Brigitte Macron has denied claims she slapped her husband in the face last year after reading text exchanges between him and an actress, according to a report.
The first lady of France, 73, caused a stir in May last year when she appeared to push president Emmanuel Macron, 48, in front of cameras as they prepared to disembark a plane during a state visit to Vietnam.
At the time, her husband insisted they had only been joking, but a new book presented claims this week that Mrs Macron was enraged after seeing an alleged text exchange between Emmanuel and French-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani.
Sources close to Ms Macron told French outlet Le Parisien: “Brigitte Macron categorically denied this account directly to the author on March 5, specifying that she never looks at her husband's mobile phone.”
The Elysée Palace, which at the time dismissed the incident as “horseplay”, has not given an official response.
The author of the book, Florian Tardif, told RTL radio on Wednesday that sources close to the presidential couple had told him that Mr Macron maintained a “platonic relationship” with actress Golshifteh Farahani for several months.
Mr Tardif, whose book ‘An (Almost) Perfect Couple’ was released on Wednesday, said some of the correspondence with Ms Farahani, 42, “went quite far”, including one that allegedly read: “I find you very pretty”.
Someone close to the couple told Mr Tardif that Ms Macron had read a “message that she was never meant to read”, which then prompted a “dispute [that was] longer and harsher than usual”.
The exchanges “led to tensions within the couple, which resulted in this private scene becoming public,” Mr Tardif claimed. He said the couple had quarreled on the plane as they arrived in Vietnam, leading to the ‘slap’.
Ms Farahani has previously dismissed rumours of a relationship with Macron but has not publicly commented on the claims in the new book.
Farahani told Le Point earlier this 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].”
A unnamed source close to the First Lady also told POLITICO that Ms Macron “has categorically denied” the claims.
Mrs Macron has faced a litany of attacks and conspiracy theories during her time as first lady of France.
Last month, she told French newspaper La Tribune Dimanche that the job had left her “sometimes sadder than I have ever been”, having exposed her to the “darkness of the world, the stupidity, the wickedness”.
Reflecting on how her life had been changed by public life, the former teacher admitted: “Sometimes I find it hard to see the blue sky. I have moments of pessimism that I didn’t have before.”
Earlier this year, ten people were found guilty of cyber-bullying Ms Macron after spreading false claims about her gender and sexuality, as well as making “malicious remarks” about the 24-year age gap between her and her husband.
The Macrons have pursued a high-profile defamation lawsuit against American right-wing influencer Candace Owens, who promoted claims that she was born a man online.
Tom Clare, their lead counsel in the case, said last year that the couple had found the claims “extremely upsetting”. He noted Ms Macron would have to “subject herself in a very public way” in order to “set the record straight”.
The Independent has contacted representatives for Farahani and Mr and Mrs Macron.
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