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Architectural Digest (Power Couple extended imagine)

for @karlacce4 @takemepedropascal

Inside Johnny Depp and Y/N Y/L/N’s Stunning $1.9M New Orleans Home! - Article by Rita Joseph, November 2018

A casually dressed Y/N opens the door on a bright and sunny but chilly Friday afternoon. The Golden Globe nominated actress is just as stunning makeup free and in an old college sweatshirt and jeans and her hair pulled back from her face as she is in expensive designer gowns and jewelry; right behind her is her husband Johnny Depp and their dog Jack Sparrow. “Hey, come on in!” Immediately, I’m greeted with warmth and the scent of cinnamon. The entrance is narrow, and there is a wooden table next to the door with a small bowl which hold two sets of car keys, but there are two doorways across from each other: on the left is the sitting room, and on my right is the dining room with its painted blue walls contrasted with white curtains and a chandelier hanging above the table.

We start with the sitting room which holds a lime green couch adding a nice touch of color against the white walls. There is also a gold ceiling lamp and a glass coffee table. “This is our sitting room, but we use it for a little bit of everything, like a storage room or sometimes a guest would want to sleep in here when they visit because it’s so quiet as opposed to upstairs because we still have teenagers, and there’s a lot of banging around in the morning getting ready for school, or we’ll have friends over.” Those friends would include Brad and Angelina (before the divorce), Tim Burton and Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, and Depp’s Hollywood Vampires band mates Joe Perry and Alice Cooper. What great company to keep!

From the sitting room we head into the dining room. “We actually painted the dining room a week after we moved in. All of the walls in the house were white and we thought it was way too much, so we decided to paint it a different color,” Depp said. “The tables and chairs actually belonged to Y/N’s sister and we bought it off her in ‘07 when she moved to another city, and that couch in the other room we bought after Nathan and Noelle’s first birthday.” “It was their favorite thing to play on when they were babies. So hard to believe that was 2004,” Y/L/N reminisced. The blue walls are decorated with a few of Depp’s paintings with a molding of a deer’s head that Y/N got at a flea market.

As we exit out of the dining room, I get a good look at the other side of the wall facing the staircase as we go into the living room. The entire wall is covered in a black and white photo of a jazz band taken at a Mardi Gras parade a few years ago, and there is a nice sized wine cabinet which is the size of a recording booth with only one bottle of wine in it; Johnny has cut back on drinking, but still enjoys a glass of wine every now and then. “I’m not as young as I used to be, and I’m runnin’ around on stage all night so I want to be as healthy as possible when I’m performing and to see the rest of my babies grow up.” The rest of his babies would be Nathan and Noelle, fraternal twins born in 2003. Their oldest kids include 26-year-old Star Wars star John Christopher III, born in 1992, and 22-year-old The Greatest Showman actress Camille.

The living room is gorgeous but simple; an all white leather reclining sectional with built in cup holders surrounds a small wooden coffee table in front of the fireplace which has a flat screen television above it. There’s a chandelier in this room as well, similar to the one in the dining room, and the wooden table behind the sectional breaks up the whiteness of the room. “This is where everyone spends the majority of their time. Morning, noon, night, weekends, we are here, with the older kids when they come over for dinner on Sundays. They’ll come over in the afternoon and stay the whole day.” Even with the oldest kids moved out and with houses of their own, the Depps are still a close knit family with Camille and John Christopher, or Three as he’s called by friends and family, living minutes away. Depp family favorite weekend activity? “Cooking breakfast together and then going to the nearby park or to a flea market or farmers’ market. There’s always something to do do in the city so you’re never bored,” the Dark Shadows actor explained. 

When I asked them why they decided to move away from Hollywood, it was an easy answer. Y/L/N said: “we wanted to give them a normal childhood, and you can’t really have that when there are people taking pictures of you in your school uniform heading into school.” The couple moved to the Big Easy before Johnny began filming the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie in 2002, and speaking of cooking, the kitchen is next, and it is every homeowner’s dream. The white marble kitchen island doubles as a sink with its clear backed chairs and a sleek gold light fixture hanging above. A few feet away is a rectangular table with four shelves.

“This is my favorite room. I’m always cooking, and this is pretty much multipurpose room. We do game nights, eat meals, the twins do homework here.” When I joked about the chandeliers, the two only laughed, with Y/N adding, “you’re gonna be seeing a lot of chandeliers in this house. I loved them as a child and always wanted one. Or thirteen. We actually got each of them at Home Depot or Wayfair, and they look good in every room.” At this point, Jack Sparrow begins barking and runs to the front door (the dog, not Depp who plays the beloved swashbuckler). Noelle and Nathan are home from school and they follow the dog into the kitchen.

They are taken aback as they take in the camera man, as they wash their hands in the sink before reaching for the snacks. “Oh, I thought this was happening tomorrow,” Noelle remarks as she reaches for a bag of trail mix from a cabinet and a bottle of water from the fridge. “You have drivers ed tomorrow,” Y/N instantly in mom mode. “And your uniforms are hanging up in the laundry room.” Johnny and Y/N are athlete parents with Nathan playing on his school football team while Noelle is a cheerleader. After getting an okay from the twins to tour their rooms, we head upstairs after the examining the wall of pictures in the upstairs hallway.

Some pictures that have never been made public: a tired looking Y/N in a hospital bed after giving birth to their children, followed by a procession of school portraits and certificates from school. John Christopher and Camille’s graduation and prom pictures. Family outings at the near by park which featured a heavily pregnant Y/N circa early 2000s. A picture of Depp’s late mother Betty Sue and Y/N’s Aunt Claudia smiling as they played cards. And then there were the family portraits.

One that started with John Christopher as a newborn in 1992, then adding Camille in 1996, followed by the twins in 2003. Black and white photos of grandparents and great-grandparents, photos of Depp and Y/L/N ancestors, and the framed Polaroids of Y/N and Depp in Vegas on their honeymoon, after they eloped in summer 1991 after less than a year of dating, and I had to ask the question that’s still on peoples’ minds years later: why elopement? “We were young and didn’t want to go through the process of planning a wedding. I proposed a day after meeting her aunt and uncle and two days later we were married.” You remember that day like it was yesterday; you and Johnny went on vacation to visit your aunt and uncle so they could meet him for the first time as your boyfriend. They loved him, of course and at that point, you’ve only been dating for four months and it was getting serious to the point where Johnny called you his future wife and mother of his children in interviews (which probably wouldn’t be too distant in the future since your period was late). He proposed the night before you left for L.A. after your aunt and uncle had gone to bed and you immediately said yes.

After settling back home, you two took a road trip to Las Vegas the very next day and twenty seven years later, you’re still very much in love. I asked them why move to New Orleans, to which Depp answered: “Y/N was filming a movie here after Three was born, and when I came to visit her with the baby, I think it was during Mardi Gras, we had an amazing time. The food was just incredible, and the people were amazing, and no one gave a fuck about who we were. Once Camille was born, we kept coming back as much as we could, and we decided we wanted to build a life here.” The first room we enter after reaching the landing is the master bedroom. The walls are painted a nice gray, and, you guessed it, a chandelier. “This is our room, where we rarely get any sleep because we have the kids always running in and out for whatever reason--” 

“And we also climb into bed with them too,” Noelle interjects. “And other times we just do it to annoy them,” Nathan backs up his sister’s statement. The bathroom is gorgeous with a white tiled floor; the shower stall is in a corner next to Y/N’s vanity, and across from it is a jacuzzi tub set next to a window that had a few candles along the edge, and adjacent from the tub is a double sink. “This is our bathroom, and we do more unwinding here than the bedroom. Whenever one of us comes home from filming or press tours or whatever, we’re in the tub, probably falling asleep.” Next we move to Noelle’s room and it’s something out of a Pintrest board

Pretty pastel pinks and fluffy white rugs and throws with a nice swing chair in a corner, which she calls her reading nook. Black and white framed pictures of her mom from her modeling days as a teenager and pictures of friends and family fill in space on her walls. “Every piece of furniture came from either Wayfair or Overstock. They have such great deals on furniture and rugs, and I’m always scrolling through their websites.” Nathan’s room is a typical boy’s room. It’s a cool gray scale vibe with a portion of the wall behind his bed painted black and there are shelves on either side of the bed filled with books, picture frames and sports trophies. “Dad and I repainted this wall almost a month ago. The sun shines so bright in the mornings and it’s always a pain, and I love when a room is cold and dark.” 

He admits to sleeping with the fan on at night, even in the winter. There’s a sleek desk in the corner that holds a laptop and a stack of books, and next to it, against the wall, is a decent sized book shelf. Nathan likes to read, a trait that he and the rest of his siblings picked up from their parents. He and Noelle are having a competition to see who could read the most books by the end of the year. The next room is a low ceilinged guest room which is where Depp’s mother Betty Sue lived her last days. 

“This used to be Grandma Betty’s room. Jack comes in here all the time, and we’d find him just laying on the bed,” Nathan says, touching a portrait of his grandmother. The next room is pretty much a music studio, as there’s a drum kit, bass guitars, electric guitars, and a keyboard. The walls are covered with the kids’ school art projects over the years. The room is frequented by Depp’s band the Hollywood Vampires whenever they blow into town, where they write and record new music, and Noelle receives guitar lessons from her father and Cooper. The last room we reach is a game room/homemade home movie theater.

There’s a nice flat screen on the wall and plastic storage bins containing video games, game controllers, and DVDs; Noelle used the room to host a sleepover a few weeks ago, and Nathan and his friends used it to launch water balloons at the neighborhood boys during the summer, which he realizes he makes a mistake in admitting this in front of his parents. Finally we come to the last part of the tour, the backyard which holds a patio and a swimming pool. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but we were using the pool up until a week ago. During the spring and summer months, we’ll invite the neighbors over for barbecues or they’ll invite us.” It’s November, and Thanksgiving is a week away. The entire Depp family plans on spending the holiday at the Kentucky ranch Johnny bought for his mother with his siblings. Before we leave, Y/N offers me and the camera man Justin a snack of green tea and cinnamon rolls ushering us politely out of the door so they could have dinner and get ready for Nathan’s game.

The video is now up on architecturaldigest.com and on our YouTube channel.

The video is uploaded on YouTube to great reviews; the viewers love how down to earth and humble you are and that you didn’t spend a ton of money on furniture and other unnecessary miscellaneous items in the house while others wish they had a room like Noelle’s when they were teenagers. The comments range from: i’m a simple person. i see johnny depp’s name and i click on it-user26. i love how they live in a normal looking house in a normal neighborhood. i’m so glad they raised their kids outside of hollywood because john christopher and camille are the most humble nepo kids in the industry and always acknowledge their privilege. can’t say the same for others.- user89. When is Noelle gonna start her modeling career?- user85. i love how close they all are and that they live so close together to where they can get together on the weekends.- user63

dying at the looks johnny and y/n gave nathan when he said he and his friends threw water balloons out the window.- user14. when tf did the twins get so big??? why wasn’t i warned???- user 78. why do noelle and nathan get to look like they just stepped out of a j crew catalog after a day at school but i look like i got beat within an inch of my life by 4th period? - user52