A French journalist's new book alleges that Brigitte Macron slapped her husband, President Emmanuel Macron, aboard their plane in Hanoi, Vietnam, after reading a flirtatious text message on his phone from an Iranian-born actress, a claim the first lady's representatives have flatly denied.
The book, titled "An (Almost) Perfect Couple," was written by Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif and published Wednesday. It offers a detailed counter-narrative to the official Elysee Palace explanation of a viral video that surfaced last May showing what appeared to be a physical altercation between the Macrons as they prepared to disembark their aircraft in Vietnam.
At the center of the dispute is the question of what actually happened, and why. Tardif's account points to the 42-year-old actress Golshifteh Farahani, a staunch critic of the Iranian regime in Tehran, who he says maintained a months-long "platonic relationship" with the French president. The Macrons' camp insists the whole thing was a joke between spouses.
In an interview with RTL France, Tardif said he had learned that Macron exchanged messages with Farahani, and that one message in particular, in which the actress allegedly wrote "I find you very pretty", set off a confrontation. Tardif claimed Brigitte Macron, 73, read the message on her husband's phone moments before the incident aboard the plane.
As the New York Post reported, Tardif told RTL France that the discovery of the messages led directly to the scene that cameras captured:
"[This] led to tensions within the couple, which resulted in this private scene becoming public."
An extract from the book, serialized in Paris Match, went further into Brigitte Macron's alleged state of mind:
"What hurt Brigitte was not so much the contents of the message as what it hinted at: a possibility... nothing tangible or that could really be denounced but the idea alone... was enough."
Tardif also quoted a friend of the first lady who described Brigitte Macron's reaction in stark terms: "She saw herself being erased."
The Macrons' side has pushed back hard. A representative for the French first lady issued a categorical denial, stating:
"Brigitte Macron categorically denied this account directly to the author on March 5th, specifying that she never looks at her husband's mobile phone."
A close associate of the president offered a different version of events entirely, describing the video as nothing more than the couple's habitual banter before an official engagement. The associate said it was "a moment when the president and his wife were unwinding one last time before the start of the trip by joking around."
The associate added more detail about the dynamic: "He loves to make jokes about his wife before these kinds of moments when they're about to begin an official engagement. And she always reacts like that." Macron himself reportedly characterized the episode as "joking around" and told people to "calm down."
The pattern of official responses to the video has itself raised questions. When the footage first circulated last year, Macron's team initially suggested the video could have been AI-generated, before shifting to the position that it showed a playful slap. That pivot from "possibly fake" to "real but harmless" did not go unnoticed.
The Elysee Palace did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the book's latest claims.
Farahani herself denied any romantic involvement with Macron. In a statement to Le Point published in March, she dismissed the rumors with evident frustration:
"I think that there is a lack of love for some people and they need to create romances like this to fill [the void]."
Le Parisien had previously reported that Farahani allegedly maintained a "platonic relationship" with Macron for several months. The same outlet carried the account of Brigitte Macron reading the message on her husband's phone just before the filmed incident. But with both the first lady's office and Farahani denying the story, and the book's author relying on unnamed sources, the factual picture remains contested.
High-profile figures caught in the crossfire of leaked messages and private scandals is hardly a new phenomenon. The pattern of institutional leaders facing exposure over inappropriate relationships has become a recurring feature of public life on both sides of the Atlantic.
The sequence of events, pieced together from French media reports and the book's claims, runs roughly as follows. The incident aboard the plane took place in May of last year, during an official trip to Hanoi. The video surfaced publicly around the same time, prompting the initial AI-fabrication claim from Macron's team, followed by the "playful slap" explanation.
Months later, in March, Farahani publicly denied the rumors to Le Point. On March 5, Brigitte Macron's representative said the first lady had directly told Tardif that the book's account was false. Tardif's book then went to print and was published Wednesday, with Paris Match running serialized extracts.
The gap between the incident and the book's publication, roughly a year, gave all parties time to prepare their positions. But it also means the competing narratives have hardened. The Macrons say it was a joke. The book says it was a confrontation sparked by jealousy. And the public is left to weigh an unnamed friend's account against the official denial of a head of state's spouse.
The broader fascination with private messages between powerful figures, and the political fallout when those messages surface, shows no sign of fading.
Tardif is a journalist with Paris Match, one of France's most widely read magazines. His access to the Macron orbit is evident from the level of detail in the book. But the key claims rest on unnamed sources: a "friend of the first lady" and unspecified accounts of the messages between Macron and Farahani. No screenshots or copies of the alleged texts have been published.
On the other side, the Macrons' denial hinges on the assertion that Brigitte never checks her husband's phone, a claim that is, by its nature, impossible to verify from outside the marriage. The close associate's description of the incident as routine spousal humor also asks the public to accept that a slap caught on video during an official state trip is simply how the Macrons unwind.
Neither explanation is fully satisfying. The book offers a motive but relies on anonymous sourcing. The official denial offers a counter-narrative but asks for a generous reading of what the video shows. The Elysee's initial instinct, floating the possibility that the footage was AI-generated, suggests the palace understood from the start that the optics were damaging, regardless of the cause.
When elite institutions face uncomfortable revelations about the private conduct of their leaders, the first response is almost always to minimize. The second is to reframe. The Macron team followed that playbook precisely.
Several questions hang over the story. The exact contents and date of the alleged message from Farahani, beyond the single quoted line, have not been disclosed. The identity of Brigitte Macron's representative who issued the denial has not been made public. Nor has the identity of the "close associate of the president" who described the incident as joking.
Whether the Elysee Palace ever formally retracted its initial suggestion that the video might be AI-generated remains unclear. And whether the palace eventually responded to the latest round of press inquiries about the book is not yet known.
These gaps matter. In a story built on competing claims from unnamed sources, transparency about who is speaking, and why, is the only way the public can judge credibility. That transparency is, so far, absent from both sides.
The appetite for stories about hidden files and alleged cover-ups among the powerful reflects a deep and justified public skepticism. People have watched too many official denials crumble under the weight of later evidence to simply take the palace's word for it.
Emmanuel Macron, now 48, married Brigitte when she was his former teacher, a fact that has shadowed his public life since before he entered politics. The 25-year age gap between them has been a persistent subject of French tabloid interest. Tardif's book, whatever its ultimate credibility, lands in fertile ground precisely because the Macron marriage has always attracted unusual public scrutiny.
For American observers, the details are foreign but the dynamics are not. A leader's private conduct becomes public. The official response shifts from denial to deflection. Unnamed sources clash with unnamed sources. And the public is left to decide whom to believe based on incomplete information.
The willingness of political figures to attack others for scandals while guarding their own secrets is a bipartisan and international phenomenon. What changes from country to country is only the accent.
When a head of state's team floats the idea that damaging footage of him might be AI-generated, then quietly drops that line and pivots to "we were just kidding around", the public has earned the right to raise an eyebrow. Trust, once spent that carelessly, is hard to buy back.
