Amber Heard has shared a post on Instagram for the first time since July, thanking her fans for their overwhelming support and love in her return to Aquaman.
In 2022, the actress famously lost her high-profile defamation case against The Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp.
The jury ruled that her 2018 Washington Post article titled "I spoke up against sexual violence - and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change" was defamatory.
She was ordered to pay $10m in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The latter sum was reduced to $350,000 to comply with a state statutory cap.
Amid the trial, a petition to remove The Rum Diary star from the Aquaman sequel entirely gained more than 4.5 million signatures. In addition to this, only one of Heard’s co-stars from the franchise has since spoken publicly about working with her on the films.
In June 2022, Dolph Lundgren said: "She was great. I worked with her on the first Aquaman, now the second one. We shot last fall in London. She’s terrific, I had a great experience with her," per The Independent.
"She’s very kind, nice to the crew, nice to everybody, just down to earth," he added.
Today (January 3), Heard took to Instagram to post an image of her in character as Mera, Aquaman's love interest in the DC franchise. She also posted a picture of her feeding a baby seemingly on set and a final one of her in a car.
She captioned the series of images: "After all this time, Aquaman 2 made its splash (sorry, its too easy) Thank you to all of my fans for the overwhelming support and love in Mera’s AQ return. Thank you so much #aquaman."
The actress appears to have disabled comments on the post.
During the trial, a Change.org petition was circulated on social media calling for Warner Bros. to remove Heard from the DC sequel - with the petition racking up more than 4.6 million signatures at the time.
Last year, Aquaman director James Wan confronted the Danish Girl actress' claim that her part as Mera in the sequel was "pared down" due to her tumultuous trial against her 60-year-old former husband.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Wan denied that Heard’s trial had played a part in the creative decision-making, stating: "I always pitched this to everyone from the get-go. The first Aquaman was Arthur and Mera’s journey."
"The second movie was always going to be Arthur and Orm," the filmmaker said, referring to the name of Momoa's character and Patrick Wilson’s supervillain. "So, the first was a romance action-adventure movie, the second one is a bromance action-adventure movie. We’ll leave it at that," he added.
In the 2018 DC movie Aquaman, Heard's character Mera played a prominent role as the love interest of Arthur Curry, portrayed by Jason Momoa. However, as reported by Business Insider, Mera's presence is notably scaled back in the sequel - despite her now being married to Aquaman and having a child with him.
During her defamation trial against her former husband, Johnny Depp, Heard claimed that her role in the sequel had been significantly reduced.
Heard revealed to the Fairfax courtroom that she received a new version of the movie sequel’s script that withdrew a fight scene involving her - resulting in a "very pared-down version" of her part. "I fought really hard to stay in the movie. They didn’t want to include me in the film," she said at the time, per CNN.
