When Emily in Paris first premiered, even Lily Collins thought the eponymous social media maven was an early-20s girl trying to find her place in the world. But she was wrong. The series later confirmed Emily Cooper is older than most viewers assumed. And now that Season 4 has arrived, Collins tells Elite Daily that she can see how her character’s age suits her now.
“There’s a maturity to Emily this season that we haven’t seen before,” Collins says, adding that she’s able to understand the character as a 29-year-old because of this growth. “Being 35, I can think back to when I was 29, and I’d like to think that Emily has grown in a lot of ways.”
This comes four years after Collins initially stated she thought Emily was around 22. “I believe that she’s pretty fresh out of college. Maybe this is her first year after graduation. I want to say she’s like, 22-ish,” Collins said after the first season aired in 2020.
The actor was proven wrong in Season 2, when an episode centered on Emily’s birthday revealed the character is actually 29.
Collins admits that seeing Emily more grounded in her work and personal life in Paris after four seasons has helped her see more maturity in the character. That’s especially true in Season 4, which sees Emily much more capable at her marketing agency and finally exploring a stable(-ish) relationship with Gabriel — although, naturally, there’s still a roller coaster of drama.
It sounds like this more mature version of Emily will only continue to grow in the second half of Season 4. Of the upcoming episodes, Collins teases, “Emily’s switching her vacation mode on and putting her phone down a little bit more.” Emily Cooper without her phone?! That’s certainly a major shift from the selfie-obsessed, Instagram-captioning influencer who treated Paris as her own personal content farm back in Season 1. Perhaps the 29-year-old really has started to behave her age after all.
