Emily in Paris’s Lily Collins has addressed criticism of the Netflix show in a new interview. The star spoke out about the backlash over the show’s Golden Globe nominations and the lack of diversity and representation, saying that if there’s ever an opportunity to improve she believes you should “run with it.”

The first series of Emily in Paris was released back in October last year and it very quickly got people talking. While it didn’t go down well with critics, on the whole season 1 of Emily in Paris was a hit with viewers and was one of the most watched shows on Netflix for some time.

However, once the Golden Globe nominations were announced in February this year a backlash quickly began as people took to Twitter to express their unhappiness that Emily in Paris had received two nominations while shows like Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You were snubbed.

Many people felt the show was offensive in its portrayal of French people and also pointed out a lack of diversity within the cast of Emily in Paris when the show first aired, and were disappointed to see that continued in terms of award show recognition. A writer on the show eventually tweeted that she agreed with the criticism and penned a brief op-ed saying it was illustrative of a wider problem in the industry.

Now, with the second season of Emily in Paris set to air later this month, series star Lily Collins has responded to the criticism during a recent interview.

“I was really passionate about including [more] women, people of colour, and also sexual orientation, to really show more of what the world is, and be a part of the Emily family,” she told Glamour.

“If there’s ever an opportunity to be better, do better, and have more representation and inclusion, you should run with it,” she explained, adding, “we never represented [Emily in Paris] as anything other than what it was going to be.”

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Speaking about the Golden Globe nominations and the backlash that came with them she said, “It was definitely an interesting time for the world when those Golden Globe nominations came out,” Lily recalled, explaining that her focus was “…more on the subject matter at hand and change that needed to be made, as opposed to how I fit into all of that with the show… It was definitely difficult to go through in a sense, but nowhere near as difficult as what the overall conversation was,” she explained. “And that was what was most important.”