Emily in Paris star Lily Collins has said she is keen for an Emily in London spin-off.
In the Netflix series, the 35-year-old plays an American marketing executive Emily Cooper who moves to Paris for a short-term job opportunity – but ends up falling in love with the city and establishing a new life there.
The latest season sees Cooper begin to date an Italian man who lives in Rome. Conveniently, she is asked to open a new office in the city, suggesting that Emily in Paris could become Emily in Rome for its fifth instalment.
But perhaps London could be next, since Collins has told the BBC that making a British spin-off would be “so fun”.
Collins – who is currently making her stage debut in the West End production Barcelona, in which she once again plays an American abroad – has said that she thinks her Netflix character would love London.
The actor, who was born in Surrey and raised in Los Angeles, said: “She would definitely go to Portobello Road and buy some antiques, obviously visit Big Ben and toy shop Hamleys.”
“She would also definitely try and get into Buckingham Palace,” Collins continued, adding that Cooper would love to have tea with the King and “try and get the guards to smile”.
Speaking about how she will spend her free time in the city between her eight stage performances a week, Collins said she loves sitting in the front seat of a double-decker bus and gazing out of the window.
“I don’t even have a plan on where I want to go, I just sit there and see all the sights and people,” said the actor, who is the daughter of Genesis drummer Phil Collins.
Collins, who lives in LA but owns a home in Denmark with her husband, the American film director Charlie McDowell, says she relaxes in London by “walking the dogs with my husband on Hampstead Heath”.
“I go there so often, it really is huge and it actually feels like countryside even though you’re in London,” she said.
In The Independent’s two-star review of Barcelona, critic Annabel Nugent writes that the plot can often feel “contrived”.
“A good chunk of Barcelona’s duration requires its actors to do one of the hardest things an actor can ever do: act drunk convincingly. Collins and [co-star Álvaro] Morte make a go of it – and special mention to the messy make-out scenes choreographed to comically realistic effect – but it gets old fast,” writes Nugent. “Despite the short 90-minute running time, there are one too many studied stumbles and repetitions.“
