A new look at Johnny Depp’s first feature film in three years has officially arrived. On Wednesday, France’s Why Not Productions unveiled a first teaser image for Jeanne du Barry, an upcoming historical film starring Depp. The promo image, which you can check out below, showcases Depp as King Louis XV. The film will be directed by Maïwenn, who also stars in the project as the titular character. Production reportedly began on July 26th in France, and will last for 11 weeks.
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Jeanne du Barry will be “freely inspired” by the life of Jeanne Bécu who was born as the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished seamstress in 1743, and went on to rise through the Court of Louis XV to become his last official mistress. Other cast members will include Louis Garrel, Pierre Richard and Noemie Lvovsky.
This comes following the ongoing legal proceedings involving Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard, with Depp suing the actress for libel after she penned an op-ed about their past marriage in The Washington Post, in which she claimed that the actor verbally and physically abused her throughout their relationship. Depp and Heard’s legal troubles have gone on for several years now, after Heard divorced the actor and obtained a temporary restraining order from him in May of 2016. Their relationship was also the driving force behind a previous libel lawsuit that Depp filed against the British tabloid The Sun, after the publication referred to Depp as a “wife-beater” in a 2018 article.
Depp went on to lose both the initial suit and the subsequent appeal, and resigned from his role as Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise just days later. In the aforementioned 2018 article in The Washington Post, Heard spoke about how her comments surrounding domestic and sexual violence have negatively impacted her role in the entertainment industry, particularly with efforts to blacklist her.
“Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress — that I would be blacklisted,” Heard wrote at the time. “A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me.”
Depp has previously argued that the legal drama has led to him being “cancelled” by the entertainment industry.
“It can be seen as an event in history that lasted for however long it lasted, this cancel culture, this instant rush to judgement based on what essentially amounts to polluted air,” Depp claimed in a 2021 interview. “It’s so far out of hand now that I can promise you that no one is safe. Not one of you. No one out that door. No one is safe. It takes one sentence and there’s no more ground, the carpet has been pulled. It’s not just me that this has happened to, it’s happened to a lot of people. This type of thing has happened to women, men. Sadly at a certain point they begin to think that it’s normal. Or that it’s them. When it’s not.”
“It doesn’t matter if a judgement, per se, has taken some artistic license,” Depp continued. “When there’s an injustice, whether it’s against you or someone you love, or someone you believe in – stand up, don’t sit down. ‘Cause they need you.”
h/t: Deadline
