Dublin influencers Holly Carpenter and James Kavanagh have finally spoken about their Paris arrest back in January 2020.
Holly launched her new podcast Filter Free this week and kicked it off with a terrifying story from their French trip.
Holly and James flew into Paris but when they arrived at the airport, they were greeted by police.
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James said: “I kind of held back on telling this story because I felt like we did something wrong… but we actually hadn’t.
“For a long time I was ashamed of it.
Holly added: “I was borderline traumatised”.
James explained that he and Holly planned a trip to the city of love with their friends at the beginning of 2020.
According to Kavanagh, they got “quite lit” on the flight over and they were being “a bit too loud”.
Once they landed James and Holly were shocked to be met by police with guns.
He said: “Next I look up and there’s riot policemen with guns pointed at me and Holly, and I was like ‘sorry?'
“So we were handcuffed and brought into this room, and at this stage I was still a bit giddy and I don’t know if I thought it was real, because it was just so ridiculous, we hadn’t done anything to warrant an arrest.
“We were handcuffed in public, in front of everyone, everyone was gasping.
“At the time there were huge riots going on in France so I don’t know if they were just on high alert and thought we were more dangerous than we were," said James.
“We were just two lit girls from Dublin. My crime is that I like to have fun.
“We were brought into this room, now the worst thing about this was no one told us why we were arrested, they were laughing at us.”
Holly admitted she was “bawling” and that they sobered up fairly quickly.
James added: “I was pleading with them like ‘can you tell us why we’re in here?’ And they kept saying ‘no, be quiet’.
“It was honestly like we were being kidnapped, they weren’t even wearing police uniforms either, it was like riot gear.”
The police also figured out who Holly was and threatened to take a picture of her in the cell and post it on Twitter.
Holly said: “I actually thought everyone at home, like my family and friends, had a picture of me in a cell.
“I was so shaken, and I felt kind of violated as well. They upended my suitcase, they laughed in my face, they made me give them my bra.”
Around 15 hours later they were released but Holly and James admitted they were “shook” over the incident.
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