French actor Gerard Depardieu questioned over alleged sexual assaults • FRANCE 24 English

Intro here in France police have summoned screen Legend Gerard deu over two separate incidents of suspected sexual assault the 75-year-old actor is now being held for questioning depu is being interrogated over two women's allegations that he assaulted them one on a film set in 2014 and the other on another shoot in 2021 the actor has also been accused by more than a dozen other women of harassing groping or sexually assaulting them he was handed preliminary rape and sexual assault charges in 201 20 following allegations from actor Charlotte ALU DEA denies any wrongdoing we're going to talk a bit more about all of this with Eric Randolph who's the culture editor at AFP Eric thanks for taking the time to speak to us today uh just first of all this is not the first time that J deer has faced accusations he already faces a rape charge claims of assault from more than a dozen women he strongly denied all of these is anything different this time uh well I think it's more case that these allegations against him have been building for a long time as youve stated he was already facing rape allegations there have been uh and he's been preliminar charged with those there have been other rape allegations by a Spanish journalist uh in Spain there was another rape allegation that was dropped due to statute of limitations and there have been a steady stream of uh reports in the Press uh women coming forward with testimonies of him being sexually aggressive on set um and it it's just been building and building over s quite a period of time and there was also a documentary just before Christmas in which he was caught on film making very lwd comments in front of a female interpreter during a trip to North Korea and I think that just the steady stream of these allegations has has really been building to uh to a critical point and now he's being questioned uh officially on the most recent allegations uh it's taking it to another more serious stage H and Has the Me Too movement arrived in France deu is not the only person of prominence in the French film world to have faced accusations like this over the past few months French Cinema has been rocked by allegations that it as a whole has Shrugged off sexism and sexual abuse for decades has the meoo movement finally arrived in France for good yes well that that it's often been said that that France was quite reluctant to follow Hollywood's uh lead uh in the me tooo Reckoning that happened a few years ago uh there was even a sense that it was somehow an UNF French thing to to tackle uh male aggression on film sets and we even had some actresses such as the icon Kine dener um joining a petition calling saying that men should be allowed to continue to hit on women and pushing back against some of me too but I think there was in there were V at various stages there have been New Waves of allegations that have made it harder and harder for French cinar to ignore that and in particular there was the case of a actress Judith godes who recently came for with allegations of how she was raped and sexually assaulted when she was a minor by two directors and that actually ended up with her giving evidence in front of the Senate uh the first time that had been done and just seeing a lot more concrete uh demands for Action uh for protecting people on set and I think it I think you know somebody put it that there's going to be an after Depo he's become somewhat the poster boy in negative way uh for this and it it's just it's just reached a point where I think it's hard to go back uh whether there's any real change uh behind the scenes that's still something to work on but I think it's it's definitely become harder for France to ignore this and say it's just part of their um culture it definitely does seem A split in French Cinema that there is a major split in French Cinema still despite what you're saying this before and after de deio even within wider Society I mean you have some French people defending his right to presumption of innocence others supporting his accusers uh I mean do you still notice that split going on today or do you think that those people who had so far been backing deer even the French President Emanuel macron might start to change their tune well let you say I think well you're right to mention mron because he he got in quite a lot of trouble when he said that there had been a Manhunt against Depo uh the problem with dep is he is still a huge huge star in France he's done over 200 movies uh he is really part of the fabric of French Cinema it's very hard for people to accept that he has to be um completely written out of of the history books because his films are still such a legendary part of the culture um which is a problem that everyone is wrestling with in different parts of the world and certainly there's a huge backlash against the idea of of canceling him and I think macron has tried to defend himself and I think he speaks for a lot of people by making the case that there you know so far he has not been judged guilty of any of these actions and he himself Depo has denied any wrongdoing whatsoever in very strong terms um and so you know there is still this ongoing debate over whether uh even with all of these accusations against him there is any actual proof or until we've seen him condemned whether it's right to have this what he would call a media lynching um um but uh I I think the scale of the accusations against him are making it very difficult for people to associate themselves with him and while initially he did continue to get film roles and was still a public figure uh we now are seeing more and more people within the film industry distancing themselves from him uh and uh he was barred from publicity work from uh his one of his films last year uh and he's becoming a bit of a liability