An American in Paris

Sex and the City lives on in Netflix's comedy Emily in Paris, writes Emily Zemler.

LAST autumn, on a particularly rainy day in Paris, Darren Star paused between filming scenes of Emily in Paris to reflect on how his career had come full circle.

Sitting at a table at the famous Left Bank bistro Cafe de Flore, Star remembered being stuck in Los Angeles in production on Miss

Matched while Sex and the City shot its final episodes in the French capital.

‘‘I remember Sarah Jessica Parker calling me from the set saying how wonderful it was,’’ Star says, laughing.

‘‘I was like, ‘Oh'. But they did a great job. I feel like this is my payback for myself that I couldn't be there. Now I really get to be here.’’

Star has loved Paris and French culture for as long as he can remember, culminating in a memorable trip to Paris when he was 19.

‘‘It was one of those places that matched — and went beyond — my expectations,’’ he recalls. ‘‘I fell in love with it the first time I visited.’’

Since then he has travelled to France as often as possible, and once he came up with the idea for a series about an American expat who moves to Paris and stumbles through various cultural faux pas, he made the move himself.

‘‘I moved here, I got an apartment, I went to French class here. I liked it, and I struggled,’’ he says. ‘‘I wanted to see what it was like to really live here. I knew I was going to write this show, and I was like, ‘I need to just see some of the daily things.' The little struggles and the small indignities.

‘‘I think all Americans are uncomfortable in Paris, to some degree. We're all bulls in a china shop here . . . This is a culture that's about civility.’’

Star drew on his own fascination with Paris when writing Emily in Paris, which follows Chicago native Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) as her marketing firm transfers her to a French company where her optimism and knack for social media does not quite jibe with the Parisian sensibility.

Once in Paris, Emily struggles with the cultural differences, but also makes new friends and meets beautiful French men.

Star feels that Paris itself is central to the story, just as New York City was another character in Sex and the City. That's why

Emily in Paris was filmed in France with an entirely French crew.

‘‘It is a love story [about] Paris,’’ Star says. ‘‘I feel like you can't duplicate that sort of thing unless you're on location. The idea of just coming here for a week or two and trying to grab locations — there's just too many details that would have been lost in translation. What you get in terms of the atmosphere . . . you can't fake.’’

Speaking after the production wrapped, Collins agreed with Star’s assessment.

‘‘There's such a beauty and a magic to the city that you want to properly capture. To be able to shoot down random side streets as well as the Paris opera house or Cafe de Flore and these wellknown places. You get to have 10 episodes to live and breathe within the city in a way you can't capture in a 90minute film or one episode of TV.’’ There are a few references to Sex and the

City throughout the series, including a return to the fivestar Plaza Athenee hotel, where Parker's Carrie Bradshaw stayed with Aleksandr Petrovsky (played by famed dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov) in the show's final episodes.

Carrie was always in the back of Collins' mind when filming, partly because she sees Emily as someone who grew up idolising the women of Sex and the City.

‘‘I was a huge Sex and the City fan,’’ Collins says. ‘‘I think Emily is a huge Sex and

the City fan. She would be thinking about the episode when Carrie Bradshaw goes to Paris. Emily is very much like myself and my friends in that she has TV and movie icons who she's looked up to and loved.’’

µ Emily in Paris is available to stream on

Netflix.