‘Emily in Paris’ Director Andrew Fleming On Season 4’s “Chiaroscuro” Style
SPOILER ALERT: This piece contains spoilers for Emily in Paris season 4 part 1.
Emily in Paris season 4 part 1 will leave viewers hanging out in the gray area after several big plot twists, or trompe l’oeuils.
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Two big reveals will challenge Gabriel specifically in part 2 of season 4, as it turns out Luc’s girlfriend Marianne (Laurence Gormezano) is not the Michelin star inspector she claimed to be, and Camille (Camille Razat) is actually not pregnant! This will make things interesting for Emily and Gabriel to navigate after they’ve decided to strike up a relationship. Co-stars Lily Collins and Lucas Bravo emphasized the maturity of this season for their characters.
Consistent with the concept of the gray area, teased in the trailer for the first half of the series, director Andrew Fleming, who helmed six episodes this season, echoed these themes.
“Just to be a geek, we try to reflect that visually, the look and the feel of the show — it’s a different DP this year, it’s Seamus Tierney and it’s more like the term chiaroscuro, which means, dark and light and shadow,” Fleming told Deadline. “The lighting is more dramatic, and we were shooting in Paris in the winter, so there’s a very different feel to this season. It starts off in the spring with the first two episodes, and then it becomes winter, and there are coats, and it’s cozy. Paris is very different in the winter, but it’s beautiful. I think it’s more beautiful in the winter.”
In the below interview, Fleming took Deadline behind scenes like the tennis match, the masquerade ball, the boat fight at Giverny and more as well as themes that set up for part 2.
DEADLINE: You directed six episodes for this season. Which ones?
Fleming: One, two and three and eight, nine and 10.
DEADLINE: Ooh so beginning and end.
Fleming: I am the beginning and the end. I am the Alpha and the Omega.
DEADLINE: What was different going into this season? Lily Collins mentioned Emily’s vulnerability.
Fleming: It’s funny you say that because she and I had a conversation, and we talked about this with Darren also, we did feel like that this season should and would feel differently because she’s grown up. She’s not a wide-eyed kid in Paris, she lives there, and it’s not a fish out of water anymore. This is her world, and she takes things more in stride. She has more — to use a word that’s very common today — agency. She’s in touch with herself. She knows what she wants. She’s not awkward about it. This was reflected in the storylines, the relationship with Gabriel isn’t just this weird flirtation, it happens. It’s real. They start really figuring out, is it possible to make this work? And their arc this season — and a lot happens in the last half too — It’s very emotionally raw.
There’s this scene — one of my favorite scenes, a very simple scene. It’s just her and Gabriel talking in front of the restaurant, and she’s revealing some information to him, and he’s like, “Ah, I’m so sick of these lies.” And she’s like “So am I!” And when Lily said that, she screamed it. I stopped, and Darren was there, and he stopped and, I could see the entire crew just went like, “What the f*ck? Emily doesn’t sound like that.” She was connecting to her gut.
DEADLINE: The chiaroscuro style is evident in the masquerade ball scene. How did you tee up that moment to be when Emily and Gabriel get together?
Fleming: I loved the idea of it being a limited palette, of everybody there only wearing red or white or black, and to really create something magical. It was a great sequence on the page, because that’s not just one scene. It’s actually a series of 12 or 13 scenes. And a lot happens at that party, like a lot. Everybody’s life turns around at that party. Julien’s, Luc’s, Alfie’s. Everybody comes in thinking they’re heading in this direction. They go out of that party in another direction.
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DEADLINE: Did you film at the Roland Garros tournament for the tennis match?
Fleming: In 2023 we went and shot B roll of the crowds at the real Roland Garros, did our own beauty shots in our own style, with the whip pans and the fast motion and stuff. Then in the winter when it was really cold, we pretended it was May, and brought in a lot of extras. There are some shots where we were shooting towards the stadium, and we had to create, 10,000 digital extras. It was a mixture of things. Some of it was practical with our actors in real time during the winter. Some of it was really during real Roland Garros, and some of it was done digitally. It was like, without a doubt, one of the most complicated sequences we’ve done in the show, more complicated than the mask ball.
DEADLINE: Going back to the masquerade ball ,with everyone thinking they’re gonna go one way, and then their lives go another way, how do those finale cliffhangers set up for Part 2?
Fleming: It all comes down to character, and the set pieces are important. I feel like they give the show the energy, but it really is, do you care about them and what happens? Those are the two big things for Gabriel and Camille and his Michelin star, his restaurant, his reputation as a chef and Camille and the baby. It’s not over, believe me. Things keep being complicated. It’s a juicy season. The scripts were really good. Every script had a lot going on. There was no break.
DEADLINE: And Sylvie, has her own big moment, with the backstory, with Louis De Leon that led to scenes between characters we don’t normally see interacting. Emily and Sylvie seem the closest they’ve been this season too.
Fleming: They are, and you’ll see in part two how that evolves. It’s funny, we were having a cast dinner last night, and I don’t want to say who, but two of the actors who don’t really interact that much were hanging out, and Darren was just talking about, “Oh, they would be a great pair.”
That’s a sign that a show has more to give. If there are two characters who haven’t really hung out, but they could get together, and things could happen and there, there are still possibilities for those things, and there are new characters who come in in part two. Really interesting characters.
DEADLINE: Last thing I want to ask about is filming at Giverny. How did that unfold?
Fleming: I haven’t told anybody about this, but it was very complicated to do that. The actresses, Camille and Lily were on the boats yelling at each other. Very difficult to maneuver the boats. We had cables and whatnot. I’m giving away the magic here, but we had two stunt players fall in on location at Giverny. But then this is the craziest part. We built a little pond inside a stage and got those boats and got lily pads, and did close ups of Lily and Camille after they dumped in, and they yell at each other for a beat. So it was really three completely different like things happening there at that sequence.
It came together well. I’m pleased with it. We’re in this beautiful place, and we didn’t want to ruin anything, like we didn’t break Monet’s house, but it’s emotional, too. I loved what goes on between them there, this crazy scream fest, and then they connect emotionally, because they have so much in common, and they do care about each other despite all the misunderstandings.
I love that scene, and I love the scene after it at the restaurant. When I read it, I was terrified, because it’s a lot of beats in a very short scene, but I loved the way it came together. It is a complicated scene it’s Camille and Emily and then Gabriel comes into it, so then it’s Gabriel and Camille and Emily’s there. And then Sofia comes into it and inserts herself so it’s Sofia and Camille in the middle, and Emily and Gabriel on either side. And it’s like I was pleased with the way I blocked that scene because it was visually telling the story of what’s going on between them. All the actors really delivered.
It is interesting because we have bigger set pieces in this season and we keep trying to get bigger and bigger, but that scene in front of the restaurant with the four of them, and this other scene where Emily yells and Gabriel in front of the restaurant, it’s those little scenes, those are the ones that really hit you in the face, and they’re my favorite scenes.
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