Helena Bonham Carter Speaks Out In Support Of Johnny Depp & J.K. Rowling

Helena Bonham Carter went on a full anti-“cancel culture” rant and it’s a huge bummer.

In a recent interview with The Times UK, Bonham Carter compared people being held accountable for their behavior as, wait for it, a witch hunt. “Do you ban a genius for their sexual practices? There would be millions of people who, if you looked closely enough at their personal life, you would disqualify them. You can’t ban people. I hate cancel culture. It has become quite hysterical and there’s a kind of witch hunt and a lack of understanding,” she told the publication.

Case and point, according to Bonham Carter, her Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dark Shadows, and Alice in Wonderland costar Johnny Depp.

“Johnny certainly went through it,” Bonham Carter said. However, now that the trial between himself and ex Amber Heard is complete, she believes he’s “completely vindicated... I think he’s fine now. Totally fine.”

Her feelings for Depp’s ex Heard are far less charitable. “My view is that [Amber Heard] got on that [#MeeToo] pendulum,” she said. “That’s the problem with these things — that people will jump on the bandwagon because it’s the trend and to be the poster girl for it.”

Sigh.

But that’s not all. Bonham Carter also spoke out against the backlash against proud transphobe J.K. Rowling. “It’s horrendous, a load of bollocks. I think she has been hounded,” the actor said. “It’s been taken to the extreme, the judgmental-ism of people. She’s allowed her opinion, particularly if she’s suffered abuse. Everybody carries their own history of trauma and forms their opinions from that trauma and you have to respect where people come from and their pain. You don’t all have to agree on everything — that would be insane and boring. She’s not meaning it aggressively, she’s just saying something out of her own experience.”

As for her Harry Potter co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, both of whom have condemned Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric, Bonham Carter takes a very patronizing view. “I think they’re very aware of protecting their own fan base and their generation,” she opined. “It’s hard. One thing with the fame game is that there’s an etiquette that comes with it; I don’t agree with talking about other famous people.”

And Rowling’s detractors? According to Bonham Carter, well, they’re just jealous. “If she hadn’t been the most phenomenal success, the reaction wouldn’t be so great,” she told the publication. “So I think there’s a lot of envy unfortunately and the need to tear people down that motors a lot of this canceling. And schadenfreude.”

Yep, that must be the reason. Not because it’s hate speech, but because we’re all just jelly.