Gérard Depardieu Hit By Fresh Sexual Misconduct Allegations In Bombshell France 2 Exposé

Melanie Goodfellow
·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

A second woman has filed an official complaint against French actor Gérard Depardieu accusing him of sexual assault.

According to local media reports, French actress Hélène Darras lodged a complaint, related to events on the set of the 2007 dance comedy Disco, with the Paris Prosecutor’s Office on September 10.

More from Deadline

The case was first reported by France 2’s investigative show Complément d’Enquête in teased extracts of an edition devoted to Depardieu and the mounting sexual misconduct allegations against him, which airs at 11pm CET this evening.

The show is also set to reveal 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.

In the show’s interview with Darras, she recounts how Depardieu hounded her on the set of Disco when she was a 26-year-old novice actress. She had a small role as a dance competition contestant in the comedy, directed by Fabien Onteniente and starring Franck Dubosc with Depardieu in a supporting role.

“He was unmanageable,” she said of Depardieu. “He looked at me as if I were a piece of meat. I was wearing a very tight dress [as her costume]. He came up to me and then passed his hand over my hips and buttocks.”

Darras said she had refrained from saying anything to the production at the time for fear of being ostracized by the film and TV profession.

“I was an extra. I hadn’t even finished theatre school. I really wanted to be an actress and I didn’t want to be blacklisted at 26,” she told the show.

The actress added that she had felt a sense of emptiness and invisibility after the incident and that it had taken its toll on her psychologically.

“No one could give me back my confidence, nobody could give me back my life, except me.”

Depardieu has been hit by multiple sexual assault allegations in recent years, some dating back decades.

Earlier this year, investigative news website Médiapart published an in-depth report detailing allegations by 13 women. Another two allegations were reported by French radio station France Inter over the summer.

Darras is only the second woman to have gone public about lodging an official complaint against the actor.

She joins actress Charlotte Arnould who filed a complaint in 2018 accusing Depardieu of rape. The case is currently making its way through the courts.

In October, Depardieu published an open letter denying all the allegations against him in Le Figaro newspaper.

He said that Arnould had consensually come to his room and suggested that the other allegations related to his behavior on set were due to misunderstandings.

Arnould’s lawyer Carine Durrieu-Diebolt said she was “shocked and scandalized” by the letter and that she expected the truth of her client’s allegations to be upheld in the courts.

Deadline has also contacted Depardieu’s lawyers at Cabinet Temime for comment on the fresh allegations.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.