What is the obsession with celebrity court cases?

Why do we love them so much?

From Johnny Depp and Amber Heard to the Wagatha Christie trial, we have had our eyes glued to our phones to get the latest update, but why are we so obsessed with them? Following an ongoing court case in the media is not something new, if it's big and known, we tend to keep an eye on it. But when it comes to those involving people who are big and well known, our interest completely peaks and we're more invested than ever. Whatever about being interested in a trial with regular people, these are people we've seen on our TV screens, we see them in the papers for unrelated stories, we see them on red carpets, they're in a world the majority of us will only ever see online. They're a different breed, they're of interest to us in their own regard as it is. So when one celebrity ends up in the centre of a trial, we're more intrigued than ever to get the gossip from it. As summer comes in, we have two major celebrity trials taking place, the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation case and the Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy libel trial. Starting with the latter, we all remember the original "it was... Rebekah Vardy's account" Instagram post and the drama that evolved from that, so it was only expected that we would want to hear what happens in the end of this story. When it comes to the Johnny and Amber story, it's similar. We all followed along to Johnny's libel case in 2018, and the former couple's highly publicised trial in July 2020, so it was only expected that we'd be glued to this one too. For the 2022 trial, we can actually watch it be streamed so we don't have to wait to catch up or only see certain aspects, it's available for us at the touch of a button. We're so used to seeing these people as characters, and when it is themselves, it's through interviews and social media, they present a certain version of themselves, the version they want us to see. In these trials, we see a different version, maybe the version we want to see, the more vulnerable side of them, the dramatic side, something different and unseen before. There may not be an exact answer as to why we're so obsessed with these types of trials, but one thing is for sure, we won't be stopping any time soon.