So who is the man everyone’s talking about, and why is he the subject of so much chatter online since being appointed?
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Gabriel Attal’s parents worked in the film industry
While Attal was born and raised in Paris alongside three younger sisters, his parents are not ethnically French. His dad hails from a Tunisian Jewish background and his mum was raised by Orthodox Christians in Odesa, Ukraine, per The Guardian.
His father was the late film producer Yves Attal, who worked on films with Pedro Almodóvar, Roberto Benigni and Bernardo Bertolucci, per IMDB, and his mum – Marie de Couriss – also worked in a production company.
“I couldn’t have dreamed of a better family or received more love than my parents have given me”, Attal wrote in a recent Instagram post.
He had a privileged upbringing
As a teenager, Attal went to Paris’ École Alsacienne, which Tatler reports costs over US$1,200 per term and counts numerous French actors, novelists, singers and diplomats among its alumni. Whether through natural talent or dedicated study, Attal’s education clearly paid off, as he’s been dubbed the “Word Sniper” for his eloquence and ability to think on his feet.
And if you’re wondering how he got into politics in the first place, it turns out he has one of his former classmate’s mums to thank. In 2012, health minister Marisol Touraine offered Attal a job that led to a full-time position in the ministry at the age of just 23, according to France 24.
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He was badly bullied at school
In true millennial style, Attal has always shared elements of his day-to-day life on Instagram but he rarely opens up publicly about more personal topics. Last November, Attal made headlines when he gave an interview to Sept à Huit on French channel TF1 detailing the extent of the bullying he suffered at school.
When he was fourteen or fifteen, another student – widely thought to be lawyer Juan Branco, though he denies this – created a website critiquing students’ looks, per Politico. According to the Sept à Huit interview, after Attal went to the cinema with a girl the bully liked, the harasser reportedly told him he would “destroy” him and a flood of violent threats soon resulted from cruel posts on the site. The bully even posed as Attal and insulted his friends in an attempt to isolate him further.
Attal told the channel he hoped telling his story would help others, and as education minister in 2023, got to work on several anti-bullying initiatives alongside president Macron’s wife Brigitte, according to Politico.
He was outed as gay online by a classmate
Per Advocate magazine, Attal’s appointment has been widely celebrated by LGBTQ+ activists, who point out that “France is sending a powerful statement by appointing its first out prime minister – one of the highest-ranking positions held by an LGBTQ person anywhere in the world”.
Sadly it doesn’t appear to have been entirely Attal’s own choice to come out when he did, as his aforementioned classmate Juan Branco reportedly outed him on social media in 2018.
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Who is Gabriel Attal dating?
It hasn’t escaped the world’s attention that Attal is a hottie, with many of his posts on Instagram simply being met with a string of fire and heart emojis. So who is the new prime minister of France dating?
It’s been widely reported that Attal was in a civil partnership with a man named Stéphane Séjourné, a 38-year-old lawyer and member of the European Parliament. However, Politico claims that the two are “no longer an item but have never publicly confirmed their break-up” – likely because Séjourné keeps his private life a closely guarded secret, according to the same article.
