'They Wanted Me to Retire' Johnny Depp Breaks Silence on 'Fantastic Beasts' Exit — and the Industry That Left Him Behind
An unfinished scene, an unwanted exit — and a career still in recovery.
Johnny Depp has finally addressed the way his departure from the Fantastic Beasts franchise played out — and his words leave little doubt about how deeply the experience cut. Speaking to The Telegraph, the actor recalled being removed from the third film, The Secrets of Dumbledore, after filming just one scene.
"It literally stopped in a millisecond," he said. "They said we’d like you to resign. But what was really in my head was they wanted me to retire."
The studio line was diplomatic — a thank-you, a farewell. But for Depp, the exit wasn’t mutual. It came at the height of a public scandal involving domestic abuse allegations made by his ex-wife, Amber Heard. Though he would later win a defamation suit in U.S. court, the damage had been done. Warner Bros. had already replaced him with Mads Mikkelsen, and Fantastic Beasts moved on without him.
Despite being paid his full fee — reportedly $16 million — the actor’s words suggest it wasn’t about the money. It was about being excluded without a voice."There’s far too many of me to kill," Depp said in an unfiltered moment during the interview. The line may be headline-grabbing, but what lingers isn’t the fury — it’s the lasting sense that he was being erased.
Years later, the wounds haven’t entirely healed. Depp may have cleared his name in court, but the Hollywood welcome mat hasn’t exactly been rolled back out. Big studio roles remain scarce. So the question lingers: was this just a firing — or something more permanent?
