“Emily in Paris,” the hit Netflix series about a young American living a life of romance and luxury in France, has ignited a blaze of indignation since it premiered in late 2020.
Emily’s clumsy grasp of the native tongue, brash designer clothes and exaggerated encounters with dashing chefs and flamboyant artists left some Parisians irate and American expatriates embarrassed, even as it became one of Netflix’s most popular comedies.
Now in its fourth season — split into two installments, with the second arriving Thursday — the show continues to both charm and vex with its sunny vision of what the French newspaper Liberation has called “Disneyland Paris.”
But in the new batch of episodes, Emily (Lily Collins) departs Paris and heads to Rome. Invited by her new Italian love interest Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini), she zooms around on his scooter, offering a picture-postcard view of the Eternal City with stops at touristic hallmarks like the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and the Spanish Steps. As he entices Emily to move on to a new European capital, Marcello makes a pitch that doubles as the season’s mandate: “Forget about crepes. We’ll be eating pizza.”
Darren Star, the creator and showrunner of “Emily in Paris,” said that Emily “was becoming very comfortable in Paris. I wanted to throw her into some unfamiliar waters.” He added that “we were able to live Emily’s life in Paris, and now we’re going to do the same thing in Rome.”
The show’s depiction of Rome is about as romantic as it gets: gleaming arches, ruins at golden hour and plate after plate of Parma ham and carbonara, with none of the grime, litter and graffiti that are equal parts of the real Roman experience.
Many other Italian archetypes abound in the episodes, including food-loving nonnas and men who exclaim “bellissima!” at passing women. The series also channels classic Italian iconography through homages to films like “Roman Holiday” (as well as one of Emily’s less esteemed favorites, “The Lizzie McGuire Movie,” also set in Rome).
As Emily exclaims shortly after her arrival, eating a heaped cup of gelato, “Look around us! Isn’t this amazing?” Star said this was all was by design. “We ran with the beauty of the city of Rome,” he said. “I’m not trying to depict Rome as the overcrowded, garbage strewn, graffiti infested place — that’s not the Rome that Emily is experiencing.”
It remains to be seen whether this romanticized portrayal will impress native Romans, or if they, like Parisians before them, will be offended by the one-dimensional sketch. Will scenes of Emily tossing coins into the Trevi, musical cues like “Mambo Italiano” and references to movies like “La Dolce Vita” and “Gladiator” endear Italians? Either way, Star insisted that he doesn’t care. “I’m not concerned with that,” he said of possible objections from Italian viewers. “I don’t really take those criticisms to heart..”
Italy was a particular draw for Star, he said, for its deep connection to the fashion industry, which made the move feel “organic,” given Emily’s work in that field. But he also felt that the cultural differences between Italy and France would make for an interesting tension: there’s “a certain warmth” that Italians have, Star said, that the French do not: a “family feeling” that he wanted Emily to experience.
The longstanding cultural rivalry between France and Italy also seemed “fun to play with,” Star said. Emily’s French boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) has a fraught history with Italy, which has been foreshadowed since the second season, and that connection shapes the action as it unfolds.
The showrunner always had it in the back of his mind that Emily might travel to a different city, he said. “People that live in cities in Europe, they leave their city,” Star said “they’re not just sitting in Paris and never leaving Paris.” To that end, Emily in Rome — or elsewhere in the European Union — was perhaps something of an inevitability.
With only two full episodes in Rome, Star said these new episodes “really only scratched the surface of telling the story of Emily in Rome, or Emily in Italy.” Should the show be renewed for a fifth season, he might have the chance to explore further: the season ends with the suggestion that Emily’s time in Italy is far from over.
Still, Star made it clear that “Emily in Paris” isn’t moving permanently. “Paris is not done,” he said. “She doesn’t change her Instagram handle to @emilyinrome. I think the show still has its feet firmly planted in Paris.” That might mean “Emily in Paris” will prove to be a more adventurous, city-hopping adventure in the future.
It also means that frustrated Parisians aren’t free of Emily just yet.
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