Spoilers for Emily in Paris.

This story is a reminder that I probably need to do a rewatch of Emily In Paris’s Season 4 – I only watched it once when it first came out last year, and I was impressed that the show really tried to shake up the fundamental premise. As in, Emily In Paris might be Emily In Roma in Season 5. Emily and Gabriel broke up and then Emily started a very Italian relationship with handsome Marcello. Emily loves to mix business with pleasure, so it’s very likely that she’s going to move to Rome to do a significant marketing campaign for Marcello’s family business. While in Rome, Emily and her boss Sylvie met with Rupert Everett, who helps them out with some office space. Well, as it turns out, Ol’ Rupert is not going to be a regular in EIP’s Season 5. He says Netflix never called him, and they apparently wrote him out of the show! Some quotes from Rupert’s conversation at the Marateale film festival:

He believes there are more opportunities for LGBTQ actors: “I think it’s great that there is less stigma with being gay or lesbian or trans and you have an opportunity more to work in the cinema.” What he doesn’t like is the corollary of that: “If you are a homosexual, you have to play a kind of saint. You can’t play a character who is a serial killer if you were in a homosexual role in the film, because everyone goes, ‘Oh no, this is such a bad image for homosexuality.’ So that makes it a bit boring. Everyone becomes a kind of cardboard cutout.”

The problem is political correctness: The problem, adds Everett, is that in cinema today, “everything is political. Heterosexuality is political. Homosexuality is political. Me Too is political. Race is political. Everything has to be politically correct, and this is a disaster. We have a culture of victimization. Everyone is a victim. And I think this is very bad too. When I was young, everyone was a survivor. Now everybody’s a victim. And I think being a victim is very hard work. It looks like it’s fun, but nothing happens once you’re a victim.”

Today’s youth have been raised to believe that anything is possible. Everett thinks this is a mistake: “Young people are educated just to follow a dream, not really to do any work. And that’s completely different to how things were in my era. If you had a dream to be an actor, there was a lot of work you were forced to do. You couldn’t get a job even unless you got a membership at the syndicate. And once you’ve got a membership of the syndicate, you were obliged to work in the provincial theater for two or three years before you were allowed to do anything else. So the work you had to do to follow your dream was much more difficult—and I think it was better also.”

He won’t appear in the next season of Emily in Paris: “I was fired,” he says bluntly in English, before switching back to Italian. “I did a scene in the latest season, and they told me, next year we’ll speak. I waited for them to call me—but ultimately, it never came, and they just fired me. Showbusiness is always very difficult, from the beginning to the end. When they write the screenplay, they think they want you—but then things change, and they lose your character. I don’t know why. For me, it was a tragedy. I was in bed for two weeks because I couldn’t get over it.”

[From Vanity Fair]

Yeah, I’m not surprised. Well, I’m a little bit surprised that Rupert’s big mouth didn’t get him in trouble, although I’d love to hear Netflix’s side of things. It actually sounds like Rupert wanted the work, and maybe he enjoyed doing something lighter. But Netflix was like… his character is not super-important to the story, so why bother? Also: Lily Collins is executive producer, and I get the feeling that she has a huge say in casting decisions. Speaking of, Camille Razat will no longer be in the show. It seemed like Lucas Bravo possibly did not want to come back, but he will return and there’s going to be another love triangle.

Photos courtesy of Netflix/Emily In Paris.