No second degree for Gérard Depardieu. Through his lawyer, the French actor withdrew the appeal against the sentence which in May 2025 had sentenced him to a suspended sentence of one and a half years for having harassed two collaborators on the set of Les Volets Verts, in 2021. The verdict therefore becomes irrevocable. The hearing was scheduled for next Monday. The judicial front linked to Charlotte Arnould's complaint remains open: the judges will rule on the interpreter's appeal on 26 November.
Gérard Depardieu's conviction for sexual harassment is now irrevocable. A few days before the start of the second degree trial, scheduled for Monday, the actor's defense announced the withdrawal of the appeal. The sentence established by the Paris court on 13 May 2025 remains in force: one and a half years of imprisonment, suspended on parole.
What changes with the withdrawal of the appeal
By giving up the appeal, the seventy-seven-year-old interpreter, who has French and Russian citizenship, effectively accepts the outcome of the first instance. The story concerns two women involved in 2021 in the production of Les Volets Verts, a film directed by Jean Becker: a 54-year-old decorator, Amélie, and a 34-year-old assistant director, referred to by her fictitious name Sarah.
Because the court found the victims credible
In their reasons, the judges had given weight to the linearity of the two women's stories, which had remained stable over time. On the contrary, the version provided by the actor had changed significantly from the time of the arrest until the trial. The reading of the device took place just as the Cannes Film Festival was opening, the event in which Depardieu had been awarded best actor in 1990 for Cyrano de Bergerac.
Defense behavior and secondary victimization
During the four days of hearings, the strategy of the lawyer Jérémie Assous, Depardieu's lawyer, who harshly attacked the civil parties, accusing them of lying, also caused discussion. An attitude censured by the president of the college and which led the judges to recognize secondary victimization, a hypothesis rarely accepted in French courtrooms.
What happened on set in September 2021
According to what was reconstructed in the courtroom, the facts reported by the decorator date back to September 2021, in an apartment in the 16th Parisian arrondissement used as a location. The woman was illustrating the work on the sets to the actor when, she said, he blocked her by grabbing her by the hips and accompanying the gesture with sexual comments. The assistant director reported similar episodes, repeated on three different occasions during filming.
The other charges and the appeal in the Charlotte Arnould case
The face of over two hundred films, in recent years Depardieu has been called into question by several women for sexual violence. Some of the complaints are no longer prosecutable due to statute of limitations, while others are still standing. The best known is that of the actress Charlotte Arnould, the first to file a complaint, in 2018. The actor, who has always declared himself innocent since the indictment in 2020, has appealed the decision which sends him back to trial: the outcome of the appeal is expected on November 26th.
