Florent Pagny has decided to publicize his fight against cancer. In January 2022, the singer posted a video on social media announcing his illness. In his autobiography titled Pagny by Florent (Fayard editions, April 2023), he delivers the outlines of his battle and the reasons why he decided to inform the public of his state of health. “I followed my instinct as well as a certain practicality in making public what was happening to me. I thought the most direct way to explain to people who had bought their tickets for the remaining forty concerts that I couldn’t honor my dates was to tell them straight up. […] Instagram will have been used for that. Reveal this twist of fate. Then give reassuring news along the way”.
The first extracts from his confidences were published by the Sunday newspaper. Florent Pagny reveals the consequences of chemotherapy and the heavy side effects: “I quickly found myself grey-green, without a hair on the face. Of course, I felt the side effects of the therapies, the chemo every twenty-one days and the radiotherapy whose rays I underwent every afternoon between the chemo sessions. It is true that the side effects were difficult to bear. Non-stop nausea, and your esophagus becoming so sensitive that you hurt along the path of each food. It’s very boring, let’s say it, but not insurmountable”.
“I get the uppercut”
The singer also looks back on the day that changed everything, the day he learned he was suffering from cancer while recording “The Voice: “When the news hits, I’m stunned. I take a slap that fucks me up before I hit the ground, throat so tight I can hardly breathe. The earth is collapsing”. And to complete: “Alone in my dressing room, I receive the uppercut. I don’t take the time to cash it in. I’m hanging up. Ten seconds later, I push open the dressing room door and head for the set.
The announcement of this disease profoundly transformed the singer: “This disease took me somewhere else, forced me to question my fundamentals to fight for my skin, to rebuild myself. I built myself up until I was 60 now I’m rebuilding myself and it gives me so much strength”.