Lucas Bravo Talks Dream Roles & Culture Shocks

Lucas Bravo’s career is thriving. As Gabriel on Netflix’s Emily in Paris, the French actor and model achieved global fame when the series debuted in 2020. Later, he showed his comedic side, playing Julia Roberts’ love interest alongside George Clooney in Ticket to Paradise. 

While he’s adjusting to the Hollywood model of filming, he tells me that he finds the industry quite weird. The platform and visibility — and doing interviews like this — is “stepping out of his comfort zone.”

“My comfort zone is just sitting in nature and silence — staring into the abyss of my meaningless achievements. When you think about it, this is weird. I’m talking to you throughout like an LCD screen, and you’re in Canada, and nothing we do here will be remembered in 50 years. I’m kidding! (Laughs.) Let’s not go that deep. But yeah, I feel like we’re always pushing ourselves,” said the 36-year-old. 

His deadpan sense of humour takes me by surprise, but I’m most interested by his desire to distance himself from the spotlight and the allure of the Hollywood hills. He’s sincere in his ambitions, in perfecting the art of acting. He says that he would have loved to star in Dances with Wolves or Into the Wild, where he’d have gotten out of his comfort zone to embrace something new and nature-related. “It’s my dream job,” he says with a smile.

The actor is drawn to these stories — with protagonists that adapt to new cultures and environments — because they remind him of childhood. As a son of a professional soccer player, Bravo moved across countries and continents, learning to adapt to each environment. He’d like to dive into that parallel world on-screen as well. 

In many ways, Bravo feels different from Gabriel. His role in Emily in Paris has evolved; after five years and four seasons, the actor says he couldn’t be more different from his character. However, season four is his favourite thus far; Gabriel gets more proactive, getting ready to be a father with Camille (Camille Razat), and thinking about his potential future with Emily (Lily Collins). 

Now that Emily in Paris: Season Four, Part One is streaming on Netflix, I spoke with Bravo about the highly anticipated season, his career, and Hollywood.

Congratulations on Season Four! I loved seeing Gabriel being more proactive this season.

More proactive — yes, yes, me too. It felt good when I read the script, I was like, ‘Ah, finally something to chew,’ because I’ve been the sad, melancholic, trying-to-get-his-relationship-back-on-track guy for the past two seasons. It’s not the most fun to play because it kind of impacts your life, when you go to set and you’ve been just melancholic all day. I was happy to see that we’re back in action. So, yeah, I’m glad to see that you’ve enjoyed that.

You’ve said this is your favourite season so far. Why is that?

It is, because — in terms of writing — I feel like Emily is fully Parisian, so I feel like it’s not so much about, ‘Hey, I’m discovering Paris, and it’s a new world.’ It’s not so much about this fish-out-of-water dynamic. It’s more about, ‘Okay, now that I’m here and I know how things work here, and I have the codes and dynamics: Let’s be real.’ So, yeah, I feel like the season is a bit more mature in that way.

If every character is a little bit of the actor who plays them, how much of yourself do you see in Gabriel?

I feel like there’s a lot of me. But, in the show, it’s only been a few months. It’s been five years for us, but it’s only been a few months; so, the person I was when I started the show isn’t the person I am now. Because you go away for a year, you shoot other projects, meet other people, your life evolves, and you gather experience. When you come back, you have to step back in a costume that doesn’t fit anymore, because you’re a completely different person. So I guess there was 90% of me in Gabriel in season one and, as we go now, I feel like it’s fully a character. I feel close to him, but I don’t recognize myself in his life’s choices.

There is a theme of embracing the gray area of life. I’d like to ask: When was the last time you felt like you stepped out of your comfort zone and embraced it? 

Well, I feel like this industry is quite particular. I don’t feel like it’s normal for one person to go through that type of process: visibility, interviews, your image being thrown back at you, and stuff like that. For me, this job is a gray area. It’s stepping out of [my] comfort zone because my comfort zone is just sitting in nature and silence — staring into the abyss of my meaningless achievements. When you think about it, this is weird. I’m talking to you through an LCD screen, and you’re in Canada, and nothing we do here will be remembered in 50 years. I’m kidding! (Laughs.) Let’s not go that deep.

But yeah, I feel like we’re always pushing ourselves — this industry is interesting, if challenging. The last two movies I’ve shot this year were super challenging. [In] one, I’m playing a rapist, a sociopath and, in the other one, I’m playing a conman. It’s been fun to tackle different aspects of the human psyche.

This role has opened doors to an amazing career that I know you’ll continue to have. What part of this experience — playing Gabriel — has given you a better understanding of your own acting goals?

You know, every set has a different dynamic. Every director wants different things from you. For example, on Emily in Paris, it’s a very structured set. It’s very focused on aesthetics, so you can’t mess up with the physicality. You can have too many [of] what I call “life gestures.” You can’t, like, scratch your head — which is something I love: the naturalism that you infuse in, like, indie movies and stuff like that. It gives a bit of substance. You cannot have that in Emily in Paris.

I think it taught me to be very structured: “stand up straight, know your lines, don’t change anything” kind of American way to be on set. Also, it gave me distance. When I shoot indie movies, [I] have more freedom and things are maybe a little less structured. I still carry that with me. And it’s a plus — even though, sometimes, it prevents me from “letting go” with the character I’m playing, it surely brings an example on set. Americans are super structured and super professional, and it’s a great base to have to start this industry.

Is there anything that you’d like to see Gabriel continue to do — or that he hasn’t done yet — in terms of where the storyline takes him?

I feel like it’s hard because as I said, I don’t feel like I can read his thoughts anymore, which I could in season one; Darren Star is completely in charge. But I was saying earlier, in the previous interview, that I would love for his restaurant to become a vegan restaurant, and for him to get a green Michelin star. It’s something I’ve been talking about with Darren and producers for two years now, and I hope it’s going to happen.

The show is big on fashion. How would you describe Gabriel’s style versus your own personal style?

Gabriel’s style is very relatable. Everybody’s so dressed up and so crazy; it’s a circus of crazy, colourful macaroons everywhere. So we wanted to have one character that is kind of — I wouldn’t say basic, but a bit more relatable. You could wear [Gabriel’s clothing] in the street without people thinking you lost your mind. When we first started, I think in season one, we wanted something a bit melancholic, with autumn colours: always brown, yellow, reddish. As we evolved, we wanted to infuse something more mature. There’s a lot of dark blue and black; sharp and sexy.

So, this season is a bit more… we wanted [Gabriel’s style] to be a bit more “manly,” so to speak. We don’t like that word, but it was more childish in the previous ones. He was looking for answers, and now he’s going for a Michelin star. He’s going to be a dad. He’s taking matters into his own hands. So, yeah, it’s a more mature style.

I have no clue what I’m doing with my style. I wake up in the morning, and it depends how I feel; I try things on. Sometimes it’s chaotic, sometimes I feel good. Style is weird because it’s a statement, it’s an armour. It’s a statement. It tells a lot about you — and sometimes you don’t want people to know how you feel, or so. I wish I had a substantial answer to give you, but style is chaotic for me.

I’ll take that. Given that you’re busy with all kinds of roles, what is a role or a genre you’d like to have the opportunity to play someday? 

Emily in Paris is a fish out of water story, but I always like the kind of stories, like Dances with Wolves or Last Samurai, where you go to another culture, and — instead of trying to change it — embrace it and become part of it. That’s kind of my childhood story: my dad was a professional soccer player, and we would change locations every two years. I was always the new guy. I always had to adapt. So, it resonates with me. I love that kind of story. I would have loved to be in Dances with Wolves or even Into the Wild, anything that implies that you get out of your comfort zone and embraces something new and nature-related. It would be a dream job.

Emily in Paris: Season Four, Part One is now streaming on Netflix. Part Two streams on September 12.

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