‘Emily in Paris’ chef Lucas Bravo says playing sad ‘is not fun anymore’

Emily in Paris actor Lucas Bravo is really thinking about his future on the Netflix series, where he plays Gabriel, the sometimes love interest of the title character portrayed by Lily Collins.

“The ‘sexy chef’ was very much part of me in season 1, and we grew apart season after season because of the choices he makes and because of the direction they make him take,” Bravo told IndieWire in an article published Tuesday. “I’ve never been so far away from him. In season 1, there was a lot of me in him. But 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. I really grew apart from him.”

EW has reached out to the show, but did not receive an immediate response.

Bravo also said that he’s limited by the script when it comes to changes he can make.

“I tried for seasons to bring nuances but we don’t have much liberty on set. We cannot change a word or an emotion. They know what they want and we just have to comply,” he said. “It makes me question if I want to be part of season 5 […] because my contract ends at season 4. I really want to see if Gabriel gets back to his fun, cheeky, playful, alive self. Because three seasons playing melancholic, sad, depressed, and lost is not fun anymore.”

He noted that, after all, the show is supposed to be a comedy.

“Everybody is having fun around me, everybody is jumping around,” he said, “and I’m just slowly sinking into god knows what.”

The Darren Star-created series follows Collins’ Emily, as a Chicagoan hired by a French marketing firm to move overseas and provide an American perspective. Her time in the romantic city also leads to adventures in friendship and — oui, oui — love.

By the end of the fourth season of Emily in Paris, which debuted on the streamer in August, Gabriel decided that he wanted to be with Emily. She, however, had moved on both geographically, as she had been sent to open an office in Rome, and in her love life. Her new love interest, Marcello, is played by Eugenio Franceschini.

Collins said in September that she’s excited to see what happens with the couple next season.

“Marcello is a whole other adventure that we want for Emily because we ultimately want Emily to be able to have a better work/life balance,” she told Netflix blog Tudum. “We want to have Emily be able to smile without condition. We want to see her beyond her vacay mode. And he comes at that perfect time.”

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