Since the formalization of their couple in 2014, the appearances of two of François Hollande and Julie Gayet could almost be counted on the fingers of one hand: the former president and the actress, married since the beginning of the month, have always preferred discretion and fiercely protect their privacy. A reserve which surely comes to them from their beginnings, and from the media whirlwind which had suddenly fallen on them, after the publications of the magazine Closer in which we saw François Hollande go to his beautiful scooter.
An extreme media coverage that did not please the actress, as she had recently confided to Sud Radio, but on which François Hollande is very lucid. “I often tell him: ‘I don’t know what I fried in this story, but you lost it’“, he told journalists Fabrice Lhomme and Gérard Davet for their book A president shouldn’t say thata good proof that he knows perfectly well how much his duties could have destroyed their couple.
But the actress always stayed by his side, in the shadows when he needed it most, without ever getting involved in political life, unlike the other companions of the former socialist president, Ségolène Royal and Valérie Trierweiler. A quality that he often appreciated in her. “Julie’s tender and delicate affection was an invaluable support. Without needing to play a role, she was there, with this aspiration to happiness that makes life sweeter“, he wrote in his memoirs, The lessons of power.
Actress but not First Lady!
A relationship that they only really formalized after the transfer of power with Emmanuel Macron. Indeed, the actress had completely refused to take the role of First Lady who held out her arms to her: “I made this choice to stay who I was, to stay in my place and not to set foot on the official side. I never passed that door, I was always very clear“, she had explained in particular on the radio.
A few days after their wedding, which took place in the strictest intimacy with only a few witnesses in their Corrèze stronghold, they are preparing to resume their lives, always separating public life from private life. A characteristic that they want to respect even with their friends: Michel Drucker, for example, rarely sees them as a duo. “For me, it’s not a power couple, everyone works on their side“, has indeed entrusted the host to the magazine Gala. “Besides, if they have dined once at my house in Paris, I see them rather separately“, he concludes.