‘Emily in Paris,’ the Netflix show you loved to hate-watch, gets Season 2
Like it or not, “Emily in Paris” is getting its work visa extended for a second season, star Lily Collins and streaming service Netflix announced Wednesday.
“Deux is better than un. I’m freaking out and beyond thrilled (much to Sylvie’s dismay) to announce #EmilyinParis will be returning to @netflix for Season 2!” Collins tweeted, while Netflix took on the voice of Sylvie Grateau, the fictional Emily Cooper’s disapproving French boss.
“Nous sommes désolées! We are writing to regrettably inform you that Emily Cooper will need to remain in Paris for an extended period of time,” said the release, written as a letter from Grateau to her firm’s corporate overlords in America.
“Despite her overconfident manner and lack of prior experience in luxury goods marketing, she has nonetheless managed to charm some of our hard-to-impress clients during her short time at Savoir. Call it bonne chance, or American ingenuity — I’m leaning towards the former — her results are impressive.”
“We love having Emily in Paris!,” the note concluded. “But please don’t let her know that.”
So it will be another location shoot in Paris for Collins, who just got engaged to director Charlie McDowell in September.
The show, created by “Sex and the City” mastermind Darren Star, follows the 20-something Chicagoan as she Instagrams her way around Paris while working at a marketing agency that’s not thrilled about her assignment there.
In addition to having Phil Collins’ daughter as its lead, the show costars Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as Grateau, with Mindy Chen as Emily’s new best pal, Ashley Park, and Lucas Bravo as hot neighbor Gabriel.
Samuel Arnold and Bruno Gouery play coworkers Julien and Luc, with Camille Razat as Gabriel’s girlfriend in the series produced by MTV Studios, Darren Star Productions and Jax Media.
Darren Star, creator of Netflix’s “Emily in Paris,” reflects on a 30-year career that includes “Beverly Hills, 90210,” “Melrose Place” and “Sex and the City.”
Star knows what he’s talking about when it comes to being an expat in Paris — he relocated temporarily to the City of Light to immerse himself before pitching “Emily in Paris” to the Paramount Network, which in turn sold it to Netflix.
“I moved here, I got an apartment, I went to French class here. I liked it, and I struggled,” he told The Times before the show premiered in early October. “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.”
He added, “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.”
Netflix’s “Emily in Paris” returns “Sex and the City” creator Darren Star to the City of Light — and pays subtle homage to the earlier series’ romantic finale.
Not all “Emily in Paris” reviews have been civil, however, with many tagging the lead character as, well, supremely annoying.
There was the critical Buzzfeed commentary from an Actual French Person who said things like, “This might come as a shock, but we actually work and are expected to come to the office on time” and, “No vibrator, no matter how powerful, would blow out the fuse of an entire Parisian neighborhood.”
“If Emily’s life is supposed to be a millennial woman’s dream come true, then that dream is not built on upward trajectory, money, or the knowledge that she made the world a better place,” Vox’s reviewer wrote. “Rather, it’s a relatively worry-free, intellectually slovenly existence, in which a metropolitan place like Paris is more amusement park than a large, imperfect city.”
Then there’s the “Emily in Parasite” parody Instagram account.
And even NPR got in on the Emily-bashing, while grudgingly giving the show a B-plus.
Still, the reviewer wrote, “The people in the Paris office find it a little obnoxious that the woman specifically sent to be the liaison between the French staff and their new American partners doesn’t speak the language. I’m not going to lie: I did, too.”
No release date has been set yet for Season 2 of “Emily in Paris.”
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