France’s First Lady Brigitte Macron to Be Subject of Biopic Series From Gaumont
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France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, will be the subject of a biopic series produced by French mini-major Gaumont.
The six-part show is being penned by Bénédicte Charles and Olivier Pouponneau, who previously teamed on the thriller series “J’ai menti.”
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Titled “Brigitte, une femme libre” (“Brigitte, a free woman”), the series will chart the life of French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife. Gaumont is keeping the plot of the show under wraps and will be announcing the cast in the next few weeks.
Brigitte Macron’s life story surely provides plenty of material for a TV series. She met Emmanuel Macron while teaching theater at the Catholic high school Providence in Amiens. Macron was then 15 years old, while she was 40 and married with three children. In a recent interview with Paris Match, Brigitte Macron talked about her anxiety over their age gap, saying that her “head was in a mess” after she fell in love with him because “such a young boy was crippling” and she feared he would want to be with someone his own age. Their relationship sparked a scandal and led to Brigitte divorcing her husband, while Emmanuel was sent to a boarding school in Paris. The pair eventually got married in 2007 when Emmanuel was 29.
“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.”
Charles told Le Figaro that the series’ “touchy subject” caused her and Pouponneau to be “stuck at first.”
“We had to overcome this to propose a fiction. Brigitte Macron is a fascinating character, and we want to tackle it in a romanesque, almost melodramatic way because of the romantic dimension of her destiny,” Charles said.
Brigitte Macron was recently seen on the set of Darren Star’s “Emily in Paris” Season 4, which is currently filming in Paris, prompting rumors that she may make a cameo appearance in the show.
Gaumont is one of France’s top TV producers of upscale international series. Their recent credits include “Lupin” starring Omar Sy, and “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” starring Daniel Bruhl as the famed fashion designer.
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