He is accused of sexual assault on two women during a filming in 2021. Gérard Depardieu, also indicted for rape and targeted by numerous complaints of sexual violence, appears this Monday in a first trial.
Will the 75-year-old French cinema giant attend the hearing, starting at 1:30 p.m.? “I confirm to you that Gérard Depardieu intends to appear before the court,” replied his lawyer, Me Jérémy Assous.
“I expect justice to be the same for everyone”
One of these two women, a film decorator, filed a complaint in February 2024 for sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexist insults during the filming of the film The Green Shutters, by Jean Becker, in 2021, which led to the opening of an investigation. She denounced facts dating back to September of that same year, which allegedly took place in a private mansion in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
“I expect justice to be the same for everyone and that Mr. Depardieu does not benefit from preferential treatment because he is an artist,” explains his lawyer, Me Carine Durrieu-Diebolt. “The witnesses and the evidence that he will produce will demonstrate that he is only the target of false accusations,” promises Mr. Assous, for whom “the goal pursued has just been revealed through the requests for compensation: enrich yourself by 30,000 euros”.
“Gérard Depardieu is a serial sexual assaulter”
According to the account given by this 55-year-old complainant to the investigative site Mediapart, Gérard Depardieu suddenly shouted during a conversation that he wanted a “fan” because he couldn’t “even get hard” in this heat, then he allegedly assured that he could “make women come without touching them”.
The latest information on Gérard Depardieu
An hour later, he allegedly “grabbed her brutally” as she left the set, she added. Gérard Depardieu would then have “blocked her by closing his legs on (her) like a crab”, then would have “kneaded her waist, her stomach, going up to (her) breasts”, she assures. He also allegedly made “obscene remarks” to her such as “Come touch my big parasol, I’m going to shove it in your pussy”.
The actor’s bodyguards then “took him away”, she recalled. “He was screaming and laughing to himself. He said to me: We’ll see each other again, my darling! “. “My client is waiting for justice to establish that Gérard Depardieu is a serial sexual assaulter,” Me Carine Durrieu-Diebolt also said.
The “salaceries”, “from morning to evening”
The actor will also be judged for sexual violence denounced in a complaint by another woman, an assistant director on the same film. This filming also marked the actress Anouk Grinberg, who spoke of “salaceries” on the part of Gérard Depardieu “from morning to evening”, in an interview with AFP. “When film producers hire Depardieu on a film, they know they are hiring an aggressor.”
“I have always heard (Gérard Depardieu) make sexual, serious remarks” but his behavior has “very, very seriously worsened, with the permission of the profession which pays him for that, and which covers his crimes”, she castigated .
Charlotte Arnould files a complaint first
A figure in French cinema known throughout the world, Gérard Depardieu was accused of identical behavior by around twenty women. The actress Charlotte Arnould was the first to file a complaint. In August, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested a trial for rape and sexual assault against the actor.
An investigation is also underway in Paris after the complaint of a former film assistant accusing Gérard Depardieu of sexual assault in 2014. The actress Hélène Darras had also filed a complaint against him for sexual assault, but it was closed for prescription. As for the Spanish journalist and writer Ruth Baza, she accuses Gérard Depardieu of having raped her in 1995. “Never, never have I abused a woman,” the actor assured him in a letter open published in Le Figaro on October 1, 2023.
The Macron controversy
A few weeks later, in December 2023, Emmanuel Macron shocked feminist associations by saluting a “huge actor” who “makes France proud”, and by denouncing “a manhunt” after the broadcast of a report from Additional Investigation on France 2, during which the actor made multiple misogynistic and insulting remarks towards women.
Launched in 2017 to denounce the behavior of American producer Harvey Weinstein, the #MeToo movement has swept through French cinema in recent years. Several big names have been accused of sexual violence, such as directors Jacques Doillon or Benoît Jacquot.
