Johnny Depp slipped a joke about Donald Trump into a surprise appearance as part of his acting comeback.
The 63-year-old actor crashed the San Diego ComicCon on Thursday, emerging in a faux 1880s British Christmas village as Ebenezer Scrooge, the Charles Dickens character he plays in the upcoming film Ebenezer.
At one point, Depp, in character as the Christmas grouch, began ripping garlands from the gate of the mock home, saying, “These are poison! Keep these away from children.”
As another performer protested, he declared, “That’s on my property, which means that I own it,” before appearing to riff on Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
“And you’re paying tax on it being there. ‘Cause everybody has to pay all that stuff. Putting tariffs on the gate,” he said.
The crowd appeared to catch Depp’s reference to the tariff-loving president, erupting in laughter. The moment was caught in footage posted by Entertainment Weekly.
Though the Supreme Court struck down some of Trump’s most sweeping tariffs earlier this year, the 80-year-old president revived one of his trade wars this week, enacting a nearly 100-year-old tariff act to hit Canada with 50 percent levies on a plethora of goods.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ebenezer, backed by David Ellison-owned Paramount Pictures, will be Depp’s first major American studio film since his legal feud with ex-wife Amber Heard in 2022, when a jury found that Heard had defamed Depp in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she claimed she was a survivor of domestic abuse.
Depp has repeatedly taken aim at Trump over the years, calling him a “brat” in 2016 while discussing his portrayal of Trump in the parody film Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal: The Movie.
In 2017, he apologized after making a joke about assassinating the president, asking the crowd at the Glastonbury Festival, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a President?”
Directed by Ti West—best known for horror films such as Pearl and X—Ebenezer also stars Andrea Riseborough, Rupert Grint, Ian McKellen, Daisy Ridley, Sam Claflin, Charlie Murphy, Arthur Conti, and Ellie Bamber, according to Entertainment Weekly.
