Gérard Depardieu will not attend his trial on charges of sexual assault, related to events on the set of the film The Green Shutters in 2021, which is due to kick off in Paris on Monday afternoon.
The French actor’s lawyer Jérémie Assous said the Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac star had been advised against attending the hearings in person for health reasons, and that the actor was seeking a postponement.
“Gérard Depardieu is extremely affected and unfortunately, his doctors have forbidden him from appearing at the hearing,” Assous said in an interview with RTL France.
The actor is being tried on charges of sexual assault allegedly committed against two women on the set of the film The Green Shutters in 2021.
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The trial is being viewed as a test case for #MeToo in France with the media backlash against the star, who is hailed as one of the country’s greatest actors, dividing the local film industry.
The hearing comes less than a week after another high-profile #MeToo trial in which French actor and director Nicolas Bedos was sentenced to one-year in prison with six months suspended, after being found guilty of sexually assaulting two women in separate incidents in 2023. He denies the charges and is appealing the verdict and sentence.
Assous said Depardieu was not trying to avoid standing trial.
“It is anything but an escape, on the contrary, he wants to be heard by these judges. He wants the truth to come out, because for the time being everything you have heard, and I say this to your listeners, is false information, disinformation and inaccuracies,” he told RTL France.
Assous, who had originally told the press on Sunday that Depardieu would be in attendance, was questioned on the change of plan.
“Gérard Depardieu was expecting to attend, but Gérard Depardieu has doctors, Gérard Depardieu is 75 years old and has been diabetic for 25 years, and his doctors said ‘no’,” he replied.
“It’s a physical problem, and in fact we’ve written to the court making it clear that we’re open to them doing an official examination.”
The trial follows in the wake of multiple allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior against Depardieu on and off the set over the course of his career, but marks the first time he has been tried officially in the courts for sexual assault.
Depardieu also faces an official complaint of two acts of rape dating back to 2018 by actress Charlotte Arnould, which is currently making its way through the courts. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office requested in August that the actor stand trial in a criminal court on the charges, and a decision is pending.
The actor has vehemently denied the rape allegations and mounting sexual assault accusations against him, even publishing an open letter in Le Figaro newspaper in October 2023, suggesting his acts had been misinterpreted.
The letter followed a detailed investigative report by French investigative news website Médiapart in April 2013, in which 13 women accused the actor of sexually inappropriate behavior.
Two months after the open letter, Depardieu came under further public scrutiny following the broadcast of a bombshell edition of investigative show Complément d’Enquête, which probed these historic accusations as well as other acts of inappropriate behavior.
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