For nearly two decades now, Johnny Depp and his Pirates of the Caribbean character Jack Sparrow have remained synonymous. Out of the many iconic film roles Depp has taken on, including Sweeney Todd, Edward Scissorhands and The Mad Hatter, the swashbuckling Pirates lead has ascended all the others. And yet, the actor behind the role has now admitted he’s yet to see his performances in the Disney blockbusters.
Johnny Depp was on the stand for nearly three hours on Tuesday in a Virginia courthouse to provide his side of the story as he pursues a $50 million defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard concerning an op-ed she wrote in 2018. During his testimony, Pirates of the Caribbean came up, and Depp was asked how he believed the Disney action flick turned out. He responded:
I didn’t see it. But I believe that the film did pretty well, apparently, and they wanted to keep going, making more and I was fine to do that. It’s not like you become that person, but if you know that character to the degree that I did – because he was not what the writers wrote, so they really weren’t able to write for him. Once you know the character better than the writers, that’s when you have to be true to the character and add your words.
Around 30 minutes into the testimony (per Independent), Johnny Depp was asked to speak about his career as an actor, specifically in terms of playing Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. The actor shared that the role came about after he rejected an opportunity to star in Hidalgo for Disney, which Viggo Mortensen would go on to star in.
Johnny Depp shared that his daughter Lily Rose Depp was two at the time, and he was constantly watching animation and other children’s movies and television. In the spirit of this, he asked to have a meeting with Disney, and the studio handed him the Pirates of the Caribbean script. Depp had “different ideas for the character” than what was on the page, and the final result was Captain Jack Sparrow.
Johnny Depp shared he wanted to create a character similar to Bugs Bunny, where people of all ages could accept and be entertained by him. However, when he was asked how he thought the movies turned out, Depp dropped the bomb of never seeing them. (All the Pirates movies can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription, by the way). Depp has talked before about not watching his films. While speaking to David Letterman in 2009 (via The Things), he said it’s really “none of my business” once he steps off set.
Depp has expanded on that before, saying that he doesn’t like watching himself in movies and much prefers the experience of making the film to seeing it play out on the big screen. Even so, audiences still love Jack Sparrow, considering over 700,000 people have signed a petition to get the actor back in the franchise.
For the time being, Johnny Depp is still sorting out his defamation case and Margot Robbie could be developing the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We’ll just have to wait and see where this franchise goes next.