Johnny Depp addresses being boycotted by film industry: ‘When you’re asked to resign from a film…’

After his film Jeanne du Barry opened the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, actor Johnny Depp took part in a press conference the next day where he spoke about his absence from Hollywood these past few years. The actor was involved in several legal issues with his ex-wife Amber Heard, including a defamation trial which he won. Johnny addressed the question of being boycotted by Hollywood and also added that most of what was written about him was ‘horrifically written fiction’. (Also read: Cannes Film Festival opens with Johnny Depp’s comeback film, Jeanne du Barry)

This was the actor’s first public appearance in four years. Johnny Depp had been dropped from the Harry Potter spinoff series Fantastic Beasts and replaced by Mads Mikkelsen in the last film. The actor’s last film Minamata was in 2020.

Arriving late to the Jeanne du Barry press conference, the actor responded to a question posed by a journalist. He said, “Did I feel boycotted by Hollywood? You’d have to not have a pulse to feel like, ‘No. None of this is happening. It’s a weird joke.’ When you’re asked to resign from a film you’re doing because of something that is merely a function of vowels and consonants floating in the air, yes, you feel boycotted.”

He went to say, “I don’t feel boycotted by Hollywood because I don’t think about Hollywood. It’s a strange, funny time where everybody would love to be able to be themselves, but they can’t. They must fall in line with the person in front of them. If you want to live that life, I wish you the best. The majority of what you read is fantastically, horrifically written fiction. It’s like asking the question, ‘How are you doing?’ But the subtext is, ‘God, I hate you’.”

The French film Jeanne du Barry, directed by Maïwenn, features the director in the title role and Johnny as King Louis XV. Pierre Richard, Benjamin Lavernhe, Noémie Lvovsky, Pascal Greggory and Melvil Poupaud are also part of the cast.

Recently, Johnny announced that he would be directing his second film, Modi, a biopic of Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani. The film features Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, French actor Pierre Niney and Al Pacino.