The actor behind the Netflix hit’s dreamboat chef Gabriel talks to Adam White about his looks, his ‘paralysing self-doubt’ and why he appreciated the added ‘nuance’ to the show’s fourth season.

For Lucas Bravo, Emily in Paris’s resident purveyor of abs and baguettes, life was less confusing before he was a Netflix hunk. “Professionally and financially speaking, I wasn’t where I wanted to be,” the 36-year-old remembers. “At the same time, I felt like I knew myself better back then. I had more clarity and a lot less anxiety. I’d been chasing that goal for 27 years. But once you step into it, it’s hard to find another purpose. Every level has its own paralysing self-doubt.”

To be honest, I was expecting a bit more baguette chat. Emily in Paris, about a curiously fashioned and possibly insane American girl flouncing around the French marketing scene, has been defined by its froth and nonsense. Where once this was considered offensive television not just to France but to anyone with eyes and ears – nothing was cooler than loudly mocking Emily in Paris upon its arrival in 2020 – the show has since been embraced for that very same lightness of touch. The soapy contrivance. Lily Collins’s terrible outfits. Bravo’s hot chef Gabriel and his apron pockets of romantic uncertainty. Magnifique! So why is Bravo experiencing a bit of a crisis? Is he, um, doing all right?

“I’m sorry,” Bravo grins. “Being deep doesn’t mean you’re depressed. It’s just important to talk about these things.” He recalls trying to convey something like this to a journalist a few years ago. “I wanted to bring nuance to the fact that just because you do one season of a Netflix show doesn’t mean you have a beautiful house in the hills, and that you’re rich and you’re set for life and you’re happy. You’re allowed, as a human being, to go through a huge range of emotions and to question things. It doesn’t mean you’re not grateful, or you’re not enjoying the ride, it just…” He stumbles a second, not because of the language barrier – the Nice-born Bravo has impeccable English – but because he’s trying to get his theory right. “It just means things are real. We’re complex. It’s not black and white.” He laughs, then tries to reassure me. “But I’m doing well. I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

Read enough interviews with Bravo and you’ll notice something funny tends to happen in them. There’s always a moment in which the writer speaking to him realises – and I do mean this as a compliment – that Bravo is actually quite interesting. Mention is made of his charm, his easy humour and dry wit. That he’s a bit thornier than the idealised and – come on, let’s call a spade a spade – not-exactly-riveting Parisian dreamboat he’s famous for playing. In our conversation, that moment arrives early on. We’re speaking on Zoom about the new season of Emily in Paris – me in London, him in Los Angeles – and Bravo quickly confirms himself to be a compelling mix of big-brain thinking and buoyant silliness.

The Paris Olympics? “The French have been dissected and criticised for centuries, but it feels like we’re finally being seen as nice people again.” The bright orange sunglasses he’s tucked into the collar of his T-shirt? “You don’t know if we’re gonna go dance or if I’m gonna sell you narcotics – take it up with my stylist.” Pop culture? “Bringing back the Spice Girls for your Olympics was something that no other country will ever top.” All of which is to say: Lucas Bravo, you have my attention.

As if to further explain why his head is all over the place today, Bravo says that playing what he calls “the confident guy” on Emily in Paris wasn’t an easy fit at first. The son of a singer mum and a footballer father – specifically the Paris Saint-Germain player Daniel Bravo – he was a typical drama school alumnus bouncing between auditions and drawn not to conventional leading-man roles but eccentrics and oddballs when the Emily script came his way. “The ‘boy next door’ part is one of the hardest things for me to do,” he says. It’s also more obvious casting. Somewhat cursed by that face of his, Bravo has attempted to distance himself from the preconceptions that surround really, really ridiculously good-looking actors. “Emily in Paris is a very aesthetic-driven show, so of course you get self-conscious,” he says. “But I’m trying as much as possible not to focus on looks – it doesn’t allow you to really lose yourself in a character.”

Season four of ‘Emily in Paris’ was more interesting to shoot. It felt more substantial, a bit more nuanced

It’s partly why his roles outside of the show – such as Julia Roberts’s himbo boyfriend in the romcom Ticket to Paradise, or the bookish accountant in the Lesley Manville comedy Mrs Harris Goes to Paris – have had a little more texture to them. Even if, now, he thinks he tried to break out from his Emily in Paris type a little too aggressively in the show’s early years. “I needed to give people time to adjust to their first impression of me before I turned things around and shifted into different directions,” he explains. “Throughout season two and three, I was struggling with that.”

He’s happier than ever now that the show is on its fourth season, at least. This latest batch of episodes – which has been split into two parts, with the second half launching in September – kicks off in the immediate aftermath of last season’s cliffhanger ending, in which it was revealed that the reason Gabriel proposed to Emily’s romantic rival Camille was because she is very much pregnant with his baby. The trio’s dynamic becomes further complicated in the aftermath, giving way to dramatic material that Bravo loved to play. “If season one was birth, season two was childhood and season three was being a teenager, season four is about growing into adult life,” he explains. “It was more interesting to shoot. It felt more substantial, a bit more nuanced.”

He thinks it’s a result of the show’s natural evolution. A resident of Paris, he had a front-row seat to the Emily in Paris backlash when it first premiered – but believes both the show and its audience are different today. “I saw a shift,” he says. “It’s not a fish-out-of-water story now, it’s more about emotions and more real, so to speak. We’re growing with the show, and the viewers are growing. It feels very organic.”

That’s all well and good for Emily, but I’m still a bit worried about Bravo himself. If he’s a natural introvert who’s nervous about his future, finds it hard to play confident people and happens to be the eye candy on one of Netflix’s biggest ever shows, what must it be like for him when he’s approached in the street? Aren’t those Emily fans known to be a bit intense? “Honestly, they’re always respectful and kind,” he says, surprised. “I don’t get the ‘secretly filming you’ stuff. I’m super grateful for that.”