‘It’s horrendous’: Helena Bonham Carter defends JK Rowling and Johnny Depp - The Guardian

Helena Bonham Carter has travel to the defence of her longtime co-star Johnny Depp and of Harry Potter creator JK Rowling successful a caller interview.

Speaking to the Sunday Times, Bonham Carter said she felt Depp had been “completely vindicated” aft his victory successful a defamation case against ex-wife Amber Heard this summer.

“I deliberation he’s good now,” said Bonham Carter. “Totally fine.”

Depp and Bonham Carter person worked unneurotic successful films specified arsenic Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice successful Wonderland and Dark Shadows. Depp is besides godfather to Bonham Carter’s 2 children with erstwhile spouse Tim Burton.

Asked whether she felt the determination of the Virginia assemblage to grant Depp $15m successful the suit was a motion of the #MeToo pendulum swinging back, Bonham Carter said: “My presumption is that [Heard] got connected that pendulum. That’s the occupation with these things – that radical volition leap connected the bandwagon due to the fact that it’s the inclination and to beryllium the poster miss for it.”

During the trial, Depp denied striking Heard and accused her of lying astir his intoxicant and cause use. In 2020, Depp mislaid a libel lawsuit successful the UK against the Sun newspaper, which had described him arsenic a “wife beater”.

A precocious tribunal justice ruled that the paper’s allegations were “substantially true”.

Bonham Carter besides expressed scepticism astir whether someone’s idiosyncratic life, if ineligible and consenting, should impact their nonrecreational prospects.

“Do you prohibition a genius for their intersexual practices? There would beryllium millions of radical who if you looked intimately capable astatine their idiosyncratic beingness you would disqualify them. You can’t prohibition people. I hatred cancel culture. It has go rather hysterical and there’s a benignant of witch-hunt and a deficiency of understanding.”

She besides came to the defence of JK Rowling, writer of the Harry Potter books, successful whose movie adaptations she played Bellatrix Lestrange. Rowling has been accused of transphobia aft statements astir sex authorities and the extortion of children and susceptible women.

“It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks,” said Bonham Carter. “I deliberation she has been hounded.”

She continued: “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmentalism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, peculiarly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their ain past of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you person to respect wherever radical travel from and their pain. You don’t each person to hold connected everything – that would beryllium insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s conscionable saying thing retired of her ain experience.”

Asked astir the contented of the film’s 3 cardinal younger stars – Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – speaking retired astir Rowling’s remarks, Bonham Carter said: “Personally I consciousness they should fto her person her opinions, but I deliberation they’re precise alert of protecting their ain fanbase and their generation.”