Macron, Farahani, and the machinery of rumor
A new book reignites rumors linking Macron to Iranian actress Farahani. Behind the celebrity gossip: who is feeding this story?
At a Glance
A Paris Match journalist claims Emmanuel Macron and Iranian-French actress Golshifteh Farahani had a “platonic relationship” that caused tensions in the presidential marriage — an allegation the First Lady’s inner circle flatly denies.
Brigitte Macron’s entourage says she personally rejected this account when contacted by the author in March, saying she has never gone through her husband’s phone.
The rumor originated on Iranian accounts on X before migrating into the French press and now a commercial book — a sequence whose origin and coordination, if any, remain unestablished.
A book as detonator
Wednesday’s publication of Un couple (presque) parfait — “An Almost Perfect Couple” — written by Florian Tardif, a journalist at the French celebrity-and-politics weekly Paris Match, has revived a rumor that has circulated in the French press for months. The book purports to explain the cause of a widely discussed scene: as Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte stepped off the French presidential plane in Hanoi, Vietnam, last June, the First Lady reportedly slapped the president.
Tardif, interviewed on RTL — one of France’s leading commercial radio stations — claims the incident stemmed from tensions linked to exchanges between Macron and Golshifteh Farahani, a Franco-Iranian actress. He describes the relationship as “platonic.”
Those claims are formally contested. People close to Brigitte Macron told French media that she personally rejected this account when Tardif approached her on March 5 — specifying that she never looks through her husband’s phone. This is a detailed denial, not a simple refusal to comment, and its factual substance deserves to be weighed accordingly.
The actress, her absences, and the question of origins
Golshifteh Farahani did not wait for the book’s release to address the rumors. The actress — who has lived in France since 2008, when she fled Iran after appearing in the film Body of Lies — has explained repeatedly in French media that she spent months in Vancouver and then in the Amazon region during the relevant periods, far from Paris and any supposed proximity to the Élysée Palace, France’s presidential residence.
On the rumor itself, her assessment is pointed: it comes “in waves,” appears and disappears, and reveals, in her view, a “lack of love” in those who spread it — rather than anything about the facts themselves.
The rumor circuit: a sequence worth scrutinizing
What makes this episode politically interesting is not the nature of the alleged relationship between Macron and Farahani — which remains, at this stage, unestablished — but the shape of how the story has traveled.
The rumor first surfaced on Iranian-linked accounts on X before being picked up by the French mainstream press, and now crystallized in a commercial book. This arc — foreign social media accounts, national press coverage, mass-market publication — could resemble a coordinated amplification circuit. Whether that is the case, and who if anyone orchestrated it, remains undocumented.
The Iranian dimension is not without broader context: Farahani is widely perceived as a dissident figure by the Iranian regime, which could make her a convenient target for destabilization operations — though this hypothesis, at this point, has no documented foundation.
What this episode really reveals
For readers outside France, the affair might read as straightforward tabloid fodder involving a head of state. Emmanuel Macron, France’s president since 2017 and re-elected in 2022, is married to Brigitte Macron, a former teacher several decades his senior — a relationship that has attracted speculation since its earliest days. The Hanoi slap, caught on camera and widely shared, landed at a moment of mounting pressure on Macron’s image as his presidency enters its final stretch.
But the deeper question this sequence raises goes beyond the personal: to what extent are rumors of a personal nature targeting sitting heads of government becoming a political instrument in their own right? And in this particular case, who benefits from keeping the story alive?
Those questions remain unanswered by anything in the public record. They are, nonetheless, the ones worth asking.
The Bottom Line
A book can trigger a crisis — or simply give fresh legs to something that was already in circulation. What remains opaque here is the chain linking the original Iranian-linked source material to the French mainstream press.
Until that chain is documented, the Macron-Farahani affair will say as much about the state of public discourse in France as it does about any of the individuals involved.
Sources: Euronews · RTL (via Euronews)