Wife slapped macron over flirty text: Book

A new book by journalist Florian Tardif claims French Presid­ent Emmanuel Macron was slapped by wife Brigitte Macron during a foreign trip last year. Tardif claims it happened as the first lady read steamy messages allegedly exchanged between the president and Iranian-born actress Golshifteh Farahani.

Tardif discussed this in an interview with RTL France following the publication of his book, ‘An (Almost) Perfect Couple’, on Wednesday. According to Tardif, Macron wrote, “I find you very pretty” in one of the texts. Le Parisien previously reported Farahani, a vocal critic of Iran’s regime, was in a platonic relationship with Macron for months.

Tardif said it led to tensions within the couple, which resulted in this private scene becoming public. Le Parisien reported Brigitte read a message on Macron’s phone just before the slap while landing in Hanoi, Vietnam, last year.

An extract from the book reads, “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.”

However, the French first lady’s representatives denied the slap had anything to do with the actress. Brigitte claimed she would never check her husband’s phone. Farahani has similarly denied rumours and any relationship with Macron.

—Agencies