Kathy Griffin Compares Johnny Depp Fans to QAnon Supporters

Kathy Griffin has compared Johnny Depp's fans to QAnon supporters, after the actor's backers stood by him throughout his court battle with ex-wife Amber Heard.

Depp sued Heard for $50 million over a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post in which she said that she was a domestic abuse survivor, though she did not name Depp. Lawyers for Depp argued that it was obvious Heard was referring to the actor.

Heard counter-sued for $100 million, alleging that Pirates of the Caribbean star Depp had defamed her through comments made by his attorney Adam Waldman.

On June 1, 2022, the jury in the Virginia trial found that Heard had defamed Depp and awarded him more than $10 million. Depp, in turn, was ordered to pay $2 million to Heard.

Throughout the trial last year, Heard became the focus of countless negative social media posts, with a sizable faction of Depp's fans questioning her allegations of domestic violence. In turn, Heard won an army of supporters, many of whom said the Aquaman star had been vilified for daring to speak out against a popular actor.

Depp and Heard both parties leveled allegations of violence against the other during court proceedings, accusations that both parties vehemently denied.

Comedian Griffin reiterated her anti-Depp stance this week, when she joined a conversation sparked by a Twitter user who said: "Asking people to name their abusers in a post Johnny Depp trial world is actually insane."

Noting the negative comments the tweet had attracted, NBC News tech and culture reporter Kat Tenbarge weighed in on the matter.

"The backlash to tweets like this illustrates that people would rather believe they were right than accept reality," Tenbarge wrote. "The reality is, the way that trial was consumed and analyzed by the public hurts victims. If you can't accept that you don't live in reality."

"The QAnon vibes intensify when JD supporters have to reckon with the very real very immediate consequences of that trial," Tenbarge added.

"Interesting," said Griffin as she joined the conversation from her locked Twitter account. "It makes sense that JD stans would be QAnon's, or at least agree with some of the QAnon nonsense. QAnon is a killer disease."

QAnon is a conspiracy theory movement based on the predictions of an anonymous online account. Griffin recently blamed QAnon from the baseless rumor that she spent time on the private Caribbean island of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The late financier has been falsely linked to several celebrities.

This is not the first time that Griffin has shared her opinion on Depp. Back in June, days after the trial jury ruled largely in Depp's favor, Griffin called the actor an "orange, fat, bloated boozebag."

At the beginning of a June 2 call-in episode of CNN political analyst Brian Karem's Just Ask the Question podcast, Karem asked Griffin for her thoughts on the trial.

Griffin prefaced her statements by saying she's "friends with Amber Heard," adding: "I completely believe her." She said the verdict was "really disturbing" to her as a woman and a feminist.

The Suddenly Susan star then called the discussion around the trial a "social media bloodbath," and opined that #MeToo is not dead yet. She then launched an attack on Depp, criticizing his appearance and accent.

"I just think Depp is gross," she said. "Do you know what I find funny? These Johnny Depp stans that are talking about this trial and yet they refuse to show pictures of what he looks like now, which is a big orange fat bloated boozebag.

"He looks like Donald Trump with a ponytail. And so they keep sticking up for him and being like, 'Amber is taking down Johnny! He's so gorgeous and dreamy!' I'm like, okay, he talks like Kanye [West] when Kanye had his jaw wired. He has a fake accent like when Madonna turned British. So, you know, who are we kidding here?"

She also ripped his fans who waited outside the courtroom each day, saying: "And just the whole thing of how he had, like, his digital warriors outside. It's... this is a middle-aged man. This is pathetic. So, anyway, I don't... I don't get it."

While it was announced in November that Heard was appealing the jury's decision, the star later revealed in December that she would be settling the case with Depp.

"I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession," Heard said as part of her lengthy statement. "There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward. I make this decision having lost faith in the American legal system, where my unprotected testimony served as entertainment and social media fodder."

Heard said she felt "vindicated" when the former couple faced a court in the U.K. after Depp took legal action against The Sun newspaper and journalist Dan Wootton for labeling him a "wife beater." Depp ultimately lost the case.

"In the U.S., however, I exhausted almost all my resources in advance of and during a trial in which I was subjected to a courtroom in which abundant, direct evidence that corroborated my testimony was excluded and in which popularity and power mattered more than reason and due process," she added. "In the interim, I was exposed to a type of humiliation that I simply cannot re-live."