Paris (EFE)
These stories, published this Wednesday by the information site Médiapart, add to a judicial investigation that Depardieu has opened for an alleged rape, following a complaint filed by actress Charlotte Arnould for events that happened in 2018.
Among the thirteen new testimonies (some of them anonymous and others under pseudonyms), three alleged victims have already provided their testimony to the Justice, but without filing complaints.
Among them are both performers and members of the technical filming teams in productions such as the Netflix series “Marseille” (“Marseille”, 2016-2018).
According to Médiapart, they have all made similar stories about Depardieu’s alleged way of acting and have said that the events occurred in public.
Unauthorized touching and aggressive behavior
They include touching without permission, taking advantage of his status of power and fame, and aggressive behavior by the actor when his victims tried to reject him.
Faced with these accusations, the lawyers for the protagonist of films such as “Cyrano de Bergerac” (1990), who was one of the best-known faces in French cinema worldwide for years, deny “any criminal conduct”, according to Mediapart.
The accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior are not the only controversies in which this face of the saga “Asterix and Obelix” (1999-2012), who is currently 74 years old, has been involved.
In 2013, he adopted Russian nationality in protest of the fiscal policies of the then-president, the socialist François Hollande, and regularly praised Vladimir Putin’s Russia as “a great democracy.” However, he has spoken out against the invasion of Ukraine.