeing his career as a cautionary tale.

Which, to be fair, it might be. Just not in the way he thinks.

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have opened up about surviving sexual assault.