The love story between Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte is to be shared in a new French TV drama, with its creators labelling it a “huge gamble”.
The six-part series will focus on France’s First Lady and her relationship with Macron, whom she met whilst she was a teacher at his school and 24 years his senior.
Production company Gaumont, the oldest film company in France, said it is developing the series titled “Brigitte, A Free Woman”, which will trace the “storybook journey” of Macron’s wife.
“Brigitte Macron is a fascinating character, and we want to tackle it in a romantic, almost melodramatic way because of the romantic dimension of her destiny,” writer Bénédicte Charles told Le Figaro.
A TV show about Emmanuel Macron and his wife's romance is to be made
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“It’s a huge gamble. It’s a touchy subject. We were a bit stuck at first. We had to get hold of the subject and free ourselves from it to turn it into fiction.”
The Élysée Palace said it had nothing to do with the series, which will consist of 45-minute episodes. “We are not associated with this project, which we learnt about in the press,” it stressed.
The series, which has yet to be cast, will begin when the First Lady met Macron, who at the time was a 15-year-old boy and a classmate of her daughter’s at the Providence school in Amiens.
At the time, Brigitte was married with three children, and the scandal caused her to divorce her first husband.
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The two met met when Macron was 15 and Brigette was a teacher at his school - 24 years his senior
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Meanwhile, Emmanuel was sent away by his parents to attend a boarding school in Paris – however, the lovers remained committed to one another despite the obstacles.
The pair married in 2007, when Emmanuel was 29 and Brigitte was 54.
“If I did not make that choice, I would have missed out on my life,” Brigitte Macron told Elle France in 2017. “I had a lot of happiness with my children and, at the same time, felt I had to live ‘this love’ as Prevert used to say, to be fully happy.”
She continued to work as a teacher until 2015 when her husband became involved in politics, rising to President in 2017 – France’s youngest ever at 39 at the time of his election.
The pair married in 2007, when Emmanuel was 29 and Brigitte was 54
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Their large age difference has come under attack in the media and also in the family’s local community.
She told the French magazine Paris Match: “The attacks, the backbiting, the judgments. It was not yet the era of social networks, but we were in a small provincial town. Everything is known.”
The age difference between the pair has stirred up trolls online, with a rumour circulating in 2022 that Brigitte is a trans woman whose birth name was Jean-Michel. Her family successfully took legal action against those who spread the misinformation.
Despite keeping a relatively low profile since her husband became President, Macron has made fighting bullying in school – both in person and online – a key priority of hers.