Speaking to online media outlet Brut, Brigitte Macron acknowledged in a video interview published on Monday evening that her language had been "very direct".
But she said she had been trying to reassure French actor Ary Abittan when she described feminist protesters who disrupted one of his shows as "sales connes," a slur that roughly translates as "dirty bitches".
That scene was filmed earlier this month.
She was in discussion backstage at the Folies Bergère theatre in Paris with Abittan, an actor and humorist previously accused of rape who was about to give a performance.
The previous night, feminist campaigners had disrupted his show with shouts of "Abittan, rapist!".
Macron asked Abittan how he was feeling.
When he said he was feeling scared, she replied with the derogatory and sexist reference to the women, adding: "We'll toss them out."
The comments triggered a backlash, including from campaigners against sexual and sexist violence, and political opponents of her husband, President Emmanuel Macron.
In her interview with Brut, Brigitte Macron said in the relatively rare public declaration that "I completely understand" that some people were shocked, but added that "it absolutely wasn't meant to be public" and that she had not been speaking as the French leader's spouse.
"I am not always the wife of the president of the republic. I also have a private life and this was a private moment. I am sorry if I hurt women victims. It's them and just them that I am thinking of," she said.
"I certainly wouldn't have used those terms in public," she said.
But she also criticised protesters for targeting Abittan, saying that she "cannot bear that a performance is interrupted. Someone is on stage. He is trying to give everything that he can give. How does he carry on afterward? What is the meaning of this censorship being placed on artists? It's something that I don't understand. We aren't judges".
Magistrates terminated the investigation of the 2021 rape allegation against Abittan because of a lack of evidence in 2024, a decision then confirmed on appeal in January.
Activists with the feminist campaign group Nous Toutes (All of Us) disrupted his show to protest what it described as "the culture of impunity" around sexual violence in France.
Asked by Brut if she regretted her comments, Brigitte Macron said: "I cannot regret speaking. I don't want to regret. It is true that I am the wife of the president of the republic but I am also myself above anything. And when I am in private, it's true that I can let myself go in a way that is absolutely not adequate but I needed to reassure him."
"I reassured him certainly in a way that was clumsy. But I had no other words at my disposal at that moment. And regardless, I think we have a right to speak and the right to think."
with DPA
