Depardieu to star in Uzbek serial by Karimov's daughter

French actor Gerard Depardieu has agreed to star in a historic serial penned by the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's strongman President Islam Karimov, a screenwriter said. Gulnara Karimova wrote a screenplay for the eight-episode "The Theft of the White Cocoon," a story about the origin of the famed Central Asian silk and set in the 5th-6th centuries in Central Asia. Depardieu travelled to Uzbekistan, a secretive, largely Muslim but secular state with a population of around 30 million, earlier this week, said Akbar Khakimov, who co-wrote the script. "Depardieu visited the ancient Silk Road town of Bukhara on Tuesday and today he held meetings with Uzbek filmmakers to review and discuss his role in the serial," Khakimov, director of the annual Tashkent film festival, told AFP in the Uzbek capital Tashkent late Wednesday. Initial reports said Depardieu would be starring as a wandering monk but he is in fact to play the role of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, the producers said. They said that Depardieu was particularly interested in the Silk Road and during his visit to Uzbekistan this week had visited Tashkent and the historic cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. In an interview with Uzbek television, the French actor heaped praise on the project and confirmed his participation. "There was the Great Silk Road and it is still there," Depardieu said through a translator. "I think this is a great idea to recreate the ancient times and understand the secret of creating silk. For me the story and the project itself is very interesting and I will take part in it with pleasure," he said in comments provided by the project's organisers. Harvard-educated Karimova, 40, has become a public face of the ex-Soviet country, serving as its permanent representative in the United Nations in Geneva and as its ambassador in Spain until last year. She also runs jewellery, cosmetics and clothing lines under her Guli label. But it is as a pop star under the name of GooGoosha that she has attracted the most attention. Her father President Karimov, 74, has ruled Uzbekistan since before the fall of the Soviet Union and has come under fire from the West over the rights situation in the country.