EMILY’S PARIS ACCORD
Brash young Yank grows up a bit in Season 2
The creatives behind “Emily in Paris” hope to bid adieu to past faux pas.
In its first season, the show took some heat for its culturally tone-deaf main character blowing into a Parisian marketing firm and, with classic American bravado, deciding she’s the only one who knows what she’s doing.
For its second season, premiering Wednesday on Netflix, showrunner Darren Star wants to get back to the basics of a young woman just trying to figure her life out.
“We see her assimilating into her world, feeling more comfortable in Paris. It’s not so much about the cultural differences as it is about Emily dealing with her relationship she created at the end of Season 1 and finding her feet at work’“Star told the Daily News of Emily Cooper’s (Lily Collins) spur-of-the-moment hookup with her neighbor Gabriel (Lucas Bravo).
“I don’t think Emily ever intended to create the situation she did, and I think she’s a character who, while she makes mistakes, her heart is really in the right place. She spends a lot of Season 2 trying to make amends but also struggling with her own feelings.”
The cultural criticism wasn’t the only issue the series faced in its first year.
Developers of the show were also slammed for flying Hollywood Foreign Press Association members, the voting body for the Golden Globes, to the French set and gifting them a two-night stay at the five-star Peninsula Paris hotel before two surprise Globes nominations. Neither the show, which was up for best musical or comedy series, nor Collins, who was in the running for best actress in a musical or comedy series, scored the win.
Star stressed that he views the first season of “Emily in Paris” as the first act of a movie. In the second act — or season — he gets to dig deeper.
“There was always going to be a lot of growth,” he said.
For Emily, that growth is both professional and personal. Her muddled love triangle with Gabriel and his maybe ex Camille (Camille Razat) has no resolution. Threesomes aren’t as easy as Americans think, Emily’s co-worker Luc (Bruno Gouery) insists in a meta monologue — but she wants to make everyone happy.
At work, she and boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) still dance around the other, never sure who’s in charge, but they’ve working toward a détente, or at least an understanding.
“[Sylvie] was a bit of a bully, but for us, for the French, she was a normal boss,” Leroy-Beaulieu told The News. “She’s unapologetic, she’s no-nonsense, she’s very genuine. She doesn’t need to pretend anything. And Emily just gets on her nerves.
“Season 2 is more about trying to mentor [Emily]. She’s trying to teach her some tough lessons, but with a tough love. Underneath there’s this love that is growing … but she’s never going to tell her, obviously.”
With Emily’s brash, chaotic American-ness fully established, Season 2 gives more time to everyone else. Sylvie’s secrets are slowly, carefully stripped away, best friend Mindy (Ashley Park) joins a band for a chance to show off the real-life Broadway actress’ impressive pipes, and even Luc and co-worker Julien (Samuel Arnold) get a chance to shine.
New and returning characters get to speak French, a welcome earworm for a series that prides itself on being an escapist immersion. The show travels more, to Camille’s vineyard and to Saint-Tropez in the south of France.
And Emily faces consequences for her actions. For every time the first season brushed off her mistakes because she didn’t understand the language or the culture or was simply wearing too many patterns, the second season holds her accountable.
“There is something about feeling, when you’re in a foreign country, that your actions don’t have consequences like they do at home,” Star said. “The more time Emily spends in Paris, she realizes that these people really are in her life and she can’t be cavalier with their feelings.”