CANNES, France — At first, you needed to surprise in the event that they have been working out the clock.

Twenty minutes after the Cannes Film Festival news convention for “Jeanne du Barry” was supposed to start on Wednesday, neither the movie’s actress-director, Maïwenn, nor her lead actor, Johnny Depp, had really proven up.

Were they hoping to keep away from questions? For Maïwenn, who was accused of spitting on a journalist in February, and Depp, who lately received a defamation go well with towards his ex-wife Amber Heard after she made allegations of bodily and sexual abuse, queries about their private scandals might overwhelm all discuss of the film they have been meant to advertise. Both had been in attendance the earlier night time when “Jeanne du Barry” opened the pageant, however Cannes premieres are famously fawning and conclude with a customary standing ovation. Meeting the press could be an entire completely different matter.

Depp, who has not starred in a serious Hollywood movie in 5 years, had already missed the morning photograph name for “Jeanne du Barry,” a French-language drama wherein he performs Louis XV reverse Maïwenn’s titular courtesan. It fell to Maïwenn to shoulder that appointment alone, and 25 minutes after the “Jeanne du Barry” press convention was meant to start out, Maïwenn entered the media room along with her main man nonetheless nowhere to be discovered.

At first, she talked round his absence, revealing that she had initially supplied Depp’s position to a number of French actors who handed. Eventually, she reached out to Depp, reasoning that his nationality was much less vital than her different issues: “I wanted to feel strongly about the actor, particularly as I would be hugging and kissing him later on.”

Questions to Maïwenn have been largely saved to a minimal, and none have been about her altercation with the French journalist Edwy Plenel, who mentioned Maïwenn spat on him in a Paris restaurant — one thing she roughly confirmed — as a result of he had been investigating a number of claims of sexual abuse towards the director Luc Besson, who had a son with Maïwenn when she was simply 16. (Besson denied the accusations, from 9 girls, and the French authorities mentioned that after an inquiry, the director would face no charges. If nothing else, Cannes is a reminder that almost each main determine within the French movie trade has a large “controversy” part on Wikipedia.)

But it was all only a warm-up for Depp, who entered 42 minutes late to intensive muttering from the journalists, then walked over to the dais to kiss Maïwenn on the highest of her head.

Depp, who spoke largely in murmured metaphors, at first mentioned the French-language necessities of the position, however he was quickly requested whether or not he felt that Hollywood had boycotted him after he was bounced from the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise in 2020 as his authorized battles with Heard started to warmth up.

“Of course, if you’re asked to resign from a film you’re doing because of something that is merely a bunch of vowels and consonants floating in the air, yeah, you feel boycotted,” Depp mentioned. “Do I feel boycotted now? No, not at all. But I don’t feel boycotted by Hollywood because I don’t think about it. I don’t have much further need for Hollywood myself.”

The 59-year-old Depp continued, “It’s a very strange, funny time where everybody would love to be able to be themselves but they can’t. They must fall in line with the person in front of them. If you want to live that life, I wish you the best. I’ll be on the other side somewhere.”

Depp’s presence on the pageant has brought on no scarcity of controversy, and although he was cheered on the “Jeanne du Barry” premiere,” an open letter in Liberation, signed by greater than 100 actors, criticized the pageant for permitting him to attend. That missive adopted a blistering open letter revealed by Adèle Haenel, a star of “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” who introduced she could be retiring from the French movie trade due to “its generalized complacency toward sexual aggressors.”

Reminded that there are individuals who suppose he shouldn’t have come to Cannes, Depp launched right into a metaphor about being banned from McDonald’s, then imagined his critics as “39 angry people watching me eat a Big Mac on a loop. Who are they? Why do they care? Some species or tower of mashed potatoes, covered in the light of a computer screen, anonymous, apparently with a lot of spare time. I don’t think I’m the one who should be worried.”

Efforts to steer the dialog again to “Jeanne du Barry” have been largely halfhearted: Depp continued to rail towards the media and his critics, insisting, “For the last five or six years in regards to me, the majority of what you’ve read is fantastically, horrifically written fiction.” But when requested whether or not he felt the movie may result in a profession comeback, Depp was blasé.

“I keep wondering about the word ‘comeback,’” he mentioned. “I didn’t go anywhere. As a matter of fact, I live about 45 minutes away. Maybe people stopped calling out of whatever their fear was at the time. But I didn’t go nowhere. I’ve been sitting around.”