If this is true, this is so sad!

Johnny Depp's comedian pal Doug Stanhope is coming to the actor's defense in a new op-ed for The Wrap, and he claims to have first hand knowledge of the ways in which Amber Heard was manipulating and blackmailing the Pirates of the Caribbean star in the days leading up to their explosive split.

Stanhope visited with the downcast A-lister just hours before the blonde bombshell claimed he hit her with a cellphone, and revealed that his famous pal divulged Heard's plans to destroy him during the meeting.

"We assumed initially that his dour mood was because of his mother's death the day before. But he opened up in the most vulnerable of ways that it was not only his mother, but that Amber was now going to leave him, threatening to lie about him publicly in any and every possible duplicitous way if he didn't agree to her terms. Blackmail is what I would imagine other people might put it, including the manner in which he is now being vilified," he wrote.

Apparently, those closest to the father-of-two were never the Texan starlet's biggest fans, but they kept quiet out of fear Johnny would cut them out of his tight inner circle. Once they told him that they had "watched [Heard] manipulate and f‑‑k with him for years," the former heartthrob reacted with mixed emotions.

"He seemed dumbstruck that nobody had ever come clean about this and he thanked everyone for being honest. [Depp] still pronounced his love for Amber," although he "was presciently aware that she was going to pull off some kind of ruse. He hadn't slept in days with anxiety. You'd call him a paranoid if you didn't know better. But he knew better and he was right. Everything Johnny had told us that she'd been threatening had actually come to be. It blew up in the news, raced through the Internet like a plague and blew up on Twitter.… People are swarming with torches on social media," Stanhope continued.

In the end, Depp predicted exactly what would come to pass.

"Abusing women is bulls‑‑t. Johnny doesn’t abuse anyone. And he told me that day ahead of time that she'd pull some kind of s‑‑t like this. Johnny Depp got used, manipulated, set up and made to look like an a‑‑hole. And he saw it coming and didn't or couldn't do anything to stop it," he concluded.

Wow! We're not sure what to believe anymore.

Meanwhile, Johnny was off in Lisbon, Portugal, performing with his band Hollywood Vampires. He was rockin' out with bandmate Alice Cooper in front of a screaming crowd that was very much in support of Johnny ...

UPDATE:
Heard's lawyer, Peter Sample, reached out to The Wrap and stated that the publication printed "outrageous and defamatory false claims" about the actress in the article. "The foregoing allegations against Ms. Heard are absolutely and unequivocally false," Sample added.