French actor Gérard Depardieu is still trending on X (formerly known as Twitter), after a documentary released earlier this week showed him making repulsive remarks about women.
‘Gérard Depardieu: La Chute de l’ogre’ (Gérard Depardieu: the fall of the ogre), was broadcast by France 2 on Thursday. It features exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from a film that the French star was shooting in North Korea in 2018.
“J’ai une poutre dans le caleçon !”
🔴 #ComplementDenquete a récupéré des images jamais dévoilées de Gérard Depardieu lors d’un voyage en Corée du Nord en 2018.
L'acteur a multiplié les commentaires obscènes à l’encontre des femmes qu’il croise.
▶️ Ce soir à 23h sur France 2 pic.twitter.com/dtOrb2AHF3
— Complément d'enquête (@Cdenquete) December 7, 2023
Much of the documentary takes place in a horse stable, where Depardieu makes multiple claims that women enjoy riding horseback because they are sexually stimulated by the activity.
He is also caught telling a female interpreter: “I weigh 124 kilos, without an erection. With an erection, I’m 126 kilos”.
Depardieu later tells the same woman “I have a girder in my underpants.”
The footage drew anger from feminists across France, with Senator Mélanie Vogel describing the actor as a “dark piece of trash”.
Sexual assault allegations
In September Helene Darras, a fellow actor, filed a sexual assault complaint against Depardieu with French prosecutors.
Darras said that she was assaulted in 2007, adding to a string of allegations targeting the French star.
The actor told France 2 that Depardieu groped her when she was aged 26 and appearing as an extra in the film “Disco”.
He “ran his hand over my thighs and my buttocks” then “said straight out: ‘Do you want to come to my dressing room?’,” she added.
Darras said she rejected his alleged advances, but “that didn’t change anything,” she went on. “He kept groping me between takes”.
The actor said she “couldn’t give a damn” if the allegations are too old to be investigated.
Darras “wanted to respond to the defence that plays down our allegations by saying they’re ‘just’ witness accounts,” she told AFP.
Depardieu in 2020 was charged in Paris after allegations of rapes and sexual assaults following a complaint by actor Charlotte Arnould.
Other women have since accused Depardieu of sexual violence in the press.
In a letter to conservative newspaper Le Figaro in October, Depardieu insisted that he is “neither a rapist nor a predator.”
“Never, but never have I abused a woman,” he wrote, saying that he would not be getting involved in “any projects” given the “context” of the allegations.
Member comments