(Paris) French director Nicolas Bedos will be tried in September 2024 in Paris for a “kiss on the neck in a nightclub”, described by the court as “sexual assault”, and for sexual harassment during a another evening of a second woman, her lawyer announced Wednesday.
Son of comedian Guy Bedos, Nicolas Bedos has turned the elite of French cinema, from Jean Dujardin (OSS117: Red Alert in Black Africa) to Isabelle Adjani (Mascarade), including Guillaume Canet and Fanny Ardant.
Nicolas Bedos must appear on September 26 for “sexual assault” on Emma G. in Paris between May 11 and 12, 2023 “by a person in a state of obvious intoxication” and for “sexual harassment” against a second woman, Clémence A ., committed between June 14 and 15, 2018 in Paris, the court confirmed to AFP.
These facts “did not give rise to any complaints”, declared in a message sent to AFP Me Julia Minkowski, who explained that she “took the initiative of publicizing” this trial “to prevent unacceptable untruths from being relayed again around this procedure”.
According to her, the alleged facts are “a kiss on the neck on a woman in a nightclub in May 2023” and “sexual harassment, on the other hand, towards a woman who describes, during a single and same evening in June 2018 at the home of a mutual friend, an insistent and offensive behavior for which Nicolas Bedos apologized at the time.”
According to a source close to the case, Emma G. denounced an unconsensual kiss on the neck and the fact that he forcibly grabbed her by the waist.
On the other hand, “a dismissal of proceedings due to the statute of limitations was decided” concerning facts denounced by two other women, the court said.
Accused of touching in a nightclub by a 25-year-old woman in June 2023, the actor is also already summoned to court in February for sexual assault while drunk.
French cinema is already shaken by the affair of Gérard Depardieu, a national icon, charged with rape, in 2020, and against whom a second complaint for sexual assault was filed for facts a priori prescribed in 2007.
At the beginning of December, the public television channel France 2 broadcast a sequence filmed five years ago in which the actor, who rejects the accusations against him, multiplies misogynistic and insulting remarks while addressing women, not sparing a little girl for his obscene remarks.
