Ooh, la la! Lucas Bravo caught a few eyes — and stole a couple of hearts — as the charming chef Gabriel in the Netflix series Emily in Paris.
The show follows Emily (Lily Collins) as she heads from Chicago to Paris for a new job as a social media marketer. While Emily tackles the cultural differences in the workplace, she falls head over heels for her downstairs neighbor, Gabriel. Emily finds herself in an unexpected love triangle when she discovers Gabriel is dating her new friend, Camille (Camille Razat).
When some viewers criticized the dramedy series for its portrayal of French culture, Bravo told Cosmopolitan in October 2020 that he thinks the naysayers have a point.
“I think they’re right, in a way,” he said at the time. “We’re portraying cliches and we’re portraying one single vision of Paris. Paris is one of the most diverse cities in the world. We have so many ways of thinking, so many different nationalities, so many different neighborhoods. A lifetime wouldn’t be enough to know everything that’s going on in Paris. It’s an entire world in a city.”
Bravo added, “At some point, if you want to tell a story about Paris, you have to choose an angle. You have to choose a vision. French critics, they didn’t understand the fact that it’s just one vision. They’re like, ‘Oh, this is not what Paris is.’ Of course. Paris is many things.”
However, the actor also understands why the show became a hit amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“People want to travel,” he explained. “Reality is so rough these days, and we’ve been going through such a difficult time that I think the show is so lighthearted, it’s so colorful, the fashion, the romance, the traveling. Darren Star’s visionis so colorful and alive and funny. People needed something to just escape.”
Although Gabriel has a complicated love life, the France native told Glamour in October 2020 that he’s single in real life. The Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris star shared that honest communication is important to him in a relationship.
“It’s the basis of everything,” he said at the time. “Don’t be afraid or assume how the other person will take it. I don’t like when there is an elephant in the room and the person chooses to just run away or slam the door or sit in a corner with their baby face on. I don’t like pouting or when someone avoids a conversation.”
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