Johnny Depp Arrives 40 Minutes Late to Cannes Presser

Johnny Depp was 40 minutes late for his Cannes press conference this morning, but Jeanne du Barry’s audience could have cared less. A visibly emotional Depp later watched as he and his film received a standing ovation from viewers at the film festival in the Grand Theatre Lumière. However, beforehand, Depp spoke out at the presser touching on the Amber Heard trial (“In regards to me and my life, the majority of what you’ve read is fantastically horrifically written fiction”) and his current standing in Hollywood.

After being asked by Deadline whether he still felt boycotted by Hollywood, as he expressed in a Sunday Times interview in August 2021, the Oscar nominee answered, “Did I feel a boycott by Hollywood? Well, you’d have to not have a pulse to feel at that point, ‘None of this is happening, it’s just a weird joke, or I have been asleep for 35 years.’ Of course, when you’re asked to resign from a film you’re doing because of something that is merely a bunch of kind of vowels and consonants floating in the air, you feel a boycott.”

Where's Johnny Depp? He was 40 minutes late to his own #Cannes presser pic.twitter.com/u0C9MX80sF

— Deadline (@DEADLINE) May 17, 2023

“Do I feel a boycott now? No, not at all. I don’t feel boycotted by Hollywood because I don’t think about Hollywood. I don’t have much further need for Hollywood myself,” he continued. “I think it’s a very strange, funny time where everybody wants to be themselves, but they can’t, they must fall in line, conform, and if you want to lead this life, I’ll be on the other side.” 

There is plenty of hype about Jeanne du Barry as the actor’s big-screen comeback movie after a three-year hiatus, during which time he fought and won a long-running defamation suit against his ex-wife Heard in the courts. However, Depp challenged the notion that he was making a comeback.

“They’re using it as a kind of catchphrase. ‘The guy’s making a comeback.’ I’ve had about 17 comebacks by the way, apparently,” he said. “I keep wondering about the word ‘comeback’ because I didn’t go anywhere, he added. “As a matter of fact, I live about 45 minutes away, so, yeah. Maybe, maybe people stopped calling. I don’t know what their fear was at the time. I didn’t go nowhere. I’ve been sitting around. So ‘comeback’ is almost like I’m going to come out and do a tap dance or something like that.”

According to Deadline, when asked how he felt about the controversy surrounding his Cannes appearance, particularly those who opposed his presence, Depp replied, “What if they said to me, I cannot go to McDonald’s for life because somewhere if you got them all in one room, 39 people saw me 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 light from a computer screen? Anonymous.” 

Depp stars in Jeanne du Barry as Louis XV, while director Maiwenn has the role of his newly recruited mistress, Countess Jeanne du Barry. The actor commented on Ma’wenn’s brazen decision to cast a non-French actor as King Louis. Despite having already reached out to some French actors who passed on the part, the filmmaker found Depp to be unique, not just because of his extended residency in France but also because he has an intimate knowledge of its politics, arts, and cinema.

“He knew more about Louis VX than I did,” the filmmaker admitted.

“I was surprised to be chosen for this role,” said Depp, “Yeah, I thought someone had made a terrible mistake.” “Maybe you want to try a French guy as King Louis,” he said, “She thought about it for a second. I thought about it for a second. It was brave of her to choose some hillbilly from Kentucky….”

Later, Depp said he aimed to portray Louis XV so effectively that the audience would forget it was him. “You need to figure out a way that the viewer can forget who you are, all the baggage you carry… that was my biggest hope that the viewer would forget who had in front of him,” said the star.