[imagesource: Twitter / @johnnydppdaily]
If Johnny Depp has one talent besides acting and music (that last one is up for debate), it’s his remarkable ability to polarise the internet.
Depp was spotlit in Rihanna’s recent fashion show, and once again, Twitter is alight with contentious back-and-forths.
As Page Six reports, “Rihanna is definitely not “Anti”-Johnny Depp” as she made room for him in her Savage X Fenty knickers show currently streaming on Prime Video.
He was granted a 40-second appearance, sporting some Rihanna designs while walking to the tune of Outkast’s ‘So Fresh, So Clean’. He even embraces a tree at the end of his walk:
Rihanna and her team invited the Oscar nominee to participate in the spectacle, with a source describing his cameo as “cool and chic.”
But many of the Bad Gal’s fans didn’t think it was cool to see Depp — who in 2016 was accused of domestic violence by ex-wife Amber Heard, but denied the allegations and went on to win a much-publicized defamation trial against her earlier this year — honored as the first man with a featured role in a Savage X Fenty show.
Look at him go, not a care in the world:
JOHNNY DEPP IN RIHANNA’S SAVAGE X FENTY SHOW pic.twitter.com/szhVItteW8
— johnny depp daily (@johnnydppdaily) November 9, 2022
Rihanna is being called out for supporting a man who can legally be called a wife-beater in the UK, with many ex-fans confused by her choice after having her own rocky past with domestic abuse:
The “Umbrella” hitmaker, 34, famously began dating fellow musician Chris Brown in 2007, who physically assaulted her two years later; after pleading guilty for felony assault, Brown was sentenced to five years probation.
Cue the backlash:
rihanna going out of her way to, like, rehabilitate the image of a domestic abuser and rapist is fucking crazy cause the hell is johnny depp, a rapidly decaying corpse, going to do at a LINGERIE SHOW? but even past all that does she even know her audience?
— sk (@kirkxxs) November 3, 2022
rihanna can’t be serious? with all these beautiful and unproblematic men in hollywood, and johnny depp is the one that appeals to you the most?
— Kat (@feneptune_) November 3, 2022
While the platform is rife with this kind of quarrel:
If she wanted to platform an abuser, she would have supported Amber Heard. Rihanna is supporting Johnny Depp and raising awareness that abuse has no gender. #AmberHeardlsALiar https://t.co/bgoVeYzCJg
— Liam’s mama (@Jcashnicole) November 5, 2022
Others are piping in to remind everyone that Rihanna has enjoyed more than one problematic moment before:
everyone shocked that rihanna supports johnny depp, a rapist, abuser & groomer as if she wasn’t posing with nicki minaj and her sex offender husband last year. Like Rihanna didn’t give an “all lives matter” segment at the height of Israeli terrorism towards Palestine last year.
— inqilāb (@tastefullysaucy) November 3, 2022
This user is referring to Niki Manaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, who in July was sentenced to a year of home detention for failing to register as a sex offender.
Despite this, Rihanna chose to hang out with Manaj and Petty:
View this post on Instagram
Rihanna is certainly being thrown into the spotlight with the #AbuserxFenty hashtag adopted by users to express their disappointment with Depp’s casting, which begs the question: does she perhaps know exactly what she’s doing?
This is what happens when #JohnnyDepp gets included in anything. Rihanna knows what she’s doing
(credits to owner) pic.twitter.com/U17q6KSjtx
—
Lily Magick
(@LilyMagick2022) November 9, 2022
Anyway, Depp is enjoying the single life again after seemingly splitting from that lawyer he started dating during the Heard trial.
The News reported that he was dating British lawyer Joelle Rich, a privately-educated mother-of-two, but now they seem to have gone their separate ways.
After appearing all “cool and chic” thanks to Rihanna, he might not be single all that much longer.
