Emily in Paris arrived on Netflix on October 2, 2020, with Lily Collins as Emily Cooper, a Chicago marketing executive with a master’s degree in communications who moves to Paris to give an American point of view to a French marketing firm. The show was created by Darren Star, produced by MTV Studios, and had originally been developed for Paramount Network, which gave it a straight-to-series order in September 2018. It moved to Netflix in July 2020. Filming began in August 2019 and takes place in Île-de-France, mostly in Paris and its suburbs.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Chicago Woman in a French Firm
The setup is simple. Emily lands the job, and cultures clash as she adjusts to work, friendships, and an active love life. Her task is to bring social media and an American angle to a venerable French firm, and the show treats that brief as a running conflict rather than a question it wants to answer.
The French characters push back. The American ones push forward. Emily stands in the middle and posts.
Lily Collins and the Cast Around Her
Collins was cast as Emily on April 3, 2019. Ashley Park joined the main cast on August 13, 2019. Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Lucas Bravo, Samuel Arnold, Camille Razat, and Bruno Gouery came aboard in starring roles on September 19, 2019, with Kate Walsh, William Abadie, and Arnaud Viard in recurring parts. Lucien Laviscount was cast in a recurring role on May 24, 2021, and Abadie was promoted to series regular for season two. Laviscount became a series regular for season three on April 10, 2022.
That is a lot of casting news, and it tells you something about how the show works. Emily in Paris runs on the people around Emily more than on Emily. Leroy-Beaulieu’s Sylvie Grateau, Park’s Mindy Chen, and Bravo’s Gabriel carry the scenes that hold up. Collins is the engine, but she is not the reason to keep watching.
What the Premise Sets Up
The show has one idea and repeats it: an American in Paris, unbothered and underinformed. The premise gives Emily no French, no instinct for the room, and a phone she trusts more than the people in front of her, and the series plays that gap for comedy rather than growth. The French colleagues read, to this paper, as obstacles with better wardrobes, and the joke usually lands on them.
Six seasons and 60 episodes later, the formula has not changed much. The series premiered to mixed reviews in the United States and criticism in France for negatively stereotyping Parisians and the French. That criticism was not a misunderstanding of the show. It was a description of it.
The Case Against Emily in Paris
Here is the ranking of what the show gets wrong, worst first:
- The French characters exist to be corrected by an American who has been in the city for five minutes.
- The work story is decoration. Marketing is a backdrop for outfits and romance, not a subject.
- Emily has no flaw the show is willing to name. She is naive in a way that costs her nothing.
- Paris is a set. The city is photographed well and understood poorly.
- The romance plots reset instead of resolve. The same handful of people circle each other season after season.
That list is the whole review, really. Emily in Paris is not a failure of craft. It is a failure of nerve. It has a point of view about Americans and French people, and the point of view is that Americans are right and French people are funny.
Why It Still Ran Six Seasons
Netflix renewed the series for a second season in November 2020, and it premiered on December 22, 2021. A third and fourth season were ordered in January 2022. The third premiered on December 21, 2022. The fourth came in two parts, on August 15 and September 12, 2024. A fifth season was ordered in September 2024 and premiered on December 18, 2025. In January 2026, Netflix renewed it for a sixth and final season.
That is a long run for a show that never solved its central problem. The reason is not hard to find. Emily in Paris is easy. It asks nothing, risks nothing, and looks expensive. It is the television equivalent of a scroll.
The casting churn tells the same story. Razat was confirmed in April 2025 as not returning for the fifth season. Minnie Driver was cast in an undisclosed capacity on May 14, 2025. Bryan Greenberg and Michèle Laroque joined in recurring roles on July 2, 2025, while Paul Forman and Arnaud Binard returned. Laviscount came back as a series regular for the fifth season on January 22, 2025, after appearing as recurring in the fourth.
In this paper’s view, a show that keeps adding people is usually a show that cannot hold a story.
The Verdict on Emily in Paris
Emily in Paris is watchable and weightless. The performances are better than the writing, which is the kindest thing that can be said about it. Leroy-Beaulieu gives Sylvie a spine the scripts do not always give her. Park makes Mindy a person rather than a sidekick. Bravo plays Gabriel as a man who has made peace with being a plot device.
Collins has the hardest job and gets the least help. Emily is written as a woman who is always right and never learns, and no actor can build a character out of that. This paper would call her plucky. The show does not call her wrong.
The French criticism was the most interesting thing that happened to this series. A show about an American bringing American ideas to France got told, in France, that its ideas about France were bad. That is a better story than anything in the first season.
What matters here is not that Emily in Paris is bad. Plenty of shows are bad. What matters is that it is popular and bad in a specific way, and that the specific way is the whole point. It sells a version of Paris and a version of America that flatter the audience watching. It is not a portrait. It is a postcard with a caption.
The 5.8 out of 10 is fair. It is not a disaster. It is not a show this paper expects to age well. It ran six seasons, in this paper’s reading, because it was pleasant, and pleasant is not the same as good.
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