"I've had my 17th comeback, apparently," he said. "I didn't go anywhere. As a matter of fact, I live about 45 minutes away. Maybe people stopped calling out of whatever their fear was at the time. But I didn't go nowhere."
He also dismissed most of what has been written about him in recent years as "fantastically, horrifically written fiction" and suggested that the criticisms were coming from only a few people. He used McDonald's metaphors to illustrate his point, such as "What if one day, they did not allow me to go to McDonald’s for life because somewhere there’d be 39 angry people watching me eat a Big Mac on a loop?"
He added: "Who are they? What do they care?"
Cannes juror Brie Larson, who is a former adviser to Time's Up, a movement that raises money to support victims of sexual harassment, was asked to comment on Depp's controversies ahead of the festival's opening night. She did not say whether she planned to see "Jeanne du Barry", adding "I don't know how I'll feel about it if I do." She was later photographed inside the theater.
Cannes director Thierry Frémaux defended the choice to open with Depp's film, saying "If there’s one person in this world who didn’t find the least interest in (Depp's) very publicized trial, it’s me. I don’t know what it’s about. I care about Johnny Depp as an actor."
"Jeanne du Barry" is based on the historical figure of Madame du Barry, who was the last official mistress of Louis XV before the French Revolution. The film has been described as a lavish costume drama with elements of comedy and romance. Maïwenn said she offered Depp's role to several French actors who passed before reaching out to him.
"I wanted to feel strongly about the actor, particularly as I would be hugging and kissing him later on," she said.
Maïwenn herself has been involved in a controversy earlier this year when she was accused of spitting on a journalist who was investigating multiple claims of sexual abuse against the director Luc Besson, who had a son with Maïwenn when she was just 16. Besson denied the accusations and faced no charges after an inquiry by the French authorities.
Maïwenn did not address that incident at the news conference and questions to her were mostly kept to a minimum.
Depp has not starred in a major Hollywood film since 2018's "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald", where he played the villainous wizard Gellert Grindelwald. He was asked to resign from the role last year after losing his defamation suit against The Sun newspaper in Britain, which called him a "wife beater" in reference to Heard's allegations.
Depp has several other projects in the works, including "Minamata", a drama about a photojournalist who exposes mercury poisoning in Japan; "City of Lies", a thriller about the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.; and "Waiting for the Barbarians", an adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's novel about colonialism.
Heard has not publicly commented on Depp's new film or his Cannes appearance. She is currently filming "Aquaman 2", where she reprises her role as Mera.