Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu on playing Sylvie #emilyinParis #HarpersbazaarAu

Emily in Paris star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu is so chic!
Love this shoot and interview in Harper’s Bazaar

“A DECADE AGO, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu nearly quit acting. “I was thinking, I’m going to go out in the country and raise sheep and I’m not going to work anymore, [because] it was too hard,” she tells BAZAARAustralia via Zoom from LA on the eve of the season 4, part 1 premiere of Emily in Paris, while reflecting on the terrible quality of work on offer during the early aughts as she entered her fifties.

I would have never believed it,” says Leroy-Beaulieu, when asked what her response would have been had she been told a decade ago that some of her best career years were ahead of her. Or that she would be playing a character who’s depicted as enjoying a robust love life with multiple partners, and even asked to shoot a scene (in Emily in Paris season 2, episode 2) in which the camera lingers over her emerging, Bond Girl-like, from the waters of Saint-Tropez in a skimpy black bikini. So much for Invisible Woman Syndrome.

“I don’t think it’s the only interesting thing about this period,” she notes of the growing visibility of mature female sexuality on screen. “What I’m more interested in, more than just seeing a beautiful woman having a love life until she dies — which I think is great — [is] the quality of the human experience that we never really investigate with women. We have complex male heroes. And they’re really interesting because they go through all these coming-of-age stories. But women, we usually don’t give them the opportunity to express that and it’s coming more and more. That’s what I appreciate”.

Emily in Paris has allowed Leroy-Beaulieu finally to honour her fashion-industry heritage on her mother’s side. Sylvie Grateau was, in fact, partially inspired by Françoise and some of the women she worked with at Dior, says Leroy-Beaulieu, who spent her teenage years hanging out at the couture house.

Françoise passed away a few months before Emily in Paris first aired in 2020, so did not get to witness her daughter wear some of her jewellery in the first season, or emerge as a fashion darling. “I had nausea for fashion for a while because it was too much — I grew up in it,” says Leroy-Beaulieu. “I was like, ‘Aaargh’, you know. But actually [the show] made me realise that I didn’t know a lot about fashion. I didn’t know a lot about what my mother had taught me.

“I always follow my mother’s advice, which is, ‘Don’t follow trends’,” she adds. “She was in love with beauty. And I realised that that’s exactly what I am. I’m in love with beauty, too. I love beauty.” Read more here 

And loved listening to this interview on the Vogue podcast with Philipine Leroy-Beaulieu: listen here.