Emily Cooper, the fictional lead of Netflix’s Emily in Paris, occupies a very real apartment in Paris. It used to be listed as a tourist attraction on Google Maps with a perfect, five-star rating — from all eight reviews — but it recently got removed. Perhaps the ten-foot tan double doors that lead to where Emily experiences love, friendship, and a cast-iron skillet in her toilet are no longer of note for most of the city’s tourists, but they are still the first stop on the Emily in Paris walking tour.
I arrive late and hung-over for the 10 a.m. experience. (The stranglehold Aperol has on the continent of Europe and those who visit cannot be underestimated.)
“Welcome! It’s okay!†our guide, Natacha, says, consoling me. “Today is going to be Nicole in Paris, Kaya in Paris, and Zach in Paris!†My tourmates are a mother-daughter pair from Switzerland. I expected the trek to be full of selfie-obsessed Americans, a gaggle of real-life, out-of-touch Emilys in bedazzled black dresses and red berets, but the universe reminds me the Swiss appreciate cheese, too. The mother seems eager; the daughter seems 14.
“We are going to be following a day in the life of Emily,†Natacha announces with an enthusiasm usually reserved for children’s television. She developed the tour herself and might, from my informal polling of everyone I met, be the only Parisian who likes Emily in Paris.
“Is this Emily’s bakery?†the mom, Nicole, asks, pointing to a small black and brown store with La Boulangerie Moderne written on the awning in a thick, buttery font.
“You are one step ahead of me,†Natacha says.
Next door is a more important site: the burgundy-fronted restaurant run by Gabriel. The restaurant is real, opens at noon, and serves Italian, not French — a little monument to a centuries-old food fight.
We begin our journey to Emily’s workplace across town, but Kaya has already hit a roadblock. She’s using a scooter since a recent injury has her in a boot, but the terrain is too uneven. She switches to crutches.
“Emily in Paris was created by Darren Star,†Natacha tells us, “who also wrote the show Sex and the City.â€
“I think he also wrote Grey’s Anatomy,†Nicole adds, launching into a monologue about Meredith Grey, a character most certainly created by Shonda Rhimes. I don’t correct her.
“Who are your favorite characters from the show?†Natacha asks.
“Sylvie,†the daughter, Kaya, says, referring to Emily’s stern French boss. “Because she is mean.†(Ice cold, Kaya.)
“The downstairs neighbor,†I answer.
“Oh, you mean the Hot. Chef. Gabriel,†Natacha says with a grin.
“Gabriel is my favorite too,†Nicole adds. “But for different reasons,†she says with a wink.
“No,†I say. “For the same reasons.â€
I’d only just binged most of the first season on the flight over. It was the perfect plane-to-Paris show; while the passenger next to me watched Garden State (it starts with a plane crash), the only explosions in my feature presentation were cultural and carnal. The rest of the U.S. watched the show in October 2020; the click of a button took viewers from shelter-in-place couches to a sugary-sweet Paris-dise, where no one dies and your biggest problem is juggling all the hot boys you’re fucking. I was catching up, with similar aspirations.
As Nicole continues on about Grey’s Anatomy (“It’s a bit like ERâ€), we continue on to the majestic Panthéon, a centuries-old structure with wide off-white columns and a massive stone dome. Natacha points away from it to a black toothpick-thin lamppost.
“Does anyone know what happened there?â€
“This is where Doug tells Emily he is not coming to Paris,†Nicole answers. Doug is Emily’s long-distance Chicago boyfriend who does something only a straight man would ever do: pass on a chance to visit Paris.
“Yes,†Natacha says with a performed frown. “There are things in life that seem like bad news but end up being good news. Emily had to be dumped by Doug so she could commit to Paris.†I did not expect philosophy on the Emily in Paris walking tour.
“Next we’re going to the poshest toilet in Paris.â€
At the Samaritaine department store, you can drop a deuce and thousands of dollars. It’s seven floors of top-shelf luxury goods, and the highest floor is the setting for a very important scene in the show that I hadn’t yet gotten to.
“Sorry, Zach, for the spoiler!†Natacha apologizes, two fists in the air. “I must do it for the tour!â€
On the ground floor, Natacha grabs a sample of her favorite perfume, La Vie Est Belle, from a display and sprays our wrists like she’s spraying Champère.
Nicole’s in the market for a new scent. “It is how you know you’ve become old,†she says. “Your perfume is discontinued.â€
I ask how she and her daughter learned about the tour, and she said her husband found it for them.
“And where is he?â€
“Working out with my son.â€
Kaya was getting a workout, too. I wondered how much of this tour was for mother-daughter bonding and how much was for mother.
“Do mostly women take the tour?†I ask Natacha.
“Boyfriends and husbands will come and say they are watching the show for their girlfriends and wives, but they end up knowing more about it than the women do,†Natacha says.
As we near the department-store exit, Natacha announces she’ll be delivering her “one joke†of the tour: “We are going to meet my BFF.†She pauses, then takes us outside and points up to a building with a black engraved sign that practically whispers Louis Vuitton. “There he is,†she says. “My BFF: my Best Fashion Friend.†I laugh as a courtesy, an act of international diplomacy to keep Franco-American relations intact.
“I’ll be here all week,†Natacha adds.
We pivot to competition.
“Do you know what this place is?†Natacha asks. “Whoever gets it first wins the Bragging Trophy. It is invisible, but it is fabulous.â€
I couldn’t place the place; it looked like any other collection of gorgeous stone buildings I’d seen in Paris.
“You know it,†Natacha encourages.
Nicole, against all odds, says nothing. Eventually, I spot a triangle on a sign in the distance.
I say, “The Louvre!â€
“Yes!†Natacha cries.
Take that, Nicole. The Invisible But Fabulous Bragging Trophy will not be surrendered to Switzerland.
We pass the museum’s glass pyramid, where tourists pinch its tip via the magic of perspective, and make our way to the marketing offices of Savoir, Emily’s employer. The door is next to the familiar black storefront of the Galerie Patrick Fourtin, but if you broke in to steal schematics for the latest Fourtier campaign, the people who live there would call the authorities.
We press on, through Passage Choiseul, a skinny walkway between buildings with an arched glass ceiling, while Natacha creates some urgency: “Emily is inviting us to a restaurant!†“We have to get to the opera!†After a few days of self-directed sightseeing, it’s nice to be babysat.
Nicole poses a hard-hitting question: “What is going on politically in France?†Natacha tells the tough truth: “I don’t watch French TV. I have Netflix, Disney+, and I love Hallmark.â€
We arrive at the beautiful Jardin du Palais Royal, a tree- and fountain-lined gravel walkway where Natacha points to a simple dark-green bench with an inscription: “Aujourd’hui, c’est demain et hier qui s’épousent,†or “Today is tomorrow and yesterday married.†Below the inscription is a collection of bird shit, the marriage of yesterday’s food and a cleaning not coming until tomorrow.
“Does anyone know what this place is?†Natacha asks.
I’d already identified this location, but it seems important to Nicole to get every question right. Again, Kaya doesn’t speak; I’m not sure if she’s shy about her English or just 14.
“This is where Emily meets Mindy!†Nicole answers.
“Yes! Where the universe sent her a guardian angel,†Natacha says.
A fellow Parisian transplant burdened by her past (a filthy-rich family in China), Mindy is Emily’s moral sounding board and a creator of sounds in her own right (she’s a singer). Looking at the empty, white-spotted bench made me think of the random, mundane places where I met my own best friends: little landmarks to friendship.
Suddenly, Nicole and Kaya eliminate themselves from the amazing race with only a few stops left. All the walking was a bit much for Kaya, but I think Nicole was suffering the loss of the Invisible But Fabulous Bragging Trophy. They head back to their hotel to watch some other shows in Darren Star–land: Scandal, Inventing Anna, Bridgerton.
I take in the remaining sites one-on-one with Natacha: an opera house and a large mall, the Galeries Lafayette. Alone with a Parisian I’m paying, I seize the moment for validation.
“When I try to speak French, everyone answers in English,†I moan. “Do the French hate me?â€
“That is a cliché. Parisians answer in English because they are eager to practice their English,†she says.
It’s a very nice thing to say. It’s also probably a lie.
Natacha jumps like a rose salesman at the sight of a happy couple or a pickpocket at the sight of a dad looking up. “I am going to do a bit of community service,†she says. Natacha walks over to a clerk at the mall. I understand a bit: mon ami … parlez … anglais … americaine. The clerk nods. I try to translate it back: “You asked, ‘Is it possible to live in Paris and not speak French?’â€
“Yes,†Natacha says.
“And is the American accent okay?†I ask.
The clerk looks at me and nods. “We accept,†she says, like my accent is American Express.
Natacha and I take a long escalator up for the final stop: the site of another pivotal season-two scene I hadn’t yet watched.
“I ask you to look at my feet and wait for the full effect,†Natacha says.
I stare at my Nike tennis shoes, a small hole forming in the tip from overuse, and ask Natacha about criticism of the show. Opinions were clear across my trip thus far. “It is a very princess-y view of Paris,†said the baker who taught a croissant class I took. “It is cliché as fuck,†said the Parisian twink who was partially to blame for my late night and tardiness on the tour. “In Paris, you are going to work, you are going to smell the streets, you are going to live like a prostitute,†he added before hopping in his Uber and never speaking to me again.
To my American mind, the show is a macaron: a pleasant petit four that tastes all the better ’cause you’re in Paris. It’s a sugary Sex in the Cité, written by spinning a slot machine that returns a Paris landmark, an iconic French stereotype, and an over-dramatic interpersonal conflict for each scene.
Natacha doesn’t mind the fantasy either.
“The show is a fiction,†she says. “It is not reality.â€
We reach the summit and I look out on a view that doesn’t seem real: light-blue sky with picture-perfect clouds, the Eiffel Tower petite from this perspective, the white dome of Sacré-Coeur behind me, something like joy flooding my tiny American brain, and déjà vu from all the sites Natacha had pointed out. For a moment, it feels like Natacha has become my Mindy. But that would make me …