"It felt like we were coming home. We were coming to a home."
This is what Lily Collins told Bulletin Entertainment during a recent virtual press conference when asked for her feelings doing another season of "Emily in Paris."
According to her, having bonded with the same cast and crew prior, it felt like they could just jump right back into filming seamlessly, albeit despite the pandemic creating a whole different dynamic on set because of safety protocols.
"But it felt like we were re-entering our characters," she reiterated. "And in a more seamless way."
"We all knew who we were, a bit stronger as the characters. And I think it allowed us to dive right in - which was a little difficult because the world had gone through so much in the last year and a half. And yet our episode starts like 12 hours later, you know, and we had to like, kind of go back in time," she continued.
"And then at the same time, we've all learned so much and grown so much throughout the pandemic and the state of the world, and just everything the world had gone through politically, environmentally, socially, you know. So much that implementing some of those lessons we've learned into our characters was also a way to ground them, but also, kind of, allow the characters to continue teaching us things about ourselves which I know happened to me... It was really nice to get to kind of come home into our characters."
On the other hand, Lily, who's playing the role of Emily, was asked about the friendship of her character to Ashley Park's Mindy.
Apparently, what she loves about the two's relationship is how "loyal" they are to one another and "supportive."
"For as much as they can laugh together, they can cry together. Yeah. And that just means that they both create that kind of safe environment for the other to not feel judged, to feel supported, to feel loved. And that to me is the ultimate friend," she said.
And Ashely couldn't agree more, relating: "There's just no question to... there's no doubt, they know that they're going to be there for each other. And I think what's amazing is that both of them, neither of them is demanding anything from each other, not demanding them to be somebody else that they're not."
She pointed out that it was "not a transactional friendship."
"It's completely a friendship. And I just think that like, for people who talk to women who have been very independent for a very long time, to find that trust, and another woman to be able to be dependent on them and to be open with them is like, such an empowering thing to see on screen. And I hope that we are very moved by how many, especially young girls and teenage girls have been, you know, adult women to have told us like, it's so nice to see two women find each other and like to really see this new friendship develop and grow. It's not like they're old friends, they find each other when they're both very alone. So I think that's a really cool part of it."
Meanwhile, in a separate interview with the new character, Lucien Laviscount as Alfie, he expressed nothing but good words towards Lily.
In fact, he vividly recalled the first time he spoke with Lily, which was when he sent his audition piece and met her and creator Darren Stae via a video call.
"And she (Lily) just did a 12-hour work. And the Zoom call was scheduled for 15 minutes... And we were on that Zoom call for close to an hour and that shows you what kind of woman, producer, artist, actress, human being she is. She really cares about her role as a producer. And she really cares about her role as a human being, as an actress, and to give an actor their time. And yeah, that for me, that speaks volumes about her. And in that moving forward was I never saw anything less than that. And I think that was the most powerful moment I've seen from a lot of people and yeah, I'm your biggest fan!"
Lucas Bravo, who's playing the role of Gabriel, is ecstatic about the airing of their new season.
"We're just super excited to share that story with the world because I think everybody's expecting to see where the story's going," he teased.
For the new season, Emily, now more entrenched in her life in Paris, gets better at navigating the city but is still struggling with the idiosyncrasies of French life. After stumbling into a love triangle with her neighbor and her first real French friend, Emily is determined to focus on her work — which is getting more complicated by the day. In French class, she meets a fellow expat who both infuriates and intrigues her.
"Emily in Paris: Season 2" premieres on Netflix this Dec. 22.