Depardieu accuser in apparent suicide on day of TV exposé
‘Depardieu indulged in many things during the shoot... slipping his big paw under my petticoats’
‘In light of this new information, an investigation has been launched’
A FRENCH actress who accused Gérard Depardieu of sexual assault has died after throwing herself into the Seine from a bridge in Paris.
Emmanuelle Debever, 60, had starred with Depardieu in the 1982 film Danton.
The apparent suicide took place on the day that a French investigative TV programme aired extracts of Depardieu, 74, making obscene sexual comments about a 10-year-old girl and appearing to grope his interpreter’s bottom while visiting North Korea.
An investigation into the cause of death has been opened. The Paris prosecutor’s office said that on Nov 29, Ms Debever’s partner reported she “had left home leaving a disturbing note”.
A connection was then made with the discovery of “a woman who had jumped from a bridge into the Seine”, it added.
She was “revived by the fire brigade” and “taken to hospital” but died a week later.
“The media then reported that the actress had complained of inappropriate behaviour on the part of Gérard Depardieu, notably in a post on Facebook in 2019", added the public prosecutor.
In her Facebook post, Debever recounted the shooting of Danton in 1982. “The monstre sacré (Depardieu) indulged in many things during the shoot... Taking advantage of the privacy of a carriage. Slipping his big paw under my petticoats to supposedly get a better feel of me. Me, not letting him get to me", she wrote.
“In the light of this new information, an investigation into the cause of death has been opened", it went on.
The Depardieu documentary, Gérard Depardieu, the fall of the Ogre’, also contains testimony from a fellow French actor, Helene Darras, who accuses Depardieu of groping her while they were working on the 2007 film Disco.
Darras, who was working as an extra, was 26 at the time of the alleged incident.
Paris prosecutors confirmed yesterday that she had filed a legal complaint. They now must decide whether or not to investigate.
Depardieu has been under investigation since December 2020 for rape and sexual assault following another complaint by actress Charlotte Arnould who said the actor raped her twice at his Paris home in August 2018.
Since then, a dozen other women have accused him in the press.
Depardieu has denied any wrongdoing. In a letter to Le Figaro in October, Depardieu insisted that he was “neither a rapist nor a predator”. “Never, but never have I abused a woman,” he wrote, saying that he would not be getting involved in “any projects” given the “context” of the allegations made against him.
Some have come out in his defence. Nathalie Baye said: “Gerard Depardieu is one of the actors with whom I’ve worked the most. I don’t recognise that man (portrayed by his accusers). I’ve worked with him a lot and have never had the slightest problem.”
However, in further testimony, Anouk Grimberg, a friend of Depardieu’s for the past 30 years, this week said she and the rest of the French cinema industry had let him get away with unacceptable behaviour for too long.