Six years ago, Lily Collins and Ashley Park were practically unknowns in France. Before filming the first season of Emily in Paris, the pair headed to a welcome party for the cast and crew, only to be blocked by a security guard. “[Lily] was like, ‘We’re here for Emily in Paris.’ And I was like, ‘She’s Emily,’” Park says. “They weren’t laughing,” Collins adds.
Needless to say, that bouncer likely would recognize them now: The Netflix show has become so identified with its titular city that French President Emmanuel Macron advocated to keep Emily in Paris after she moved to Rome in the Season 4 finale. Audiences immediately fell for Emily, an American who’s thrust into the haughty world of luxury marketing when she’s transferred to a French boutique agency, and Park’s Mindy, the first person Emily connects with in Paris. Over 50 million households watched the first season after its premiere in October 2020; four years later, Season 4 immediately topped Netflix’s TV chart and reached over 67 million viewers across two parts, proving its longevity.
While Collins established herself as an actor in films like The Blind Side, Love, Rosie, and the Oscar-nominated Mank, Emily in Paris — which marked her first lead TV role — made her a household name around the world. Park says the series changed the trajectory of her career, as her first major TV role (previously, her resume consisted largely of Broadway shows, including a Tony-nominated turn as Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls: The Musical).
Now, aboard the lavish Venice-Simplon Orient Express — a lavish, restored 1920s-era train that’s ferrying us to the Season 5 premiere in Paris — Collins and Park are feeling sentimental about it all. “This show has really opened up conversations that I never thought I’d even be in the room for,” Park says. “For me, the more famous you are, the more people that you are connected with. We get to be a part of so many people’s lives. I could do a thousand shows every single day for the rest of my life and never reach as many hearts with our art as this.”
“Season 1 Emily was the closest character I played to who I was at that moment. Season 5 Emily is the closest character I’ve played to who I am at this specific moment,” Collins says of her character, whose people-pleasing ways made her acclimation to France even more difficult in the first season. “Maybe if she just lets go of trying to control everything and her perfectionism, things will just be OK. That’s where I’m at as a human now with being a mom, trying to figure out how to let go.” (Collins welcomed a baby with her husband, Charlie McDowell, in January.)
“When characters start in a place like Emily’s, there’s a lot of room for growth,” series creator Darren Star says over brunch the following morning. From the jump, Star envisioned the show spanning six seasons — and thought it had legs, even if some of the cast were skeptical: “I think if shows work for the first season, they’re going to last.” Netflix splashing out on this promotional trip on the Venice-Simplon Orient Express — which will conclude with an after-party that turns the bar into a nightclub on train tracks, complete with a surprise performance from Park — proves the streamer has a similar faith in the show’s enduring popularity.
(Spoilers ahead.) The train ride from Venice to Paris is a fitting way to commemorate the show’s latest installment, given that Emily finds her way back to Paris after a brief stint in Rome — and puts on a well-received Venice Fashion Week show in the finale. Naturally, the move affects both her love life and career. She peacefully parts ways with her Italian boyfriend Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini), simply because they want different things. (“There was no anger, it was just something that happened. [He] realizes that if you love someone, you have to let her go,” Franceschini told me back in Venice.) At work, she gains the trust of her boss and reluctant mentor, Sylvie, played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu.
In the train’s library-like L’Observatoire, Leroy-Beaulieu reflects on Sylvie’s side of the relationship. “It’s more about affection this year, and [she’s] kind of annoyed by that,” she says. In a way, it parallels Leroy-Beaulieu’s own working dynamic with Collins. “We were very different in our way of working [at the beginning], but we both wanted to meet the other person where she was. And it taught me a lot, because I had to understand where she was coming from, the culture in America,” she says. “We can partner more now. I think it made me stronger.”
Sylvie arguably goes through more than any character this season, from the dissolution of her Roman affair, to stumbling unknowingly into a hookup with her longtime BFF’s son, to the finale bombshells that turn her life upside down. “I think this is huge comical material, especially for a character like Sylvie, who’s so straight-up and controlled, and suddenly you see her insides and she basically fails,” Leroy-Beaulieu says. “She’s a bit of a mystery, so you want to get underneath it,” says Star, who made a point of adding new dimensions to the character this season.
But once again, the real heart of the show is in Emily and Mindy’s relationship. As the two have navigated successes, missteps, and romance together, they’ve become each other’s home away from home. At the same time, the actors’ own bond grew stronger, too. “Not only has our friendship grown, but she’s one of the only people who has 1000% been on board for my personal growth,” Park says of Collins.
Meanwhile, as Collins has become a mother, Park’s been there every step of the way. She fondly recalls the day Collins brought her daughter, Tove Jane, to set earlier this year. “Remember we put her in the little seat? And we were like, ‘I can’t believe she’s on set right now,’ because we were anticipating her for so long,” Park says. (She snapped a photo to commemorate the moment, which she later printed and framed as a gift to Collins.) “I think I joked [during] Season 1, ‘Oh my God, if we’re lucky, I’ll still be doing this and have a baby,’” Collins says. “The idea that then that is actually what’s happening and I get to be with my best friend on set with [my daughter], that was a real pinch-me moment.”
The whole cast and crew hope to make more memories on set with both her family and co-stars. As of press time, Emily in Paris has not yet been renewed for a sixth season, but Star is hopeful they’ll get the green light. He’s also open to an Emily in Paris spinoff, giving the spotlight to one of Emily’s nearest and dearest. “I don’t know what it is, or who that character would be, but I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says.
Star has a clearer vision of where he’d take Emily in a potential sixth season. He has a “few ideas,” he teases — among them, a possible plotline teased in the Season 5 finale, which ends with Emily’s perennial on-and-off love interest Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) writing a postcard inviting her to visit him in Greece. “I hope she wants to go,” Star teases.
Collins is already on board. “Hello? I would love to go to Greece.”
