Invited on the set of Elisabeth Quin on Arte in 28 minutes, Emmanuelle Devos was invited to react on the Depardieu affair. To the question, "Could you shoot with Gérard Depardieu today in view of what we know or what is being said?", the actress replies: "I don't know. But I think one thing: Gérard Depardieu is the tree that hides the forest. It's a big, beautiful tree that hides the forest of fifty years of laissez-faire in the film world, and as long as it made money, we left it."
Emmanuelle Devos, who says she has never met the actor, adds that she had only heard of bawdy and not sexual assault. "Everyone was joking about it," she recalls. She denounces film sets where there is "too much power, too much money", issues that are not unrelated to the omerta that reigns in the small world of the seventh art: "We let him do it, and it suited everyone well".
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The actress is pleased to see the word being freed around this affair and is full of hope for the next generation of filmmakers: "We have to [speak out], and all those who are against all this, they are old and they will leave, unfortunately, but that's the way it is. There's a new movement coming, with a revival of cinema, with young directors. They're going to have the keys to the truck and it's up to them to do the work," she said.
'Heads will roll'
Emmanuelle Devos continues: "Those who have abused will get out, that's how it is and I think it's quite healthy. Of course there are heads that will roll that maybe shouldn't have fallen, but that's what revolutions are all about..." The woman who has not signed a single op-ed and has stayed out of the turmoil caused by the Depardieu storm nevertheless tempers her words. She calls for taking a step back from the situation: "You have to try to take a step back. We've got to step up and see what happens in ten years."
The actress thus adopts the same position as her co-star, Daniel Auteuil, who also stars in Un Silence by Joaquim Lafosse. The latter spoke on France Inter on Wednesday. Has the actor realized what was happening on the sets, he who has worked with Gérard Depardieu and who has been practicing this profession for forty years? "It's inherent in all professions, in all walks of life," he replies, before assuring that he has never "noticed anything sufficiently disturbing, or disturbing, otherwise you would think that it would have alerted me and I would have talked about it."
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But above all, Daniel Auteuil wants to be cautious: "I am neither a prosecutor, nor a lawyer, nor a journalist... My testimony would not add anything in particular, given that I do not want to add noise to noise and I am not familiar with these files. But again: I support the lyrics, and I claim these women's words." Is it also a generational issue? "Certainly, but not only," says the actor. It was time, perhaps, for these things to happen. This is something that has always existed unfortunately, and again, in all professions. I don't necessarily like it when people stigmatize cinema, because it's the same everywhere."