French actor Gérard Depardieu, suspected of sexually assaulting two women in 2014 and 2021, will be tried in October. This was announced by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office after Depardieu’s interrogation, occurred in a Paris police station where the actor remained in custody for a few hours. Before his release this evening, Depardieu was handed a court summons to stand trial on charges of sexual assault and harassment. The actor, according to some sources, was confronted with the two women who reported him.
The reckoning has arrived for Gérard Depardieu, the most famous French actor in the world, known for his exuberance and symbol of the sexual abuse that caused a real revolt – the so-called metoo – in the world of French cinema. Two women denounced Depardieu in this context of the numerous sexual accusations concerning him. The police questioned him today, in custody, on allegations of sexual violence and harassment on the sets of two films.
The actor – according to what was reported in the evening by one of his lawyers, Christian Saint-Palais, who regretted the leaks to the press – was released after denying all charges before investigators. The complaints concern the filming of two films. The facts date back to 2014, while “Le Magicien et les Nois” by Jean-Pierre Mocky was being filmed, and to 2021, on the set of “Les Volets verts” by Jean Becker. The first to report it, a set designer, talks about events that occurred in September 2021. Depardieu was taking part in the filming of Becker’s film when, one day, while he was sitting in a corridor, he grabbed the woman with his legs, pinning her between her thighs. The alleged victim claims he was then groped on her abdomen, breasts and buttocks. The actor also allegedly told her “I’ll plant my big umbrella in your sex.” The woman is a 53-year-old mother of a family, who spoke to the investigators of a “wolf trap” that she felt closing on her, with a “phenomenal force” on his part. So much so that it would have taken the intervention of a third person to free her from Depardieu’s legs that were holding her tight. The film team pushed the actor to apologize and, according to what was gathered from the testimonies, he did so by stating “I apologize because I have to apologize…”. But later, he would then insult her throughout the filming, calling her a “whore”. Later, the woman explained that she has no longer been able to work since then, and that she suffers from anxiety attacks and post-traumatic stress. In a letter sent to Le Figaro last October, Gérard Depardieu provided the “truth” about him, denying the accusations.
The second to file a complaint told the regional newspaper Le Courrier de l’Ouest that, a few days before the shooting of the short film “Le Magicien et les Nois” in March 2014, all the technical staff and actors went to Depardieu’s house, in the central rue du Cherche-midi in Paris, to prepare for the filming. On that occasion, an assistant who was 24 years old at the time, claims to have suffered sexual harassment. Depardieu would have touched her lower back, addressing her obscene phrases. At the beginning of filming, the actor crossed her again and repeated the physical harassment of her, then touched her in her private parts and uttered explicit sentences. Finally, Gérard Depardieu has been under investigation since 2020 for rape and sexual violence against the actress Charlotte Arnould. The actress Hélène Darras had also sued Depardieu for sexual violence during the filming of a film in 2007, but the crime was statute barred. In Spain, Depardieu is the subject of a complaint by the journalist and writer Ruth Baza, who accuses him of having raped her in 1995. “Never, ever – wrote Depardieu in the letter to Le Figaro – have I abused a woman”.
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