Aurora Starchild
Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp go way back—in fact, Depp is like Ricci’s “brother,” as it turns out. And Depp also once explained homosexuality to the actress when she was only 9. On a recent interview with Andy Cohen via Sirius XM, Ricci explained exactly how that happened.
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“There was something going on on set (of Mermaids),” Ricci told Cohen. “And someone was not being nice to someone else, and they were like, ‘oh, well he might be homophobic.’ And then I was like, ‘well I don’t understand what that is.’”
She went on to say that she was sitting in Winona Ryder’s trailer when this conversation happened. Winona was dating Depp at the time. Winona didn’t know how to explain homosexuality to her, so she put her on the phone with Depp.
“Johnny explained it to me,” said Ricci. He explained it “in the simplest terms,” she added. “Like, ‘It’s when a man wants to have sex with a man and a woman wants to have sex with a woman.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay.”
Cohen pointed out that it was interesting that neither Cher (who was also in Mermaids, and whose trailer was next door during the conversation) nor Winona could explain homosexuality to the 9-year-old actress. But as we all know, Depp has never seemed afraid of talking about uncomfortable or taboo topics (after all, this was the 90s).
Ricci has costarred alongside Depp in many movies, beginning with Mermaids, which was her very first movie set. Then they starred in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in 1998, Sleepy Hollow in 1999, and The Man Who Cried in 2000.
“[Depp’s] protective of me as an older brother” — Christina Ricci
Interestingly, Depp and Ricci shared a sex scene in 2000, which made them both a bit uncomfortable. Keep in mind that the two are about 12 years apart (making Depp about 20 or 21 when he explained homosexuality to a 9-year-old Ricci).
But Ricci once told ABC News that “Johnny and I would never be unclothed because in gypsy culture women are forbidden to be nude.”
She added, “I’ve known Johnny so long, he’s protective of me as an older brother and it’s weird to think of having sex with him.”
