Mindy Chen fans, rejoice! Ashley Park says her beloved Emily in Paris character has some exciting things in store in the Netflix series’ upcoming fifth season.
“There’s definitely some big, big moments in terms of song and dance with Mindy this year, which I’m super excited for people to see,” Park, 34, told Us Weekly exclusively while unveiling CHROMA: Tales Between Hues, her new multisensory immersive installation with Genesis House, in New York City on Wednesday, October 22.
Just before the big launch event, Netflix dropped a teaser for the forthcoming fifth season of the beloved comedy, which premieres on December 18.
“That teaser is just from Rome, and as people know, we filmed in Rome, Paris for a big chunk and also Venice, so it feels like we filmed three movies in one summer,” Park told Us. “The first season, I spent most of my time sitting in a café talking to Emily, and this season, I kid you not, I spent more hours on a boat than sitting in a café: the different water taxis in Venice, the gondolas, the speedboats in Rome. I was on a boat a lot.”
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In addition to an exciting new musical number, the actress teased strong character development for Mindy, Emily (Lily Collins) and the rest of the crew.
“There’s a lot of emotional elements in this new season that we really haven’t delved into before,” she told Us. “I think it’s always fun doing that, that we really understand the characters in those relationships, the friendship between them and that sisterhood, all the real ways in which those get tested.”
It was an emotional day in more ways than one, as Park’s parents and grandmother came to New York City to support her collaboration with Genesis House and how it pays tribute to her Korean-American heritage.
“[Genesis House] pays such respect and honor to the heritage of Korea, but in such a modern, imaginative, creative way,” she said. “I’m super humbled by [the collab]. What we’ve done is the Obangsaek is the Korean colors red, yellow, blue, white and black, and we infuse a lot of my personal stories with the Korean folktales that we’re doing.”
Park continued: “Every other time my grandma has come to New York to watch me in a Broadway show, there’s that barrier of language. So I think something that I was really moved by and excited about was that Genesis has helped me realize that emotion is a universal language. So what you’ll see downstairs in the installation is so personal to me, but it should feel personal to everybody.”
The installation is free to the public starting on Thursday, October 23, and invites visitors to journey through Korean folktales through a blend of scenic design and digital projection.
“Storytelling is probably the biggest element of my life,” Park told Us. “Whether it’s the music, color through emotion, that is what is universal. So I think this will be the first thing that [my grandma] is able to experience that she can also feel the same way. That was the whole point of this, and that’s also part of my coming into adulthood and understanding my Korean-American identity. This feels like the merge of that.”
