“Emily in Paris”’ Lily Collins and Ashley Park Get Candid About the New Season and Their Incredible Friendship Offscreen (Exclusive)
- - “Emily in Paris”’ Lily Collins and Ashley Park Get Candid About the New Season and Their Incredible Friendship Offscreen (Exclusive)
Colleen KratofilDecember 20, 2025 at 1:40 AM
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Caroline Dubois/Netflix
Ashley Park as Mindy, Lily Collins as Emily in 'Emily In Paris' season 5
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Emily in Paris season 5.
When Lily Collins and Ashley Park arrived on the red carpet at the world premiere of Emily in Paris season 5 on Monday, Dec. 15 in Paris, France, they were coming off a four-day long excursion across Europe. But you wouldn't know it. They were as bubbly and smiley as they were when they kicked off the season 5 celebration in Venice, Italy on Dec. 12.
"This is absolutely surreal," Collins says to a crowd of 2,800 people while on the stage at Le Grand Rex cinema, alongside her entire cast. When Park points towards the ceiling, Collins blurts out, "I didn't even know there were two more rows!"
"It feels absolutely incredible that we get to call Paris a home, to be in this theater tonight celebrating season 5 of a show we all love so dearly," says Collins. "I love this cast, we are a family."
Netflix
'Emily in Paris' cast at the world premiere of season 5 on Dec. 15
Collins, along with her castmates Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Lucas Bravo, Samuel Arnold, Bruno Gouery, Lucien Laviscount, William Abadie, Eugenio Franceschini, Minnie Driver, Paul Forman and series creator Darren Star, all gathered in the largest cinema in Europe to kick off season 5 of their Netflix hit series. But the streamer didn't just choose an impressive venue for the event — they went bigger than that.
Two days prior, Collins, Park, Leroy-Beaulieu, Star boarded the luxury train, Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, in Venice, Italy to travel to Paris for the premiere, along with press and influencers, to celebrate another season filled with over-the-top fashions, new destinations and all the juicy relationship drama that audiences can't get enough of.
PEOPLE went along for the ride, getting a rare glimpse into the dynamics of a hit show's stars — which perfectly mirrored their counterparts on screen. Collins, 36, plays the titular Emily, the market executive who moves from Chicago to Paris to pursue her dreams. She meets aspiring singer Mindy Chen (played by Park, 34) who become instant best friends.
The minute Collins and Park are asked about their friendship during an interview while on board the train, Collins jokes: "Get ready for tears!"
"My favorite thing is this adult relationship or friendship... we came into each other's lives where neither of us needed anything from each other," says Park. "And we still don't. We could go weeks or minutes without talking. But I know that if I ever really need somebody or something — and even if I don't even know how to ask for it — she's always there to offer. And vice versa."
Giulia Parmigiani/NETFLIX
Lily Collins, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Darren Star, and Ashley Park on board the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express
Park is ready to share a perfect example of their bond. "The other day [Collins' husband] Charlie [McDowell] sent me this video of her, it was the back of her head, and I had released a single called 'My Own,' but I sent it to her and there's a lot that goes behind that song. She was listening to it and Charlie's filming her, and then he goes, 'Lily, did you like it?'"
Collins interjects: "And I turn around and I'm sobbing. And I didn't know he was filming me. I was literally in tears. It was like because I could feel what Ashley was feeling in the song and I was bawling."
"It was the most genuine thing," adds Park.
Like Emily and Mindy, they're glued to the hip throughout the excursion across Europe, doing interviews, meeting influencers and capturing all the content all day long.
"Ashley is the only person I know that when she feels something, I feel it, and that can be excitement and happiness and that can be anger, that can be sorrow," says Collins. "And I can even get it from a text message or her songs or anything. I've just never had that. There's this empathy between the two of us that from day one was so connective."
Park says being back on set together with Collins always snaps her into Mindy mode, but another factor? The fashion, of course.
"I really do feel like the clothes for me are the thing," Collins says about what helps her regroup going into a new season, crediting costume designer Marylin Fitoussi. "I usually do two back-to-back days of wardrobe fittings. It's eight hours each day. I enter as Lily coming in, and then we start to find Emily within the looks, and by the end when I leave, I'm like, 'Oh, I stand differently, I walk differently.' I've found that feeling again.
"It's quite literally stepping back into their shoes," Park says during a joint interview on board the train. As Collins adds, "I don't really wear heels, I wear them for Emily."
This season, Emily starts out having it all: a job in Rome opening up a new office for the marketing agency Agence Grateau; a dreamy Italian boyfriend Marcello Muratori, played by Franceschini, who runs the top luxury cashmere brand. But as is typical with the show, many twists and turns unravel her perfect world.
Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix
Lily Collins as Emily, Ashley Park as Mindy in 'Emily in Paris' season 5
The agency fails to get the clientele they need in Rome, so they move back to Paris to rebuild. Along the way, Emily and Mindy have the briefest of fights (over Emily's ex and Mindy's current fling Alfie, played by Lucien Laviscount), that ends as soon as it starts.
As Emily works through her on-and-off relationship with Marcello, they go on an business trip together to Venice, where she has to come to a big decision whether to stay with Marcello and work for his family cashmere brand, or go back to the life she built for herself in Paris.
In typical Emily fashion, she doesn't choose the cookie-cutter answer. "I think that you don't want anything to feel too complacent," Star, the series creator, tells PEOPLE of the twists in each season. "I think we have the tendency to sort of unconsciously make trouble in our lives when things get too boring, and I think it just happens maybe a little bit on steroids in Emily in Paris, but I think it happens in life, too."
Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix
Eugenio Franceschini as Marcello, Lily Collins as Emily in season 5 of 'Emily In Paris'
As for Collins, she "loved" the season 5 ending of Emily walking away from Marcello. "I think that there was this kind of fairytale dream that came with Marcello, and she really does appreciate, respect and love him as a human. But I think she acknowledged that it wasn't the life that she wanted and she wasn't done living the exploration of herself yet. So I really liked that she was brave enough to make that decision. And as painful as it was, it was done with love and respect. And I appreciated the way that they both said goodbye in a sense.”
"It was really adult," says Park, who adds that she loved seeing Emily walk away from men who don't help her build her dreams.
“[Emily] gives, gives, gives so much, and it's like when there's a partner for her that is able to do that for her and cheer lead her?” Park asks. “I think it's because when I watched the whole thing, and I hadn't seen [Collins] for like a month, but I was missing her and I was like getting defensive for her.”
While this season saw a lot of growth for Emily, Collins had a similar experience mirror her personal life. Production resumed three months after she welcomed her daughter, Tove, via surrogate. “It was my first job being a mom. Normally I can juggle a lot of things at once and I still find myself in that mode of perfectionism and everything has to be memorized and everything has to be overly prepared. And what I realized this year is that's just not possible when you have something greater than yourself to focus on.”
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Collins continues, “I went up to people and I just said like, ‘Okay, not sleeping a lot, I'm exhausted. I'm obviously a new mom. I'm trying to figure a lot of things out in real time. It's a struggle. I miss her. I'm at work. There's a lot of new emotions floating around for me. I may not know all my lines. You might have to have some grace with time.’ Normally, if I was going through something, I would never warn people or say something. I'd just [tell myself], ‘Get over it.’”
She points out: “I've never really been in the gag reel because I've never really done a lot of mess ups because I wanted to never mess up.”
Park chimes in: “Yeah, me neither, I've never been in the gag reel, that's crazy.”
Lily Collins/Instagram
Lily Collins and Ashley Park
This year, Collins made the cut. “It was amazing because I really felt like I had way more fun and freedom because I wasn't focusing on having it all put together. Which is exactly what Emily was trying to talk about this season. It completely took the pressure off. And I think I'm someone who knows that if I vocalize it, then people know and I can be held accountable. So if I don't vocalize it and it's held inside, it's like this battle within myself. But if I'm like, ‘Hey, I'm really tired, may not know my lines.’ Then I might actually know all my lines, but people know I might not. So there's no pressure.”
For Park, she also had a year of growth. "Life is all about the process. You're not supposed to ever be a finished product," says Park, whose two-year relationship with costar Foreman ended in October. "And that's what I really learned about myself this past year.”
Collins chimes in with one word: “Resilience.”
It’s the same attitude Mindy has on screen, as she takes on new challenges (like the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars) and just keeps chasing after her dream of being a pop star. "I think manifesting is great or having clarity about your purpose or what you want," says Park. "But I don't like associating there to be a final end goal."
For both, they'll gladly take more opportunities to work together. "We don't know if we're going to a sixth [season], but I would love to go to Greece," Collins says, referring to the season 5 cliffhanger when Gabriel (Bravo) sends Emily a postcard from Greece asking her to join him.
Lily Collins/Instagram
Lily Collins and Ashley Park
Collins loves that the ending leaves that as a possibility for Emily. "We don't leave the season with her broken. She's at work.. she walks in in this red suit and she's like, 'I'm good. I am good.' And I really like that because I don't want to leave her crying. I don't want to leave Emily a mess. I want her to have gone through stuff and be okay, I think it's important."
As the interview winds down, Park apologizes for almost running out of time. "We were just having heart to hearts," she says with a laugh, pointing out an important achievement: "Well, we made it without crying!"
"We don't get to do group therapy that often," Collins jokes.
Emily in Paris season 5 is streaming now on Netflix.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
