"What did you think of what my husband said about Depardieu?" This was the first question – asked in a worried voice – from First Lady Brigitte Macron to the C à Vous team, on Wednesday, December 20. It was around 9:30 pm at the Elysée Palace, and the French TV show was just broadcast live. Over 3.3 million viewers – a record – tuned in to listen to President Emmanuel Macron. The day before, MPs voted on Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin's immigration law, the central subject of the presidential interview from two days earlier. Rewritten and then voted through, thanks to the votes of Les Républicains (LR, center right) and the Rassemblement National (RN, far right), the text provoked a political crisis of unprecedented proportions among Macron-aligned lawmakers and even within the government, whose health minister, Aurélien Rousseau, resigned.

"Depardieu, it must be addressed," said Macron that very morning, as he received the C à Vous team to prepare the interview outline. In other words, the French president wanted to talk about it on the show. Two weeks earlier, on December 7, France 2's investigative magazine, Complément d'enquête, created a stir by broadcasting images of the actor, captured five years earlier, during the shooting in North Korea of a film by Yann Moix. In the investigation– whose title "Gérard Depardieu : la chute de l’ogre" ("Gérard Depardieu: The Fall of the Ogre") was almost a premonition – we see and, more importantly, hear the actor spouting off demeaning sexual remarks about women (like his interpreter), as well as about a little girl perched on a pony.

When the subject came up on C à Vous, Macron immediately explained that he is a "grand admirer of Gérard Depardieu." He denounced – as he has always done – a "manhunt" and believes that the actor "makes France proud," as a whole. It was as if the actor had not been under investigation since 2020 for rape and sexual assault, and as if Mediapart, France Inter and Le Monde had not reported multiple accounts of the actor's behavior on set. Recalling the presumption of innocence, Macron did not have a word for the women who claim to be the actor's victims. That evening, Brigitte Macron dreaded the controversy of the days to come.

She guessed right. Nothing is ever in proportion with the most famous star of French cinema. It did not matter that he left the country to escape the scandal; since Complément d'Enquête, he has become, in the space of a few days, a central subject of debate in France. What's more, he has become an "issue" dragging President Macron himself into its radioactive wake, as well as the countries that previously awarded him and the film industry.

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