As if the endless array of crises he has faced was not enough, Macron is now mixed in a controversy of his own making.
French President Emmanuel Macron is now under fire for his defense of film star and national culture icon Gérard Depardieu, who is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault.
Macron said Depardieu ‘makes France proud’.
France 24 reported:
“‘You will never see me participate in a manhunt’, Macron told the France 5 broadcaster when asked about possibly stripping the actor of a state award. ‘I hate that kind of thing’, he added.”
Macron said that France’s Legioned to Depardieu in 1996, ‘is not a moral tool’ of Honor, award.
Macron’s words clash with Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak’s reaction, as she said the actor’s behavior ‘shamed France,’ arguing that he might be stripped of the Legion, the country’s top award.
“Depardieu, an icon of French cinema with more than 200 films to his name, was charged with rape in 2020 and has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women.”
A recent France 2 TV show showed Depardieu, on a 2018 trip to North Korea, making explicit sexual comments in the presence of a female interpreter and sexualizing a small girl riding a horse.
“In 2017, Macron withdrew the Legion of Honour from Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein after a series of accusations of sexual harassment and rape.”
The pushback against Macron’s reaction is gaining steam. Former French President François Hollande criticized Macron’s recent statements.
Politico reported:
“‘It was expected of the President of the Republic to talk about women, and not simply to say that Gérard Depardieu was a great actor’, Hollande told French radio France Inter. ‘He has made this cause the big deal of his five-year term and this is how he is dealing with the issue of Gérard Depardieu’.
Hollande called out Macron on Thursday for saying nothing about the ‘women who have been attacked, humiliated’, and for choosing instead to cite the actor’s ‘talent’ and ‘presumption of innocence’.”
Hollande’s reaction was hardly the only one. Elle fashion magazine published an op-ed on behalf of the editorial staff that also slams Macron for his statements.
“’No, Mr. President, we’re not proud. Not of Gérard Depardieu. Not of your words’, the op-ed declares. ‘Emmanuel Macron, who no longer cares about being re-elected, has revealed his true face: that of a man who sides with predators; that of a president who made us believe in his commitment to women in order to better betray them’, Elle’s staff added.”
The whole controversy regarding Depardieu’s behavior, which has been ongoing for years, was rekindled when a Spanish journalist and author filed a criminal complaint against the actor, claiming that the film star raped her nearly 30 years ago in Paris.
The Guardian reported:
“In 2021, Depardieu was charged with rape and sexual assault in a case brought by the actor Charlotte Arnould, who alleges he raped her in his Left Bank apartment in Paris in 2018 when she was 22. Depardieu, who said the allegations were ‘baseless’, attempted to have the charges thrown out but a Paris court last year upheld them, saying there was ‘serious and confirmed evidence that justifies Gérard Depardieu to remain charged’.
Depardieu denied allegations of rape and sexual assault in an open letter published in Le Figaro in October. ‘Never, ever have I abused a woman’, the actor wrote. ‘To the media court, to the lynching that has been reserved for me, I have only my word to defend myself’.”
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