Emmanuelle Cosso, co-author of the singer’s successful autobiography, recounts the return of her symptoms and the resumption of her chemotherapy.
The news had worried his fans in early March: a few months after stopping his treatment for lung cancer, Florent Pagny was facing a relapse. The singer has since reunited with the doctors and is following their protocol to the letter. So says Emmanuelle Cosso, co-author of her autobiography Pagny by Florent (Fayard), in the BFMTV podcast The headline:
“He is a super good student, and he supports the treatment well,” she says. “Both pure and hard chemo (…) both immunotherapy when it’s time, and also alternative medicine.”
Remission then relapse
The 61-year-old singer announced in early 2022 that he had lung cancer, which forced him to cancel the end of his tour. At the time, the book project was already well advanced: “We had the idea of saying that cancer is a switch”, says Emmanuelle Cosso. “He interrupted the tour, the writing of the book, all the future projects that Florent may have had at the time.”
After months of treatment away from the spotlight, during which he regularly gave news to his audience, Florent Pagny has announced his return to the stage next summer, with festival dates. A few weeks later, the cancer returned.
“The doctors told him: ‘You’ll be right back'”
The author who accompanied Florent Pagny in the writing of this book published on April 5 – which reached 50,000 copies sold in the space of two weeks – looks back on the circumstances of this relapse. “He underwent a very heavy treatment of chemo, radiotherapy, and until the end he was impeccable. At the end of this treatment, he no longer had a tumor at all.”
“He followed that up with immunotherapy. (But) after being stuck in a hospital for months and months, he needed the other part of his life that is in Patagonia so badly that he said to himself ‘ I have to go get some fresh air now’. He tried to bring immunotherapy there but he didn’t succeed. It’s a complicated treatment to travel with.”
It is in this Latin American country, where he lives part of the year with his wife Azucena, that the singer is witnessing the return of certain worrying symptoms. “Unfortunately, there was a ganglion that started to fix,” says Emmanuelle Cosso. “Obviously the doctors told him, ‘You’ll be right back’.”
“He is doing very well – as far as what obviously happens to him,” concludes the author. “We will rejoice when the remission is really announced but it’s not for now, we know that.” In the meantime, the singer “staggers” at the idea of going back on stage: “A switch, it turns off, it interrupts but it also turns the light back on.”
