French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped by his wife during a foreign trip last year after she found a steamy message from a younger actress on her phone, according to sensational claims in a new book.
Brigitte Macron’s viral attack on her husband — which was caught on cameras — was a result of the steamy messages allegedly sent between her former student, 48, and Iranian-born Golshifteh Farahani, 42, journalist Florian Tardif claimed in an interview with RTL France.
“I find you very pretty,” President Macron told Farahani, in one of the messages, according to Tardif, whose book, “An (Almost) Perfect Couple,” was published Wednesday.
Farahani, who is known to be a staunch critic of the regime in Tehran, allegedly kept up a “platonic relationship” with Macron for several months, reported Le Parisien.
“[This] led to tensions within the couple, which resulted in this private scene becoming public,” explained Tardif, a journalist with Paris Match, referring to the infamous incident in May last year as the couple prepared to disembark their plane in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Moments before the slap, Brigitte, 73, had read a message from Farahani on her husband’s phone, reported Le Parisien.
“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,” reads an extract from the book, serialized in Paris Match.
“She [Brigitte] saw herself being erased,” Tardif quoted a friend of the First Lady as saying.
On Wednesday, the French First Lady’s representatives denied that the slap had anything to do with Farahani, and insisted that she would never check her husband’s phone.
“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 representative told Le Parisien.
Farahani has also long denied rumors of any relationship with President Macron, which have been floating around since last year.
“I think that there is a lack of love for some people and they need to create romances like this to fill [the void],” she told Le Point in March.
At the time, Macron’s team quickly engaged in damage control, initially claiming the video could have been AI-generated before insisting it was a playful slap.
“It was a moment when the president and his wife were unwinding one last time before the start of the trip by joking around,” a close associate of the President said at the time.
“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,” they added.
President Macron also asserted that the couple were “joking around” at the time, urging people to “calm down.”
The Elysee Palace did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
