Christina Ricci’s tale of how she came to understand what it means to be gay is distinctly Hollywood. The incident occurred while the young actor and Winona Ryder were filming Mermaids, and Ryder called her ex-boyfriend Johnny Depp to explain what had happened.
On SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, Ricci related the amusing anecdote and said Depp “is actually the person who explained to me what homosexuality was when I was 9.”
“There was something going on on-set 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,'” Ricci recalled.
“I was in Winona’s trailer and she was like, ‘I don’t know how…’ so she put me on the phone with Johnny. And Johnny explained it to me,” she continued.
One of the most famous couples in popular culture, Depp and Ryder, called it quits in 1993. The actresses acted in 1990’s Mermaids just as they had begun dating.
Johnny Depp’s explanation to Christina Ricci
Ricci claimed Depp gave her “the simplest terms” explanation of what it meant to be gay. “He was like, ‘it’s when a man wants to have sex with a man. And when a woman wants to have sex with a woman’ and I was like, ‘ah okay.'”
“I bet Johnny Depp explained it well,” Cohen added. “Just very matter of factly,” Ricci stated.
“I love it that Winona Ryder had to put you on the phone with Johnny Depp to get that story that she couldn’t spit it out in some way, or, I mean, you’ve got Cher in the next trailer,” said Cohen. “I know we should’ve run right over there,” said Ricci laughing.
In the end, Ricci worked on several films with Depp, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Sleepy Hollow.
