How to Get Cast on ‘Emily in Paris’

Emily Cooper is an average Midwestern, millennial marketing executive who finds herself out of her element when she moves to Paris for work. While Emily’s boss in Chicago had planned to make the move herself, she finds out she’s pregnant, allowing Emily to accept said job at Savoir, a French fashion marketing firm. Knowing nothing about French culture (or the language), Emily sets out to document her experience on Instagram via the @emilyinparis handle. She soon meets Mindy Chen, an American nanny, and the two become close friends, which runs counter to the French colleagues who can’t seem to bear Emily’s rocky adjustment period. Of course, by the end of Season 3, Emily finds herself in love with two men: Gabriel, who’s just been left at the altar by a pregnant Camille, and Alfie, who declares himself unwilling to be Emily’s second choice. With so much personal turmoil to tackle and a new job at Agence Grateau, there’s no saying how Season 4 will shake out.

“Emily in Paris” Season 4 features:

• Lily Collins as Emily Cooper
• Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as Sylvie Grateau
• Ashley Park as Mindy Chen
• Samuel Arnold as Julien
• Bruno Gouery as Luc
• Lucas Bravo as Gabriel
• Camille Razat as Camille
• Lucien Laviscount as Alfie
• William Abadie as Antoine Lambert
• Kevin Dias as Benoit
• Paul Forman as Nicolas de Leon
• Arnaud Binard as Laurent
• Jin Xuan Mao as Étienne
• Melia Kreiling as Sofia Sideris

Season 4 also welcomes Eugenio Franceschini (Marcello), Thalia Besson (Genevieve), Rupert Everett (Giorgio Barbieri), Anna Galiena (Antonia Muratori), and Raoul Bova (Giancarlo) as guest stars.

Juliette Ménager (“Babel, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon”), of Joule Casting Studio, has been the main casting director for “Emily in Paris” since the show debuted in 2020.

Based in France, Ménager told Casting Networks she’s been working with American production for most of her professional life. She begins the casting process by getting to know the period and the characters. “Then I work on a master list of who is available or not,” she said. “I send out the sides and the actors come in and we work on the scene.” She added, “My job is to lead the actor (in such a way) where they can open themselves up to be their best. I usually let them do one pass because sometimes they have a creative idea (for the character) and I want to let them have that.”

But ultimately, she wants actors to know she means business in the audition room. “I do believe that less is more. Also, if an actor doesn’t know their lines, they are never allowed to come back to see me!” she said. “They need to understand that when they are in the room, it’s as important for us that they get the part as it is for them because we need to move on. We need them to succeed. We have no time to lose!”

When casting “Emily in Paris,” Star wanted his lead to be someone who could bring out the humor in the fish-out-of-water story, while also adding grit to the situation. Here’s what he had to say about Collins: “The one thing I did see even just spending time with her is the amount of toughness she’s got inside of her, that she brought to the character, which is really important to me,” he told us. “I think sometimes of Holly Hunter in Broadcast News: You still love her, but she’s tough. And Lily completely brought that.”

But beyond Collins and Park—whom he just adored in “Mean Girls: The Musical” on Broadway—Star purposely set out to establish a primarily French cast. “I wanted the show to feel like we’re fully in Paris, and I wanted to have as much French flavor as possible,” he explained. “I loved the experience of this casting, just being introduced to a whole group of wonderful French actors that I hadn’t met before.”

That’s why he partnered with French casting director Ménager, who made her indelible mark on the show by wielding her expert eye, going against the grain, and defying what was written in Star’s script. “I cast ‘Emily in Paris,’ including Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays Sylvie, the antagonist. The role was written for a 35-year-old, but Philippine was 55,” Ménager said. “I had to discuss it with (showrunner) Darren Star, and he changed everything and today it’s one of the successes of the show.”

Leroy-Beaulieu told Variety of getting cast as Emily’s nemesis (and boss): “One day, Juliette Ménager, the casting director, called me and said, ‘I have a role. You’re too old for it because it’s for an actress who is between 35 and 40, but do you want to read it anyway?’ I read it and told Juliette, ‘I know Sylvie Grateau. I know her by heart!’ My mother worked in the fashion industry [at Dior] so I got to meet many women like Sylvie. I thought it’d be stupid to not give it a try, even if the story was built around a younger character. I did a first casting call and didn’t hear back for a month and a half. When I got the callback, I almost fell off my chair. I didn’t think I’d make it.”

Regardless of whether he’s casting in the states or abroad, Star hopes actors who audition for his show read between the lines and catch him off-guard in the best way. “Sometimes it’s an actor that brings a different quality to the role, in a way I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “I love anytime an actor walks in the room and it’s exciting because it’s unexpected, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and you don’t know how they’re going to interpret it. I just look for people that surprise me and that make me excited about thinking of them in the role.”

Netflix hasn’t renewed “Emily in Paris” for Season 5—but the show’s future looks bright. After all, Star auctioned off a walk-on role for Season 5 during the amfAR Gala at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024. The amfAR auction website noted that the role was “contingent upon season 5 pickup,” which would film in mid 2025 if all goes according to plan. Keep an eye on this space for updates on the series’ fate!

With Season 5 still in limbo, there are currently no open casting calls available for “Emily in Paris.” In the meantime, we recommend bookmarking our main casting page for updates on the latest opportunities as they become available. You might also want to explore our in-depth guide on how to audition for Netflix.

To some, Collins may be considered a nepo baby—her dad is music icon Phil Collins—but the actor has always put in the work needed to improve her skills and earn her place among those she now calls her peers. “I knew that there were lots of things I needed to improve on and get more comfortable with, within myself, in order to be more free within a scene and a moment,” she told Backstage. “I got close on things, but I didn’t quite get there.”

By approaching each attempt as an opportunity for growth, Collins honed her skills and found success in the process. “I tried to take ‘No’ as, ‘No, not right now,’ not, ‘No, this isn’t for you.’ In a nutshell, it was like a comma, not a period,” she explained. “I know that sounds far easier than it is, but I knew that what I wanted to do was what I wanted to do. Being told you’re green is something that you can improve on. It means there’s more work to be done. I’m not someone who’s ever shied away from more work. I truly believed that I was going to be doing this one day, and I just kept powering through the noes. To be honest, it made my first yes so much better, because I felt like I’d earned it.”

You, too, can turn every “no” into your secret weapon. “If I took ‘No’ as ‘No, this isn’t for you,’ I would have never been in the position I’m in. I can’t even tell you how many times I got told no. At one point, I kept all the scripts that I’d ever auditioned for that I was told no for, and I was like, Why am I holding on to this? It’s bad juju,” she noted. “There are so many factors that go into the ultimate casting that it’s often not personal. It’s not about you, specifically, as a human. It’s what you bring to the character, but there’s so much more outside of your control.”

As Park told CNBC, she also prefers to look for the good hiding within every rejection. “My mom and dad have taught me by example how to find a silver lining in everything,” she explained. “What is the lesson? How did this make me grow? What did I learn? How did a rejection or disappointment become a blessing that made me stronger?” She added, “Most of the time, when I’ve gotten a dream job, it’s been right on the heels of or at the same time of being rejected from another thing that I really thought was going to be the game-changer for me.”

Even Laviscount, who plays Alfie, knows success depends on mindset. “There are always going to be times when you’re in your feelings, but at the end of the day it’s up to me to get myself out of bed, to put on a brave face when I’m not feeling too brave and then come out the other side thinking, ‘I can accomplish this, I am good enough, and I am meant to be here,’ ” he told Luxury London. He also noted he fears “not fulfilling [his] potential within life, within work, within love, within anything… I’m absolutely s**t scared to get to a point in my life and to look back thinking, why didn’t I just do that? I should have done that.” So, take that chance, because even those so-called failures can teach you what you need to succeed.