“Emily in Paris” star Lucas Bravo said he’s debating returning for the Netflix series’ upcoming fifth season after being “frustrated with the direction” his character, Gabriel, has taken.
“When you love something … you want the best version of it. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been frustrated with the direction by character is taking,” Bravo said in an interview with Indiewire while promoting his upcoming film, “Freedom.” “It makes me question if I want to be part of Season 5 […] because my contract ends at Season 4.”
While Bravo noted “the ‘sexy chef’ was very much part of [him] in Season 1,’” the turns his character has taken in the subsequent installments have created distance between the actor and Gabriel. “I’ve never been so far away from him.” Season 4, which debuted in two parts in August and September, saw Gabriel and Emily (Lily Collins) finally get together for a fleeting moment before breaking up, while Gabriel mourned the opportunity to get a Michelin star for his restaurant.
“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,” Bravo admitted. “I really grew apart from him.”
Season 4 left off with Gabriel, once again, coming to terms with his feelings for Emily after he learned she was moving to Rome to head up Agence Grateau’s Italian office. While the Season 4 finale leaves off on a cliffhanger as Gabriel hurries to Rome, Emily already began her new Roman holiday, hand-in-hand with her new romantic interest, Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini).
“I really want to see if Gabriel gets back to his fun, cheeky, playful, alive self,” Bravo said of his hopes for the next season. “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 also noted that he has tried to share his concerns on set, but said “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,” he shared. “They know what they want and we just have to comply.”
The actor added that there’s a “lack of risk” on set as he imagines the team is “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.”
Still, Bravo said he “love[s] the show and the people in it” and shared his gratitude for it “start[ing] everything for [him].” “We’ll see where it goes. The show is not over.”
“Emily in Paris” Seasons 1-4 are now streaming on Netflix.
