Photo: Netflix
This article contains spoilers from the second season ofEmily in Paris
Emily in Parisis back with more fashion, drama and romance forLily Collins' Emily Cooper and Ashley Park’s Mindy Chen.
In celebration of their Netflix show’s return, Collins and Park opened up to PEOPLE about their favorite scenes from season 2, which follows the titular marketing executive from Chicago getting more and more immersed in French culture during her year abroad at the Savoir firm.
Emily’s story picks up right where season 1 left off after she sleeps with her neighbor Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), the chef who ultimately chooses to stay in Paris for her instead of opening a restaurant in his native Normandy.
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“Episode 3 is a fun one,” Collins, 32, said. “There’s a lot of twists and turns, a lot of fashion, a lot of laughs and it takes a bit of a turn. It leaves you being like, ‘Wait, what’s gonna happen?’ Episode 3 was one of my favorites to shoot. There’s amazing fashion too.”
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Further into the season, things get more complicated as Emily meets a charming businessman from London named Alfie (Lucien Laviscount), her new love interest and a fellow transplant learning French in the same class.
Speaking about how Emily’s love triangle expands into a “love square,” series creator Darren Star told PEOPLE how episode 3 serves as a bit of a turning point for Emily, who “has to deal with the consequences of some of her, I want to call them, decisions.”
Meanwhile, Mindy is diving back into a singing career. She left Shanghai following an embarrassing performance on the country’s singing competitionChinese Popstar, which went viral online. In season 1, Mindy left her job as a well-paid nanny to sing at a local drag club, and in season 2, Mindy makes her mark as a singer and joins a new band.
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stéphanie Branchu/Netflix
Park, 30, told PEOPLE that one of her favorite season 2 scenes is in the first episode when Mindy performs her rendition of the BTS hit “Dynamite” at the drag club.
“BTS, I needed to get that [song],” the Broadway star said. “I was like, ‘Please get me a K-pop song’ and they got BTS. It was amazing.”
And costar Collins agrees. “Oh my God, The Blonds made that outfit for her,” she shared about Mindy’s drag costume in episode 1. “[Ashley] was sewn into it many times. She had to wear it for a couple of days, different days, because that scene was shot out of order, at a lot of different times, so she had to keep getting back into it. Every time she put it on, I was like, ‘It keeps getting more and more amazing!’ "
As for Park’s overall favorite episode of season 2, the actress chose the finale moment when Mindy and her guitarist-turned-love interest Benoit (Kevin Dias) perform an original song, titled “Mon Soleil,” about their blossoming relationship.
“I’m most excited song-wise. Obviously, I get to sing a lot of different genres [throughout the season] but the original song we did for the finale, I hope people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, what song is this?’ " Park shared.
“I found the composer Freddy Wexler, who is a friend and the best. We had a lot of discussions about what the song should sound like. I’m not a composer at all so I let him do all of that. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a song written for me,” she continued.
Calling the bridge of the song a “storytelling element,” Park added, “I’m really excited for people to get to also see that because that means that they watched the whole season. We didn’t really see a lot of Mindy being vulnerable and having her own situations [in season 1] where she didn’t know what to do. We just get to see a lot of different colors in Mindy, and I hope that we will respond to how much she opens up in a bit.”
Emily in Pariscreator Star also told PEOPLE, “I’m such a huge fan of Ashley. I wanted to give her character that opportunity to sort of see where she’s going and to perform so much more. She’s following her dream as a performer. In some ways, this season is like a musical.”
Stéphanie Branchu/Netflix
Newcomer Dias' character Benoit is a key part of Mindy expressing her feelings and being more vulnerable as their romance develops.
“It’s not something that I expected them to take the time to write,” Park said of Mindy finding a love interest in season 2. “For Mindy, her trajectory coming into the city was that she had no plan. She’s very opposite from Emily and they kind of meet in the middle. It’s kind of nice when you find a friend or somebody that you can have as a daily rock a little bit and trust. Then your heart is able to open up to other things.”
Park added, “I think that’s when [Mindy] settled in that part of her life, she was able to be like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ She struggled for a few episodes like, should I date Benoit or should I not? I really love how they wrote the romantic love interest. Kevin Dias is such a heartthrob too.”
And not to leave out the supporting cast, Star said “there’s so much I love about season 2 and I love the fact that we learn so much about some other characters.” He particularly enjoyed creating and expanding on the personal life of Emily’s Paris boss, Sylvie Grateau (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu).
“With Sylvie, we get a lot more story and we learn so much. Some of the layers get peeled away. She’s such an enigma in season 1, we learn more about her in season 2,” he said.
“I was really looking forward to doing that and bringing in new characters. Having Jeremy O. Harris in the show was just fantastic,” Star shared of theSlave Playplaywright, who joins the cast as fashion designer Gregory Elliott Dupree.
“I love the fact that there’s just a lot more French spoken in season 2 among our French characters. We spend more time with those characters and I think you sort of feel like you’re in Paris so much this season,” he continued. “Hearing French spoken so much more on the show, you’re very immersed and I think it’s really interesting to see Emily’s journey of trying to learn French. It’s a long process.”
Star added, “If season 1 people watched it because they were home and they wanted to take a vicarious trip to Paris, I think season 2 they’re gonna love it because we’re invested in the storytelling and the characters.”
Season 2 ofEmily in Parisis streaming now on Netflix.
source: people.com
