Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, apologized on Monday night for offending feminist protesters during a private conversation last week, but she also said that she should be able to speak freely when with friends.
“I am sorry if I have hurt women victims,” Ms. Macron said in a short video published by the French news outlet Brut. But when asked if she regretted her words, Ms. Macron said no.
“I am indeed the wife of the president of the Republic, but I am also, above all, myself,” said Ms. Macron, who is married to President Emmanuel Macron of France. “When I am in private, I can let myself go in a way that is absolutely not adequate,” she said.
Her comments were a response to a video that surfaced online last week showing Ms. Macron backstage at a theater with a French comedian, Ary Abittan, whose show had been disrupted the night before by feminist activists. While chatting with him, Ms. Macron jokingly described the activists using a term that roughly translates to “stupid bitches.”
Addressing those comments a week later, Ms. Macron said she “totally understood” the uproar that followed but added that she had been speaking in a private setting, trying to reassure a friend who was afraid of returning to the stage.
Ms. Macron acknowledged that her way of comforting Mr. Abittan may have been “clumsy” but that she had had “no other words at my disposal at that moment.”
Regardless, she added, “I think we have the right to think and the right to speak.”
Ms. Macron also criticized the activists’ decision to disrupt Mr. Abittan’s show. “What does this censorship of artists mean?” she said. “We are not judges.”
The show was interrupted by four activists from a feminist collective called NousToutes, which translates to All of Us Women. Mr. Abittan was accused of rape in 2021 and has faced opposition since, including after the charges were dismissed by an appeals court in January.
Ségolène Le Stradic is a reporter and researcher covering France.
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