“I don’t know if she’s hit the million mark yet,” says Lily Collins, speculating about the social media accrued by Emily in Paris’s Emily, the Chicago marketing whiz turned Parisienne party hopper the actor has played for five years now. “I feel like there would have been a celebratory million. Emily likes to go big.” (For the record, Collins guesses that Emily is more around the 600,000-followers range, nothing to sneeze at.)
While Collins’s character, the lead of Netflix’s frothy half-hour ensemble rom-com, certainly does like a celebration, season four of the series—which is dropping in two parts this summer; the first five episodes are out now—will see her chipper, type A character getting a little messier. “I was happy that this season you really get to see Emily feel all the feelings and have a breakdown and not look perfect all the time and actually be more vulnerable,” Collins tells VF’s Still Watching podcast. “I think that this season we get to see her be more complex, and be okay being more complex.”
Complex is maybe not the go-to word one would use to describe Emily in Paris, which was created by Sex and the City mastermind Darren Starr; the show is mostly a lark. Yet to sustain a series for this long, one must find new dimensions. So Emily is facing tricky situations in season four, exploring more facets of her personality. She’s also causing some trouble. “It’s fun to play someone that rocks the boat a little bit,” says Collins.
Collins is happy that season four isn’t just bopping and teetering around the City of Light. But it can be tricky filming more dramatic scenes when shooting on the streets of Paris, where onlookers are free to gawk. “There are moments that I’m having a public breakdown. It’s private in the show, but it’s public because there are people watching,” Collins says. “How do you actually have a private, intimate moment while there’s an audience that doesn’t have any context to the scene?”
From what we’ve seen, she manages just fine. And anyway, despite the occasional jag of seriousness, Emily in Paris remains a light treat. But is season four our final meal? Collins is as in the dark as the rest of us. “We don’t know if we’re going to go to a season five,” Collins says. “We don’t even know what the endgame is when we start a season, because we don’t know where the season’s going to finish.” Collins is at least able to tease that there are surprises to come in the second half of season four. “It wouldn’t be Emily in Paris without more bombs being dropped.”
And if there were to be a fifth season? Collins has some ideas about where the show could travel. First of all, forget Paris. “I honestly would love to see Emily in Tokyo,” she muses. Which sounds great to us—as long as she eventually returns to the city that got her to nearly a million.
For our full conversation with Collins, listen to the episode above or wherever you download podcasts.