I don’t care what people say, I love Emily In Paris. It’s an extremely dumb show full of dumb clothes and low-stakes melodrama. Season 4 came out in September and I enjoyed it so much, even if some of the plot points made zero sense. Emily and Gabriel finally got together in a real way, only for it to quickly fall apart. Then Emily met an attractive Italian man and (spoiler) Emily In Rome might be a real possibility for Season 5. But what about Gabriel? Gabriel is played by the handsome French actor Lucas Bravo. As he promoted a non-EIP project, Bravo ended up complaining about Gabriel’s storyline in Season 4 specifically:
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.
“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.”
“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.”
While I love EIP, I actually think he’s got somewhat of a point, especially with what the writers did with Gabriel in the fourth season. The whole storyline of Gabriel and Emily finally getting together only they’re suddenly miserable (for REASONS!) and they fall out… it was just complicated and dumb. That being said, it also felt like they’re trying to make Gabriel more dimensional and angsty. But yeah. As you can imagine, Lucas’ comments are not going down very well.
Lucas Bravo‘s future on Emily in Paris is still undecided after his surprising comments about the show, a source exclusively reveals in the newest issue of Us Weekly.
“The show will go on with or without Lucas,” the insider adds. “The show is Emily in Paris — not Gabriel in Paris.”
According to the source, “Everyone is so upset about the remarks he made. There is going to be a lot of tension.”
The thing is, Lily Collins is executive producer on EIP, and when other costars had issues with the writing or characterization, they went to Lily and she got sh-t done. That’s why there was such a marked improvement in the writing and storylines after the first season. Did Lucas share his thoughts with Lily? It sounds like he complained to some of the producers, but who knows.
Photos courtesy of Netflix, Avalon Red.