Summary:
- The upcoming movie, The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, features a joke about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s legal battle.
- The bad joke is met with severe backlash from fans, who criticize the poor taste of the film’s writers.
- This isn’t the first time that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s case is mentioned in a movie or TV series.
Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt’s new movie The Fall Guy hasn’t even been released yet, but it’s already met with some serious backlash.
Apparently, some viewers of early screenings of The Fall Guy have expressed discomfort with a joke in the film, which references the broken marriage between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Given the high-profile and tumultuous nature of Depp and Heard’s legal disputes, references to their situation have surfaced in various forms of entertainment and pop culture and got everyone riled up.
In The Fall Guy, which will be officially released in May, a Depp-Heard-related scene has sparked particular backlash. According to The Independent, the scene features Hannah Waddingham from Ted Lasso. She enters a thrashed and messy trailer as if a fight had just occurred, and quips, “It’s like Amber and Johnny were just in here.”
This particular line clearly alludes to the allegations of domestic violence that both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard leveled against each other during their legal battles.
Reactions to the joke have been shared on social media, with some viewers finding it in poor taste. One viewer commented on X (formerly Twitter), “The Fall Guy was just kind of cringe and smug until the weird Johnny and Amber joke, then it was unpleasant. 2024 and we’re putting dv [domestic violence] jokes into our action comedies I guess!”
Clearly, The Fall Guy was receiving mixed reactions from fans, and the sensitive joke makes it way worse.
the fall guy: was just kind of cringe and smug until the weird j*hnny and a*ber joke, then it was unpleasant
— hannah strong (@thethirdhan) April 22, 2024
“God that took me out of the movie so badly when I watched it, there was truly no reason whatsoever to say it I almost thought I’d misheard. Embarrassing for everyone involved,” another response highlighted.
The third account even resolves to an R-18 word to express their frustration: “Extremely f***ing lame if they’re actually spending a quick moment in The Fall Guy trying to poke fun at Heard/Depp, if what I’ve read is true. what is the benefit?”
extremely fucking lame if they’re actually spending a quick moment in The Fall Guy trying to poke fun at heard/depp, if what I’ve read is true
what is the benefit
— Cole (@colepier_) April 20, 2024
This isn’t the first instance where a pop culture reference to Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has stirred controversy. Gen V, a spinoff of The Boys, faced criticism for a similar Depp-slandering joke, and the animated series Animaniacs also encountered backlash for a perceived reference to the defamation trial.
The Fall Guy will be released in movie theaters on May 3, 2024. This means there is still a bit of time for Universal Pictures to cut out the controversial sequence before the movie hits the box office.
