Emmanuel Macron Defends Gérard Depardieu As Third Woman Makes Official Sexual Assault Complaint Against Actor

Melanie Goodfellow
·3 min read
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French President Emmanuel Macron has come out in support of Gérard Depardieu whose star has fallen in France in recent days following the airing of a documentary investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault against the actor.

“One thing you’ll never see me get involved in is a witch hunt. I hate that,” Macron said in an interview with evening talk show C à Vous on Wednesday evening.

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Questioned whether he thought the actor had brought shame on France, Macron replied that he was a “great admirer of Depardieu” and that he “had made France proud.”

Depardieu’s treatment of women on and off the set has been under public scrutiny following the airing of France 2 investigative show Complément d’Enquête on December 7.

Prior to its broadcast, Depardieu already faced one charge of rape in the courts filed by actress Charlotte Arnould in 2018.

The France 2 documentary revealed that a second actress, Hélène Darras, also lodged a sexual misconduct complaint against him this September. An official investigation into the case has yet to be confirmed.

The documentary also featured material capturing Depardieu talking in a sexually inappropriate way to a young female interpreter assigned to him during a visit to North Korea in 2018.

The bombshell report has prompted a public backlash while, for the first time, film industry figures, such as actresses Anouk Grinberg and Brit Van Hoof, have started speaking out about the culture of omertà around Depardieu’s behaviour.

French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak announced last Friday that she had set in place a procedure to decide whether Depardieu should be sanctioned or even stripped of the Legion Of Honor he received from late French President Jacque Chirac in 1996.

“In this report, his attitude is intended to be joking, provocative, but is in fact quite disrespectful, unworthy and shameful to France,” she told the same talk show C à Vous, adding that she been “disgusted” by the actor’s behaviour.

The Legion of honor was created by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 and is the highest French order of merit.

Macron told C à Vous on Wednesday evening that his minister had overstepped the mark with her proposal and that Order of the Legion of Honor “was not there to preach.”

“I’m wary of exaggerated acts… there will always be transgressive artists,” he said, when asked he the actor was likely to be stripped of the honor.

The C à Vous interview came one day after reports that Spanish journalist Ruth Baza had lodged a rape complaint against the actor in Spain in relation to an incident that took place during an interview Paris in 1995 when she was 23 years old.

Macron’s rebuttal of Abdul Malak’s Legion of Honor suggestion echoes a statement by Depardieu’s lawyers Béatrice Geissmann Achille and Christian Saint-Palais accusing the minister of undermining the actor’s right to presumption of innocence and also participating in a media lynching.

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