Paul Bettany has finally said, in his own words, where things stand with Johnny Depp, and the answer is short: they don't talk.

In an interview with The Times published October 15, the VisionQuest star addressed the old text messages between the two actors that were read out during Depp's legal battles. "I hadn't spoken to Johnny in years when that happened and I haven't spoken to him since," Bettany said, as reported by E! News and Variety.

"This close friend of a guy I hadn't spoken to in years"

Bettany, 55, described the period of Depp's court cases as "an interesting time," according to E! News. What surprised him most, he told The Times, was how he was presented to the public. "I was being painted as this close friend of a guy I hadn't spoken to in years," he said, adding that of everything that came out between the two celebrities, "that bit was the most odd," per The Independent.

So why did he stay quiet for so long? "I decided to say nothing because, I think, people know me," Bettany explained, according to E! News and Variety. "I've been married 23 years and, for what I do, I live an incredibly quiet life. Everybody kind of thought this is probably a nothing burger, and left it alone."

How the texts became public

The messages date back to 2013 and 2014, E! News reported. They first came to light in 2020, during Depp's libel case against the UK tabloid The Sun, which he sued over a headline that called him a "wife beater." Depp lost that case; The Hollywood Reporter reported that the judge found the newspaper's allegations "substantially true."

The texts, which joked about Amber Heard and witch trials, surfaced again in 2022 during Depp's defamation trial against Heard, according to E! News. During that trial, E! reported, Depp described Bettany as one of his "close friends" and testified that the exchange referenced a Monty Python sketch. E! added that the transcript showed Bettany eventually rebuffing the idea, calling Heard "delightful company."

Not the first time he has spoken about it

Bettany has touched on this before, though never so directly. In a 2021 interview with The Independent, he called the subject "a really difficult subject to talk about," THR reported, and said having lawyers comb through a decade of his private messages was "very strange."

"Can you imagine what it would be like, honestly, to have a bunch of lawyers go through every one of your emails and texts for 10 years?" he said at the time. "All I can tell you was that it was an unpleasant feeling."

Busy with VisionQuest

The comments land while Bettany is back in the Marvel spotlight. The Independent noted he can currently be seen in the MCU series VisionQuest, and E! News pointed out that he and wife Jennifer Connelly met on the set of 2001's A Beautiful Mind.

Depp and Bettany co-starred in The Tourist (2010), Transcendence (2014) and Mortdecai (2015), according to E! News. E! said it reached out to Depp's representative for comment but had not heard back. Depp, meanwhile, has his own big release on the way: The Independent reports his comeback Christmas film Ebenezer opens on November 13, after a run of European arthouse films including Jeanne du Barry and Minamata.

For fans who have wondered for years whether the two were still close, Bettany's answer is clear. As he put it himself, he lives "an incredibly quiet life," and these days his focus is on VisionQuest.

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