Lucas Bravo doubled down on his surprising criticism of Emily in Paris by listing the issues he has with the show while questioning a potential return.
Bravo, 36, candidly expressed his frustration with Emily in Paris while speaking with IndieWire on Tuesday, October 29, about how his character Gabriel has been “slowly turned into guacamole.”
“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,” Bravo admitted. “I’ve never been so far away from him.”
Bravo’s food metaphors didn’t stop there as he made a dig about narrative “souffles” and a “lack of risk” on screen.
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“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,” he noted. “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.”
According to Bravo, he tried to provide suggestions for Gabriel’s arc, adding, “[But] there is only so much I can do in the limits of a script. 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.”
Not having enough input into his character has made Bravo reconsider his future on the show.
“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,” he continued. “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.”
Bravo expressed frustration with other story lines as well, such as the false-alarm pregnancy of Gabrielle’s ex Camille (Camille Razat) and a temporary show relocation to Rome.
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“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,” he shared. “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.”
Despite his issues, Bravo maintained that he has “love” for 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 the best version of it,” he explained. “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.”
The Netflix series, which premiered in 2020, follows Emily’s journey after moving to France from the U.S. for a new job. Emily subsequently finds herself caught in a love triangle between Gabriel (Bravo) and Alfie (Lucien Laviscount).
Season 4 premiered earlier this year and showed Emily and Gabriel’s attempt to give their romance a chance ending as quickly as it started. The most recent installment ended with Emily moving on with sexy Italian Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini) in Rome.
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Not everyone was thrilled by the potential move from France to Rome — including the President of France. Emmanuel Macron told Variety earlier this month that they “will fight hard” to keep Emily in Paris. Frenchman Bravo didn’t find those statements as funny as fans did.
“I think we have to place things into context. 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,” he told IndieWire. “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.”
Emily in Paris is currently streaming on Netflix.
