Having opened the Cannes Film Festival last year, Johnny Depp’s latest film finally has its UK release.

The 60-year-old actor stars as Louis XV opposite Maïwenn (who also directs) as the titular Jeanne du Barry, the King of France’s mistress in the years prior to the French Revolution.

Arriving at the Curzon Mayfair last night which Express.co.uk was attending, the pair took to the UK premiere’s stage to give an improved and slightly eccentric introduction to their French-language period drama.

Clambering up on to the platform the Pirates to the Caribbean star joked: “I’d like to thank Maïwenn for helping me up the steps, she’ll probably help me down in a moment. This is Maïwenn.”

Maïwenn said: “Thank you for coming, I’m not very good at introducing movies because if I tell you what the movie is about, you’re maybe going to be disappointed.”

Depp interjected: “But if I tried to tell you what the movie was about… you will be completely confused. She’s certainly the best to tell you what the movie’s about. Wanna speak in French? I’d really like to translate… Don’t let me translate, I will just say stupid things.”

After she declined to be translated by the Jack Sparrow star, who speaks entirely in French as the King in Jeanne du Barry, Maiwenn added: “This is a movie I’ve wanted to make since 2016 and I was obsessed by Jeanne for many years because she was a feminist before everybody else.”

And then Depp went into an amusing tongue-in-cheek bit about his being cast as the King of France.

Depp added: “I’m very lucky to have been strangely, oddly, sort of perversely lucky because when Maïwenn actually met and talked about the notion of me doing the film and playing the King of France, see that’s what instantly happens in your brain you instantly go back to Kentucky – everything, everything is fried. So you’ve realised you’ve come from the bellybutton of nowhere and then you end up playing the King of France.”

He joked: “It made no sense to me, I tried to talk her out of it. She wasn’t hearing it and she had she great courage to take me into her cast. The film was… whatever we did, whatever we experienced, I think and I hope you’ll find it was well worth the agony of this kid [referring to Maïwenn] trying to make a film for that length of time. Thank you very much.”

Jeanne du Barry hits UK cinemas on April 19, 2024.