Amber Heard's Friends Are Fuming Over Johnny Depp's New Movie Amid Cannes Premiere
Johnny Depp's new movie Jeanne du Barry was the opening night film at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, and Amber Heard's friends were not happy about it. Depp was celebrated at the festival 11 months after a Virginia jury ruled in favor of most of Depp's defamation claims against his ex-wife. Heard accused Depp of being physically abusive during their marriage, allegations Depp denied.
Heard's friend, music and culture journalist Eve Barlow, shared a meme with the hashtag #CannesYouNot over the weekend. "If you support Cannes, you support predators," the meme reads. Barlow's post also included other memes with comments Depp made about Heard that came to light during the trial last year. Another slide asked, "Why does Cannes platform predators?"
The image put Depp in the same company as other filmmakers accused of abuse, including Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, and Woody Allen. "The other people in this post are alleged or convicted child predators and rapists; that is not Johnny. He won his trial and he was not accused of anything like this," a source close to Depp told Page Six.
On Tuesday, Barlow took Cannes jury member Brie Larson to task for not speaking out against Depp. During the pre-festival press conference, a journalist asked Larson if she would attend the Jeanne du Barry premiere. "You're asking me that?" Larson said. "I'm sorry, I don't understand the correlation or why me specifically." The journalist later pointed out that Larson was a board member for the now-defunct Time's Up group. "You'll see, I guess, if I will see it. And I don't know how I'll feel about it if I do," Larson replied.
"Wow, this is a reincarnation of what it must have looked like to a fly on the wall when any woman of note panicked about how to get away with not publicly speak out during the trial last year. 'WHERE IS THE EXIT BUTTON????'" Barlow tweeted. She later added, "This is the power of Johnny Depp. Nobody will speak out because of the steer this man has in Hollywood. Amber stood alone."
Cannes director Thierry Fremaux defended choosing Jeanne du Barry to open the film, adding that he didn't pay attention to the Depp-Heard trial. "To tell you the truth, in my life, I only have one rule, it's the freedom of thinking, the freedom of speech, and the freedom to act within a legal framework," Fremaux said Monday. "If Johnny Depp had been banned from acting in a film, or the film was banned, we wouldn't be here talking about it."
Jeanne du Barry was directed, co-written, and co-produced by actress Maïwenn, who also stars as the title character. Depp plays King Louis XV. The film earned a standing ovation, but the reviews were not great from American critics. "Even the casting – some would say stunt casting – of Johnny Depp as the king offers a few early thrills and then mostly yawns, with Depp dishing out what feels like a total of a dozen lines in respectable French, while otherwise remaining mute," The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer wrote. Indiewire's Ben Croll gave the film a B-, calling it "more frustrating than a misfire." Jeanne du Barry does not have an American distributor.
Depp will next head to London to perform at a memorial concert for guitarist Jeff Beck. He also recently scored a new Dior deal, worth up to $20 million, and is planning to direct Al Pacino in Modi. Meanwhile, Heard will next be seen in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which hits theaters on Dec. 20. In December, Heard announced she made the "very difficult decision" to settle the defamation case with Depp, ending the legal matter.
"It's important for me to say that I never chose this. I defended my truth and in doing so my life as I knew it was destroyed," Heard wrote on Dec. 19, 2022. "The vilification I have faced on social media is an amplified version of the ways in which women are re-victimized when they come forward. Now I finally have an opportunity to emancipate myself from something I attempted to leave over six years ago and on terms I can agree to. I have made no admission. This is not an act of concession. There are no restrictions or gags with respect to my voice moving forward."
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