Ian McKellen is teasing Johnny Depp’s upcoming Hollywood return in Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol.
“He’s in spankingly good form,” McKellen told Variety in an interview on Wednesday, April 8. “Effervescent, funny, irreverent, serious — all at the same time. It was a bit of a love fest, really. I fell in love with him. He’s very obliging to his fellow actors. [There was] a wonderful feeling on the set.”
Depp, 62, plays Ebenezer Scrooge in the upcoming fantasy film based on Charles Dickens‘ classic, A Christmas Carol. He is joined by McKellen, 86, as Scrooge’s former business partner, Jacob Marley. The cast of the Ti West-directed movie also includes Andrea Riseborough as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Severance’s Tramell Tillman as the Ghost of Christmas Present, Harry Potter star Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, and Sam Claflin and Daisy Ridley in unspecified roles.
“It was only six days, but it was well worth it. I play a ghost!” McKellen said of his role in the movie, which is set for release in November.
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The Paramount Pictures film marks Depp’s first major Hollywood role since 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Amid the actor’s legal battles with the U.K.’s Sun newspaper and ex-wife Amber Heard, Depp was asked to step down from his role as dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald in 2022’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
The role was recast with Mads Mikkelsen in November 2020 after Depp lost a defamation lawsuit against the publisher of The Sun newspaper, which had branded him a “wife beater” in an April 2018 article following his divorce from Heard, 39.
In a November 2020 judgment, Judge Andrew Nicol ruled that the allegation was “substantially true,” according to court documents obtained by Us Weekly at the time. Nicol said there was sufficient evidence that Depp had physically assaulted the actress at least 12 of the 14 times she claimed he did.
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Days after the verdict, Depp said in an Instagram post that he had “been asked to resign by Warner Bros. from my role as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts and I have respected and agreed to that request.”
“The surreal judgement of the court in the U.K. will not change my fight to tell the truth and I confirm that I plan to appeal. … My resolve remains strong and I intend to prove that the allegations against me are false. My life and career will not be defined by this moment in time,” he said at the time.
Depp’s appeal was denied by Judge Nicol in November 2020 and his application to overturn the judgment was rejected by the U.K. Court of Appeal in March 2021.
In 2022, Depp and Heard were both found liable for defaming one another in a lengthy Virginia trial. The exes settled their claims against one another in December that year.
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Since putting his legal issues behind him, Depp has starred in the independent films Minamata and Jeanne du Barry.
In addition to Ebenezer, Depp will soon be seen in Lionsgate’s Day Drinker, costarring Penélope Cruz and directed by Marc Webb.
