Cancel culture impacting Amber Heard? Actor claims ‘Aquaman 2’ role reduced

Amber Heard might not have faced the brunt of cancel culture as much as ex-husband Johnny Depp, who lost his ‘Pirates of the Caribbean‘ role and his part in the Harry Potter spinoff, ‘Fantastic Beasts‘, but the actor claims her role in ‘Aquaman 2‘ was reduced amid her legal battle with Depp over mutual abuse allegations. 

Cancel culture or callout culture is when a person is ostracized from social and professional circles over purported misdeeds. 

At her defamation trial, on Monday, Heard said she “fought really hard to stay in the movie” but they “didn’t want to include me in the film”, shooting a “very pared down version” of Mera, the part she plays. 

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Notably, in ‘Aquaman’, we were introduced to Mera as a native of Atlantis who helped Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry embrace his destiny as the ruler of the underwater kingdom. 

Heard, 36, continued, “I was given a script, then given new versions of the script that had taken away scenes that had action in it, that depicted my character and another character — without giving any spoilers away — two characters fighting with one another”, adding, “They basically took a bunch out of my role. They just removed a bunch.” 

The actor also noted that she wasn’t allowed to renegotiate her contract. Heard received $2 million for the role, which is double what she made from the first ‘Aquaman‘ movie, but it also marked her last film under the current contract. 

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There is already a petition to remove Heard from ‘Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’, on Change.org, and it has gained steam crossing four million signatures. 

However, Heard’s statements are in sharp contrast to the stand taken by the film’s producer Peter Safran, who’d spoken to Deadline in July 2021 about Heard’s role being removed, saying “I don’t think we’re ever going to react to, honestly, pure fan pressure”, and adding, “You gotta do what’s best for the movie. We felt that if it’s [director] James Wan and [star] Jason Momoa, it should be Amber Heard. That’s really what it was. One is not unaware of what is going on in the Twitter-verse, but that doesn’t mean you have to react to it or take it as gospel or accede to their wishes. You have to do what’s right for the film, and that’s really where we landed on it.” 

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Depp sued Heard for an op-ed in The Washington Post, where the latter doesn’t refer to the former by name but describes herself as a ‘public figure representing domestic abuse’. Depp sued for $50 million, claiming her hoax got him boycotted in Hollywood and Heard countersued him for $100 million.