Johnny Depp said he felt “strangely, oddly, perversely lucky” to have been offered the role of French King Louis XV at the U.K. premiere of his new film “Jeanne du Barry.”
Depp was accompanied by the film’s co-star and director Maïwenn on stage at the Curzon theater in Mayfair, where the duo briefly introduced the film.
“I feel very lucky to have been [offered the role] – strangely, oddly, perversely lucky,” he said on stage in London during a rare public appearance. “Because when Maïwenn and I first actually met and talked about the notion of me doing the film and playing Louis XV, the King of France — see that’s when instantly what happens in your brain is you instantly go back to Kentucky, where, like, everything is fried. So you realise that you’ve come from the bellybutton of nowhere and suddenly you end up playing the King of France.”
“It made no sense to me, I tried to talk her out of it,” he continued. “But she wasn’t hearing it and she had great courage to take me into her cast. Whatever we did, whatever we experienced I think and I hope you’ll find it was well worth the agony of this kid trying to make a film for that length of time.”
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Maïwenn also made a brief speech in which she explained she had wanted to make “Jeanne du Barry” since 2016, explaining she was “obsessed by Jeanne for many years because she was a feminist before everybody else.”
The film, one of Depp’s first since his protracted legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard, opened last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it earned a seven-minute standing ovation for the actor and director.
The crowd in London on Monday evening, which included Depp’s “Pirates of the Carribean” co-star Mackenzie Crook, were similarly enamored, applauding as the actor took to the stage.