A few days ago, we got a tip and the scans of Johnny Depp’s Rolling Stone interview. I wanted to wait until RS put the piece online, because I honestly don’t care about Depp enough to spend the time to transcribe this mess. Apparently, Depp spent 72 hours with the RS journalist, bingeing on wine and smoking joints. The Rolling Stone writer doesn’t sugarcoat it at all: Depp was barely lucid for large chunks of the interview. I don’t want to hype this up too much, but this is one of the craziest f–king celebrity profiles I’ve ever read in my life. If you have some time, please read the full piece, and you will end up gasping at least twice.

The first time I gasped at this piece was when the writer didn’t pull his punches about this being Johnny Depp’s “last days.” Depp is described as “alternately hilarious, sly and incoherent.” Depp has a “scared, hunted look about him.” He stays up all night, drinking wine and smoking pot, then sleeps all day. His vibe is described as “a boyish insouciance has slowly morphed into an aging man-child, still charismatic but only in glimpses. If his current life isn’t a perfect copy of Elvis Presley’s last days, it is a decent facsimile.”

Depp is a man who has reportedly made $650 million over the course of his career, and he’s lost almost all of it, which is why Depp agreed to do this piece. No, I’m saying that the wrong way – Depp didn’t agree to Rolling Stone’s request. His “lawyer” Adam Waldman contacted RS and asked if they’d like to do an interview with Depp so that Depp could set the record straight about his dueling lawsuits with his ex-managers. Rolling Stone did a cursory investigation into who Waldman really is, and this is what they found:

Waldman made it clear he was doing an end-run without the involvement of Robin Baum, Depp’s formidable publicist of many years. I started looking into the case and Waldman to see if he was legit. There was stuff about him being Cher’s lawyer – the singer is godmother to his daughter Pepper – but the first hit was a Business Insider story that read “Here Are the American Executives Who Are Working on Behalf of Putin.” Waldman was the first on the list, which detailed his service for Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate and Russian oligarch with strong ties to the Russian president.

According to Business Insider, Waldman has been paid more than $2.3 million for his work on behalf of Deripaska. Meanwhile, Deripaska became a bit player in the Russian-collusion scandal when it was reported by The Washington Post that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort offered to give Deripaska private briefings on the campaign shortly before the GOP convention. Waldman had his own cameo in the Putin-Trump meshugas. In February, none other than Trump would accuse him in a typically factually distorted tweet – without naming him – of trying to broker a meeting between Trump-dossier writer Christopher Steele and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. In April, Deripaska was placed on Trump’s sanctioned list, making it exceedingly difficult for Deripaska’s holdings to do business in the United States.

Waldman joined the game in October 2016, having been told by a client that Depp needed help. TMG had just slapped the foreclosure notice on his L.A. homes for failure to make payments on a $5 million loan from the company. TMG had filed it as a nonjudicial foreclosure so there were no public filings. The public at this point had no idea of Depp’s financial situation. Waldman was about to change that. He says he joined Depp for dinner at the Bel Air home of Ed White, Depp’s new accountant. Waldman says that White mentioned that he believed TMG had taken a cavalier approach to Depp’s accounts. Waldman listened closely and said he’d investigate the situation. Waldman and Depp quickly became compadres. When Waldman would find a friend he thought was on the Mandels’ side, he’d call the star and just say, “Tessio,” after the Abe Vigoda character who betrays the Corleones in The Godfather. Depp instantly understood and would mutter back, “F–king Tessio.”

[From Rolling Stone]

So, that was my second gasp – Depp is in bed with one of Putin’s American agents, basically. Maybe Robert Mueller should expand the investigation? This would explain why The Hollywood Vampires were doing shows all over Russia too. Isn’t it a typical Russian-mob tactic to latch onto someone on the downswing and bleed that person completely dry? That’s what this feels like. Anyway, the rest of the article is full of dumb Depp sh-t, like Depp finding Don Rickles’ racist jokes really funny, and how he really feels about Harvey Weinstein (Depp saw Weinstein be nice to his child once, so, you know) and how Depp really does have someone on staff full-time to read him his lines through an earpiece.

What else? He doesn’t talk about Amber Heard directly, because they both have non-disclosure agreements as part of their divorce. He does say that after the divorce, “I was as low as I believe I could have gotten…” and then talks about how that time in his life was so bad that he was just pouring himself glasses of vodka to drink while he wept and wrote. To be clear, he wasn’t just upset about Amber, he’s also this upset about his money. This whole thing is such a giant mess.

Photos courtesy of WENN.