Since 2021, a total of 27 women have accused Patrick Poivre d'Arvor of sexual assault or rape that would have allegedly happened during decades prior.

In 2004, Poivre was cast in a minor voice-only role as a newscaster in the French version of the Pixar animated film The Incredibles (Les Indestructibles).

His greatest controversy prior to his being accused of rape was the faked interview[4] - actually footage of a press conference with added questions - he purported to have made with Cuban president Fidel Castro, broadcast on 16 December 1991.

Télérama journalist Pierre Carles exposed this fraud, which Poivre blamed on his colleague and co-interviewer Régis Faucon, after the latter had departed TF1.

[5] On 10 January 1996, the Court of Appeal sentenced Poivre to 15 months in prison (suspended) and fined him 200,000 Francs for his part in misappropriation of public funds in a case involving Pierre Botton and his father-in-law and then deputy mayor of Lyon, Michel Noir.

[6] In December 2008, Nonce Paolini, former Chief Executive of TF1, filed for defamation against Poivre d'Arvor in the Correctional Tribunal of Paris: during an interview by Bretons in the preceding July, Poivre had accused the TF1 chief of having "installed a clocking-in system with access badges" and had formed "a private police force whose aim was scrutinising staff movements in the smallest detail".

For several years in the 1990s, rumours abounded that Poivre had had an affair with Claire Chazal, his weekend counterpart as TF1 8 pm news presenter.

The pair refused to confirm the story until August 2005, when Poivre acknowledged in "Confessions", a book of interviews to journalist Serge Raffy, that he was the father of Claire Chazal's 10-year-old son, François.

In February 2021, the prosecutors' office in Nanterre confirmed that Poivre was under investigation due to allegations of rape by a female writer, Florence Porcel, on several occasions between 2004 and 2009, as reported in her autobiographical book Pandorini.