Johnny Depp is undeniably a controversial figure in contemporary Hollywood, but that doesn’t mean you should believe everything you read about him. Certain tabloid tales about the Pirates of the Caribbean actor, like one prediction last November that he’d be dead by Christmas, are just so absurd that it’s hard to believe anyone can take them seriously. Today, let’s take a look back at some of the weirdest rumors that Gossip Cop has debunked about Depp.
Our first rumor goes back to 2018 when the gossip blog RadarOnline published a story that claimed Depp “boiled his brain” in a 1,000-degree sauna, leading to permanent brain damage. Gossip Cop looked into the ludicrous claim and found only nonsense. The website must have misinterpreted a comment from Depp about using saunas in which he joked about having “cranked [it] up to about 1,000 degrees,” a statement nobody in their right mind could have taken as a serious statement. Besides, saunas don’t go higher than about 230 degrees, even at their most extreme, and that has been known to kill people. 1,000 degrees would be physically impossible to survive. Water boils at 212.
A year later, the Globe ran an equally absurd report purporting Depp’s friends feared he would be dead by Christmas. A supposed “insider” told the tabloid that the actor’s alleged “booze binges” and his continued court battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard had left him unsteady on his feet during an unidentified “red carpet event.” His erratic behavior, the insider said, had friends worried that he was “teetering on the edge of death.” Gossip Cop, however, heard differently: we reached out to a trusted source close to Depp, who dismissed the claim. The movie star’s friends were not fearing for his life And, uh, he obviously did survive the holiday season, thankfully, if you were wondering.
The following month, the Globe seemingly forgot about that claim entirely and instead ran a piece about Depp ditching America to move to Russia. According to another shady insider, the actor had decided “it makes a heap of sense to head somewhere like Russia…where he can get away from his money troubles and make a brand-new start.” The insider also cited the various lawsuits he had been involved in over the past couple years including the one against Heard, claiming that “this whole business with Amber has left him in a shell emotionally, and he’s utterly fed up.” Gossip Cop dismissed the ridiculous story: it was Depp who had filed the suit against Heard, not the other way around, and Depp already owns homes in other countries that he could escape to if he wanted. Additionally, our source close to Depp once again confirmed the story was totally bogus.
Finally, in March of this year, NW got in the fun of capitalizing on Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s painful and drawn-out feud. The magazine reported that Depp had been wearing a bulletproof vest out of fear that Heard would try and kill him. Depp had sued Heard for libel after she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post accusing him of domestic abuse. Suspicious “sources” were now apparently telling the tabloid that Depp was “convinced” that Heard or “some domestic violence avenger” would assassinate him. Gossip Cop‘s Depp source once again shot down the claim as nonsense. In reality, Heard was too busy self-quarantining amid the coronavirus pandemic to try to murder her ex-husband, not that she ever would under normal circumstances anyway.