Lucas Bravo Is Rethinking Returning for ‘Emily in Paris’ Season 5: It’s ‘Not Fun Anymore’
Lucas Bravo is questioning how much freedom he has on “Emily in Paris” – and whether or not he wants to return to the hit Netflix series for its fifth season.
Bravo told IndieWire while promoting Mélanie Laurent’s true crime film “Freedom” that while he is indebted to “Emily in Paris” for marking his breakout role as chef Gabriel, he thinks his character has been “slowly turned into guacamole.”
More from IndieWire
And the food parallels don’t stop there: According to Bravo, the Lily Collins-led show has become rife with narrative “souffles,” or a “lack of risk” with the character arcs. In turn, Bravo doesn’t recognize both the show and the character he first signed up to play.
“The ‘sexy chef’ was very much part of me in Season 1 and we grew apart season after season because of the choices he makes and because of the direction they make him take. I’ve never been so far away from him,” Bravo said to IndieWire of playing Gabriel. “In Season 1, there was a lot of me in him. But as they made him kind of unaware of his surroundings, of the dynamic, always victimizing and always being completely lost in translation and oblivious to anything that is happening around him and being manipulated by everyone, it kind of became not fun for me to shoot or to see a character I love so much and brought me so much, being slowly turned into guacamole. I really grew apart from him.”
Bravo added that he has tried to voice his concerns and give input on set but “there is only so much I can do in the limits of a script.” IndieWire has reached out to Netflix for comment.
“I tried for seasons to bring nuances but we don’t have much liberty on set. We cannot change a word or an emotion. They know what they want and we just have to comply,” Bravo said. “It makes me question if I want to be part of Season 5 […] because my contract ends at Season 4. I really want to see if Gabriel gets back to his fun, cheeky, playful, alive self. Because three seasons playing melancholic, sad, depressed, and lost is not fun anymore. It’s a comedy, everybody is having fun around me, everybody is jumping around, and I’m just slowly sinking into god knows what.”
The actor added that Netflix and the Darren Star production might be hesitant to change the recipe for the series after its early viral success.
“They’re probably holding onto something that they couldn’t measure that had such a success so now they are very precious about not changing the recipe and keeping it what it was,” Bravo said. “Anything that could go off road is carefully taken back. It’s a lot of souffles. Pregnant? No, fake positive. Going to Rome? No, coming back. There are a lot of things like that. There is a lack of risk.”
He added, “But I love the show. It started everything for me. I love the show and the people in it. With saying that, I feel like I am not being nice or grateful, but when you love something you want it to be…you want the best version of it. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been frustrated with the direction by character is taking. But we’ll see where it goes. The show is not over.”
However, “Emily in Paris” might not be in its titular City of Light much longer. The Season 4 finale saw Emily (Lily Collins) relocating to Rome, leading to French President Emmanuel Macron issuing a statement vowing to “fight hard” to bring the production back to France. Macron’s wife Brigitte Macron also guest-starred on the show.
When asked about whether the French President’s statements will impact the series itself, Bravo said that Macron was using “Emily in Paris” to show he is part of the zeitgeist.
“I think we have to place things into context,” Bravo said. “The president also does videos with Instagrammers and YouTubers. We still react to that like it’s the hierarchy we know as the president being this inaccessible figure. But nowadays, if we put it back in the context of our society and social media and how they’re willing to give up that distance to touch the youth through the prism of social media and YouTube and influencers, it’s not so crazy that he did that.”
Bravo continued, “It was a way to show that he stood up for his wife and he is into a pop thing that is kind of cool and that everybody likes, and to show that he is connected to the youth. I am being very analytical about it when the whole team of ‘Emily in Paris’ was like ‘wow!’ and reposting what he did like it was so crazy, but I think we shouldn’t read too much into it other than what it just brought to the table.”
“Freedom” premieres November 1 on Prime Video.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
