The passage from the program “Complément d’investigation” in which actor Gérard Depardieu appears to make comments of a sexual nature about a little girl was “authenticated” by a bailiff, France Télévisions announced on Friday in a statement. This reaction comes after statements by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday on France 5, suggesting that the sequence could have been modified during editing, as previously stated by the actor’s family. The latter has also been indicted for rape since 2020, after a complaint from an actress, Charlotte Arnould.
“I am wary of the context,” said Emmanuel Macron
“There is no doubt and no ambiguity about the fact that it is indeed the young girl in the image who is targeted by Gérard Depardieu’s comments,” assured the public television group, according to which “the report of ‘Additional investigation’ on Gérard Depardieu was carried out with the greatest respect for ethical rules. Mandated on Thursday to “authenticate and certify the images and comments concerned”, a “bailiff was able to view the rushes” (the raw images, without editing), indicated France Télévisions.
He “certifies in his observation that it is a single sequence showing Gérard Depardieu watching an equestrian demonstration”. He also attests “that during the sequence, he was able to note the comments made by Gérard Depardieu and ‘that with the exception of the young girl, only male-looking riders enter the front of the cameras'” .
These images were shot by writer Yann Moix during the actor’s trip to North Korea in 2018, and broadcast in the France 2 investigative magazine “Complément d’investigation” on December 7. We see Gérard Depardieu multiplying misogynistic and insulting remarks while addressing women, and uttering others of a sexual nature when a little girl on horseback appears in the image. This show sparked an intense controversy, after the actor was accused of rape and sexual assault, which he denies.
Asked on Wednesday about the actor in the show “C à vous”, Emmanuel Macron replied: “There are sometimes outbursts over comments made, I am wary of the context (…) I have seen the images, I also heard that there were controversies over the words which were out of step with the images.”