‘They’ve said all kinds of stuff about me, it doesn’t bother me’: Johnny Depp talks returning to the director’s chair with Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness
- ontargetmedia8
- Jul 10
- 5 min read
Johnny Depp’s directorial venture puts a spotlight on artist Amedeo Modigliani. He joins stars Riccardo Scamarcio and Bruno Gouery to tell us more.
When Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani died at the age of 35 in Paris, the city he’d called home for many years, he was still relatively unsuccessful in the art world. His style – modern art characterised by surrealist figures and portraits – wasn’t received well in his lifetime, and by the time he succumbed to tubercular meningitis he still felt under-appreciated.
Since his death, however, he’s become known as a key figure in the modern art movement, having brushed shoulders with the likes of Pablo Picasso during his time in Paris. Now, he’s drawn the attention of Johnny Depp, who has directed Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness, a zoomed-in biopic following the artist over three days in 1916.
Depp, a decorated actor known for the likes of Pirates of the Caribbean, Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is in the director’s chair for the second time in his career, following 1997’s The Brave starring Marlon Brando.
“Listen, they’ve said all kinds of stuff about me. It doesn’t bother me,” says Depp, 62, who dominated headlines in 2022 during the highly publicised defamation trial he won against his ex-wife, Amber Heard.
“The thing about me is I’ve been very, very lucky – I’ve learned a f*** load in this industry not just from experiences and whatnot, but having worked with unbelievably talented people.”
Modigliani’s story appealed to Depp because he was so taken by the wild experimentation of the artist and his contemporaries.
“The styles they created were all so different,” he says.
“It must have scared the s*** out of people.”
Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio, who also appeared in John Wick: Chapter 2 and Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice, stars as the titular artist in the film he describes as ‘an anti-biopic’.
“We’re not using the conventional structure that normally biopic films do…” says the 45-year-old actor.
“Actually, we tell the story of three days of his life in a cathartic, specific, very important moment of his life. He wants to leave Paris… Because he thinks that there is no space for him in that town at that moment. He’s living a terrible life.”
Despite these few days being a particularly bleak time for Modigliani, Scamarcio says he related to the artist’s mental state throughout the story Depp tells.
“I had these moments in my life where I was thinking: ‘Maybe I don’t want to do this job anymore’. When you’re so sad, when you think that you are a good artist… You’ve done so much, and then it’s not working. Not because you’re not good. You are good. You are better than so many others, but you’re not part of the club.”
The star also has a personal connection to Modigliani, having become enchanted by the artist’s work when he was a young boy.
“When I was five, my mother, she’s a painter, she had this big book of Modigliani’s paintings, pictures and sculptures. And I was obsessed about this book,” he says.
“My mother, she kept saying to my father: ‘Why is this child so obsessed with this book?’… Now, after many years, I understand why.
“What I’m trying to say with this anecdote is that Modigliani has always been in my life somehow… I think we all have a Modigliani side inside us, we’ve all felt that dynamic, to not be recognised for what you deserve.”
While it was ill-health that ultimately took Modigliani’s life, his relationships and lifestyle were heavily impacted by the lack of recognition his work received. In the film, we watch as his relationship with English poet and art critic Beatrice Hastings, played by French actress Antonia Desplat, disintegrates as they both struggle to make their mark in their respective fields.
Desplat, who also appeared in the Charlie Hunnam-fronted Apple TV+ series Shantaram, describes the couple’s relationship as ‘chaotic, fiery, and tragic, but filled with love’.
“They’re misunderstood artists and souls, and I think they’re both tortured in their own way,” says the 30-year-old actress.
“They both have egos… They see eye to eye, but sometimes their frustration and their pain of rejection just gets in the way… She’s still outraged not to be recognised for the artist and the writer that she is, and he’s angry for the rejection that he has too. So I think there’s a common pain.”
The story also explores Modigliani’s friendship with two other artists, the French painter Maurice Utrillo and Russian-born Chaïm Soutine, played by Emily in Paris star Bruno Gouery and Northern Irish actor Ryan McParland respectively.
Gouery says he found it interesting to uncover Utrillo’s alcohol dependence, but also his childlike approach to life, as he explored the artist.
“I discovered before the movie that Maurice Utrillo went to an asylum three or four times in his life, (mostly) because of alcohol…” says the 49-year-old French actor.
“But I don’t choose in my character to find the craziness or the alcoholism. I wanted to make him very child(like), because there is a lot of childhood in Maurice Utrillo. The first thing that he buys after selling his paintings, it was a train toy, and he was 30 years old! So he was very like a child.”
In Soutine, McParland found a certain intensity – one that some might perceive as a kind of madness – in the passion he had for documenting the beauty he saw in the world.
“He was a very, very, very, very passionate person, but found beauty in everything,” he says.
“He found beauty in rotting meat. He found beauty in buildings, and found beauty in nature, and animals, and plants, and trees, and colour. If it comes across or it’s perceived maybe as madness… If there’s an intensity that comes around, that’s great, you know, but being stimulated or motivated by things like that was really a unique thing to portray.”
While Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness takes viewers on a humorous and tragic ride through 72 hours in the lives of the Parisian artists, it’s also a rather relatable story. Like his star Scamarcio, Depp says he related to Modigliani’s ‘plight’.
“He was at the mercy of his talents, at the mercy of his mercurial nature… And in this way, I found myself relating to his plight,” the director says.
“And I could see all those that I hold dear… Every artist worth their mortal salt, relating in precisely the same way.
“The choice is that there is no choice. Create, or die…”
Modigliani – Three Days on the Wing of Madness is in cinemas now.
By Rachael Davis, PA Assistant Lifestyle Editor
