Emily in Paris showrunner Darren Star keeps the surprises coming as Season 4, Part 2 of the Netflix series leaves us with big life changes for the title character, played by Lily Collins, both romantically and professionally. After a will-they-won’t-they love story with Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), new Italian energy has come into Emily’s life as she made her way to Rome to close out the season.
“I always look at Darren like the best bartender and Emily in Paris is just a bestseller cocktail,” Samuel Arnold, who plays Julien, told Yahoo Canada when describing the change of location and introduction of new Italian characters for Season 4. “He just adds on ingredients every season and makes it better and better. … And I just want to say, let’s keep shaking.”
Spoilers for Emily in Paris Season 4, Part 2 included beyond this point
While the show is still called Emily in Paris, a possible Season 5 of the series may need be renamed “Emily in Rome,” with the season ending as Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) makes Emily the head of Agence Grateau’s new Rome office. Of course, this happens just as Emily starts a romance with Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini), whose family business is now working with Agence Grateau, for at least six months, halting their plan to sell the company to JVMA.
But while Emily is seemingly entering a new work mode, Italian style, in some ways she’s pushing aside the work-focused energy to take a little bit more time for herself. Finding that work-life balance is something that’s been particularly important to the show’s star as well.
“It’s something that was really important to me,” Collins said. “I’ve always been very work-driven and I love what I do, and I always have, even when I was a teenager, … but for me it was hard to find the balance of stopping that and just focusing on being young and just having fun, and not focused on work.”
“So I think I continue to find that balance as an adult, and I think it’s something that Emily really struggled with at the beginning. But what I’ve tried to do more of is encourage a vulnerability in her character and have her understand that you can’t have it all, all the time, or have it all figured out. And sometimes you just need to breathe and put your phone down.”
There’s a core moment at the end of Season 4 that really shows Emily taking a little bit more time for herself, and it was actually an idea from Collins.
At the end of the season we see Emily take a selfie at the window of her new Rome apartment. As she hesitates to post it on social media, Marcello knocks at the door to take her out to explore Rome. Right as she’s about to walk out of the apartment with him, Emily puts her phone down and picks up her keys.
“I said, I just feel like it doesn’t need to be focused on, but I want people to notice that she’s making a choice, and as we leave this season hoping to go to another one, I just want people to remember that she’s shown growth,” Collins said. “She would never have left her phone anywhere, I mean she had it around her neck at times, on a chain, and now she’s like, ‘I’m just going leave it here,’ and not even take a purse, which is mind-blowing for Emily.”
Mindy and Emily’s friendship: ‘They are each other’s home’
Emily’s love life and professional life aside, if there’s one thing Emily in Paris has really shown us is the importance of friendship, and Mindy (Ashley Park) and Emily, in particular, have made us want to cherish our female friendships a little bit more throughout these four seasons (with hopefully more to come).
“I can’t imagine the experience without Mindy for Emily, but also Ashley for me,” Collins said. “And I think whether it’s Sylvie and Emily, or Camille and Emily, or Mindy and Emily, I think it’s so important for all generations to see the complexities and the layers of female friendships and relationships, whether it’s in the workplace or friendships, and also Camille and Sofia, that romantic relationship.”
“I just think it’s really important to not always focus on necessarily the romance, but also the camaraderie and soul sisterhood that can come from meeting a girlfriend. I think with Mindy, we’ve grown so much together from our time in Paris and we’ve learned so much about how to fight for ourselves, and stand up for ourselves through the other one, and what it’s like to ask for help and receive it from a non-judgmental friend. I think that they’ve gotten that from both of each other, and I’ve certainly gotten that from Ashley, and I just love being able to work with a best friend every day.”
Ashley Park also highlighted that one thing she loves about her character Mindy is that she’s such an “empath” who really understood Emily’s need for friendship in Paris from the first day they met.
“What I love so much is they’re both expats living in Paris and we really see them being able to open up to other parts of their life, and themselves, and becoming the women that they are because they found a home in each other in this city,” Park said. “And I think that especially this season, we really see that they are each other’s home.”
When it comes to Sylvie and Emily’s relationship, there’s more motherly guidance coming from Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu’s character.
“I have a daughter that’s more or less Emily’s age, so I’m very used to that position, and I really like it,” Leroy-Beaulieu said. “You’re trying to help women to see what they can’t see, walk different paths, and I think she appreciates the fact that Emily is accepting her imperfections more and more.”