World3 min(s) read
Published 15:31 13 May 2026 GMT
Last year, a video of the French president being slapped by his wife went viral after the couple was spotted fighting, and the reason she got violent has finally been revealed.
A new book has claimed that Brigitte Macron pushed her husband in the face while disembarking a plane in Vietnam because she saw a message on his phone from an Iranian actress.
Understandably, at the time, the president claimed that the incident was nothing and said he was simply “bickering, or rather joking, with my wife”.
However, in his new book ‘(A (Nearly) Perfect Couple),’ French journalist Florian Tardif has uncovered the couple’s secret in his “investigation” into the “forbidden zones” of their marriage.
Tardif, a journalist for Paris Match who has been following the husband and wife, who were once teacher and student, since 2017, described the infamous moment as a classic “couple’s scene” in an interview on RTL radio on Wednesday.
Describing the events, he said, “What happened is that she [Brigitte Macron], saw a message from a well-known figure: an Iranian actress."
While the journalist alleges that Macron had a “platonic” relationship with the star “for a few months”, he claims that the “messages went quite far”.
According to Tardif, the president told the actress, “I find you very pretty”.
Insisting that he has “verified” the story, Tardif said, “That's what I've been told by those close to him, and that's what I'm saying this morning.”
Allegedly, the messages caused “tension” between the husband and wife, which resulted in a “significant” argument as the couple was preparing to exit the presidential plane at Hanoi airport.
Tardif said, “This private scene became public because there was a misunderstanding on the plane. We thought the argument was over. It wasn't.”
An Elysee official described the aggression at the time as “a moment when the president and his wife were relaxing one last time before the start of the trip by having a laugh.”
The new book also claims that Macron regretted being dishonest about the dispute, “simply because they could have shown at that moment that they were a couple, a real couple, not a perfect couple.”
In response to the scandal broken in the book, Brigitte Macron's representatives denied allegations that the moment was linked to an Iranian actress in Le Parisien.
The president’s representatives said, “Brigitte Macron categorically denied this account directly to the author on March 5, specifying that she never looks at her husband's mobile phone.”
