People have been talking about nothing else since the video leaked, almost as much as the chaotic passage of the social security bill through Parliament. The First Lady, Brigitte Macron, has been at the eye of the storm since her explosive comments about feminist activists were made public. Those behind the scandal, the agency Bestimage and its boss Mimi Marchand (a long-time acquaintance of former president Nicolas Sarkozy), are pleading “human error.”
There has been an uproar around Mrs Macron since Monday, December 8, 2025. Her remarks were captured on the sidelines of a show by comedian Ary Abittan, by a cameraman from Bestimage, an agency specialising in celebrity news. In the video, the First Lady is seen backstage at the Folies Bergère, alongside Abittan but also her daughter Tiphaine Auzière, Bernard Montiel, former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls…
Annoyed by the intrusion of feminist activists seeking to disrupt the comedian’s performance – they continue to accuse him of rape despite two decisions not to prosecute – the president’s wife referred to them as “bloody idiots.”
Mimi Marchand, a close friend of Mrs Macron, defended herself on BFMTV, confirming information reported by Le Parisien. She maintains that this video was never meant to be marketed. The cameraman handed over all his photo and video material to his superiors without flagging how explosive Brigitte Macron’s words were. And then disaster: no one else listened to the audio on the footage, so it was sold as is.
“It was a mistake by both the cameraman and the webmaster, who did not listen to the sound, which is mandatory, especially for this kind of public figure,” insists Mimi Marchand, adding that she was not at her workplace on Monday morning due to “a personal bereavement.” She says that “the process will be reviewed and made even more precise in future. We will systematically add music to raw videos where there is no interview…”
Owning up is all well and good, and resolutions are laudable, but all this is rather thin gruel for Brigitte Macron, caught up in the storm. It is the first misstep by Mimi Marchand, who is very close to the presidential couple and extremely attentive to their public image.
The website of the magazine Public also finds itself in a tight spot. The editor-in-chief of the platform refuses to confirm that the video was sold to them by Bestimage. But she does confirm that their “source” did not “specifically alert [them] to its content or to what was being said in it. (…) It was when we watched it that we discovered Brigitte Macron’s comments. We decided to publish it because it seemed to us to be a matter of public interest that went beyond the world of celebrities,” says Maëlle Brun.
Faced with the backlash, they decided to remove the video from all their social media accounts. “We have a good relationship with our source, so we took it down at their request,” she explains…
The noise and the stigma surrounding the presidential household, however, are here to stay.
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