Pop Culture
‘Emily in Paris’ Takes on Rome, Touring Landmarks From the Forum to the Trevi Fountain
Love and business are both pointing Emily Cooper toward Italy.
Emily Cooper’s adventures in Paris will continue with the hit Netflix series Emily in Paris renewed for season five—but (spoiler alert) everyone’s favorite Chicago expat (Lily Collins) will also be living la dolce vita next time we see her. Her Roman holiday in part two of season four, which dropped September 12, led to a new business opportunity that will have Emily splitting time between the two European capitals.
“Emily’s going to have a presence in Rome. It doesn’t mean she’s not going to be in Paris, but she’s going to have a presence in Rome,” showrunner Darren Star told Netflix’s in-house publication Tudum. “I want to stay ahead of the audience and take them to unexpected places. It doesn’t mean that Emily’s leaving Paris forever, but the show has the ability to have a bigger footprint.”
Emily in Paris premiered in fall 2020, charming viewers still stuck in their homes with its cheerful, candy-colored adventures in the City of Light.
The titular plucky marketing executive may not have learned French, but Emily thrived in Paris, winning over her demanding French boss, as well as legions of Instagram followers. (That includes Brigitte Macron, wife of the French president, who made a cameo this season.)
Along with her questionable romances and over-the-top, occasionally insane fashion choices, Emily also brought us most people’s first look at the phenomena known as Immersive Van Gogh.
And in between Emily’s efforts to pitch advertising campaigns for everything from to baby perfume, there have been other crossovers with the art world in the love-it-or-hate it series.
Emily’s friend Camille deLalisse (Camille Razat) is an art dealer, with scenes at her work filmed at Perrotin gallery, and the two had a fight earlier this season that ended with them both falling into Claude Monet’s lily pond at Giverny.
There was also a cute visit to a balloon museum, a romantic proposal at the Musée d’Orsay, fashion shows at Versailles and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and an auction helmed by none other than Artnet News’s own Simon de Pury.
Excitingly for art lovers, expanding the series’ world beyond France definitely offers plenty of opportunities for more art appearances. (And potentially to recreate moments from France in Italy, like Emily’s selfie out the window of her new apartment.)
As soon as Emily touched down in Rome, she naturally hopped on a moped with her handsome new love interest, Marcello Muratori (Eugenio Franceschini). They zipped past some of the Eternal City’s most historic sites, from the Forum to the Victor Emmanuel II Monument to the Colosseum, before tossing coins in the Trevi Fountain and sitting on the Spanish Steps to take it all in. Marcello even managed to convince our social media-loving heroine to put down her phone for a minute.
“Think of all these buildings and ruins that are still standing after thousands of years,” Emily marveled later.
If past behavior is any indicator, Rome’s historic art and architecture will offer Emily plenty of professional inspiration. Here’s hoping for Emily gets to launch a brand activation with the Vatican Museums and throw a fancy theme party at the Galleria Borghese in season five.