While appearing at the San Sebastian Film Festival, embattled actor Johnny Depp railed against cancel culture and warned others that no one is safe from it. Depp’s star power has taken a dramatic downturn in recent years. While he was one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors for a long time thanks to roles like Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, real life scandals have made him an outcast. His ex-wife Amber Heard accused him of verbally and physically abusing her in 2016 as she filed for a restraining order alongside divorce papers.
Since then, Depp has been involved in numerous legal battles, including a very public one last year where he took on the U.K. paper The Sun for calling him a “wife-beater.” Depp lost the suit in the fall, and not long after, Warner Bros. asked him to step down from his role as dark wizard Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Hollywood has largely turned its back on him, though he’s found some love overseas. The San Sebastian Film Festival just bestowed him with the honorary Donostia Award, a move that received backlash.
It was at the film festival that Depp made his latest comments regarding cancel culture and his ongoing situation. Per Deadline, the actor spoke to the press and warned that no one is safe from being cancelled. “It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgement based on what essentially amounts to polluted air,” Depp said. He then went on to elaborate:
It’s so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe. 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. Sadly at a certain point they begin to think that it’s normal. Or that it’s them. When it’s not.
It doesn’t matter if a judgement, per se, has taken some artistic license. When there’s an injustice, whether it’s against you or someone you love, or someone you believe in – stand up, don’t sit down. ‘Cause they need you.
![Johnny Depp Attacks Cancel Culture & Warns No One Is Safe](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Johnny-Depp-Murder-on-the-Orient-Express.jpg)
Depp has spoken out about Hollywood’s current attitude toward him in the past. Most recently, he criticized the Hollywood boycott that is preventing his latest movie Minamata from being distributed in the United States. He stated no one wishes to work with him now, and that might be true. Aside from the Fantastic Beasts situation, Disney is reportedly moving forward with the Pirates of the Caribbean series without Depp or Jack Sparrow. That decision has received pushback from fans; a petition has amassed over 500,000 signatures calling on Disney to bring Depp back for Pirates of the Caribbean 6.
Right now, there does not appear to be an end to Depp’s so-called cancellation. Heard is in the midst of filming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom for Warner Bros., though some fans supporting Depp have called for her removal on the grounds that she is the abusive party; Depp has stated the same himself. He has received a few legal wins against Heard this year, one of which allows him to actually sue the actress for an op-ed she wrote about domestic abuse. Though many have passed judgement on Depp already, the actor is refusing to go down without a fight.