Season 3 of “Emily in Paris” is definitely not unanimous and this time it is the “real” Emily who speak on the subject!
In season 3 of Emily in Paris, Emily Cooper, moonlighting as a waitress, confuses the words “champagne” and “mushrooms”, causing a horrible allergic reaction in a customer at Chez Lavaux, a restaurant where her former French lover Gabriel is the chef.
As The Seattle Times reports, it was this scene that angered Nicole Pritchard, a 41-year-old Paris-based real estate agent, yacht broker and part-time yoga instructor from Virginia who has lived in Paris for 20 years. For her, it is impossible that Emily (played by Lily Collins), who has lived in the French capital for about a year and worked for a champagne brand within the fictitious luxury marketing company that employs her, would not can’t tell the difference between champagne and mushrooms.
Emily embarrasses me because I don’t see her making a lot of effort to integrate into French life. After all those language lessons, she should know the difference between champagne and mushrooms. It’s two or three syllables. It’s not that hard.
She, who supported the character of Emily in her early days, can no longer take it, especially since Emily mispronounced “of course”, showed her stomach in the office and confused George Sand with a man. She also said her weekly pilgrimage to Café de Flore has been ruined by the series’ boisterous fans who now throng the café, taking selfies for Instagram and wearing red berets like their favorite heroine.
SHE’S NOT THE ONLY ONE
Since its debut in 2020, the Netflix series, telling the story of an American woman in her twenties who moves to Paris for an unexpected job opportunity, has not ceased to arouse strong reactions among French people who complain that she portrays them as mean, haughty and lazy while idealizing Paris. The series had however been presented by its creator, Darren Star (Sex & The City), as a glamorous love letter to the French capital.
When season 3 was released at the end of December, The world didn’t go easy on it, writing: “It’s time to consider at least one season of Emily away from Paris.” Likewise, last week, in Release, David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris, protested against the representation of the capital in the show, a “Disneyland Paris” according to him, “confined to the districts of the ultra center and inhabited only by the most rich”. The series, he complained, also seems oblivious to climate change and resource scarcity.
But even more pissed off by fiction than the French are the real Emily in Paris, outraged American expats like Emily Hamilton who gave up watching the series because she didn’t recognize anyone she might have met in France: “Everyone is an exaggeration. It all seems completely absurd.”
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Even Rebecca Leffler, 40, who was dubbed “the real” Emily in Paris in the French media and worked as a consultant for the series during season 1, then drawing on her two decades of life as a expatriate to the French capital to help shape Emily’s on-screen Parisian life, now has a problem with the series.
Like Emily Cooper, Rebecca Leffler moved to Paris in her twenties and worked in a luxury division within Publicis Groupe, a French advertising company. Although she acknowledged that Emily’s chronic awkwardness was necessary narrative conceit, she said she was nonetheless irritated by Season 3 because Emily always seemed to get what she wanted while never seeming to meet. the harsh realities.
Emily’s biggest struggle is accidentally cutting off her bangs as every hot guy she meets falls in love with her. She posts a croissant on Instagram and suddenly has a million followers. She has an entry-level marketing position and can afford expensive designer dresses. I mean, are they kidding?
Pamela Druckerman, 52, an American writer based in Paris, lamented that fiction treats Paris like a “two-dimensional cartoon” in which Emily can go from Montmartre to the Left Bank in what seems like a nanosecond, “without never take the metro or meet homeless people”.
“We try so hard not to be the mean American, and here is Emily with her terrible accent and garish clothes, shouting at the French in English and expecting them to understand“, she said. “To be an American expat in Paris is to try to appear vaguely French or invisibly American, and Emily is the opposite of that.”
But idealizing Paris is part of a long American tradition that makes our country attractive and the “Emily effect” has indeed boosted tourism in the capital. At the end of December, McDonald’s even launched an “Emily in Paris” menu with the McBaguette, complete with a duo of chocolate and raspberry macaroons. Expected for a season 4, it would therefore seem that Emily has still not finished talking about her!
Emily in Paris can be found exclusively on Netflix.