Culture chat: Watching ‘Emily in Paris’ despite ourselves

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, Lilah’s back and we’re talking about Emily in Paris! The extraordinarily popular Netflix sitcom, which millions of people across the globe love to hate-watch, just dropped half of its fourth season. It’s about an American 20-something who moves to Paris to live out our Francophile fantasies. And while it's been ridiculed since it first came out in 2020, we're all still watching! Why? And what do we want out of comfort television? Lilah is joined by Adrienne Klasa, the FT’s Paris reporter on luxury and media, and Cordelia Jenkins, FT Weekend Magazine’s deputy editor.

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We love hearing from you. Lilah is on Instagram @lilahrap. We’re on X @lifeandartpod and on email at [email protected]. We are grateful for reviews on Apple and Spotify. And please share this episode with your friends!

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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):

– Episodes one to five of Emily in Paris Season 4 are on Netflix now. The next half of the season will air on September 12

– We love this article by Jo Ellison – ‘Emily in Paris is as cheesy as brie’ – from 2020

– Cordelia Jenkins is on X @CordeliaJ. Adrienne Klasa is @AdrienneKlasa

– Lilah recommends American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. For more on the value of reading old books, here’s a recent column by Janan Ganesh

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Special FT subscription offers for Life and Art podcast listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/lifeandart

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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Jean-Marc Ek and Sam Giovinco. Clip courtesy of Netflix

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and I'm back, and this is our Friday chat show.
0:08.9	Today we are talking about Emily in Paris. It's the notorious Netflix sitcom in which an American 20-something from Chicago, named Emily, played by Lily Collins, moves to Paris for a marketing job to bring an American
0:21.6	social media angle to an esteemed French luxury marketing firm. Of course, her painfully
0:26.5	earnest presence is not welcome, and she gets herself into love triangles and fashion mishaps
0:31.8	all over the city. This show has been hate-watched since it first came out in 2020.
0:37.1	Reviews have gleefully complained that the show misrepresents Paris, is full of French cliches,
0:42.7	that she's annoying, that her fashion's annoying.
0:45.3	But people still love it.
0:47.3	It was Netflix's most watched show in 2022, and to my great delight, it's back.
0:52.5	The first half of season four just dropped. Emily is picking up some pieces. She ruined a wedding and is probably in love with the groom. There's a polycule and there's tons of product placement. And today we're getting into it. I'm Lila and there's a man having a baby with a woman who's in love with another woman and I'm the only one who knows. Here with me in London, rumor has it.
1:11.5	She's had an affair with Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart at the same time.
1:15.4	It's the FD's Deputy Magazine editor, Cordelia Jenkins.
1:19.2	Hello.
1:19.7	Thank you for having me.
1:22.2	Sorry for that intro.
1:23.4	I can give you a different one if you prefer.
1:25.8	It's great.
1:27.0	Aspirational.
1:28.8	Joining us from Paris, she's been running around the city looking for a Boucheron necklace that doesn't exist.
1:34.3	It's the FTs Paris correspondent for luxury and media, Adrienne Klasa.
1:39.0	Welcome, Adrienne.
1:39.9	Thank you so much.
	...

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