Emily in Paris, is, for the most part, an escapist, delicious little feast for the eyes. Sure, there’s been drama and arguably annoying characters (*cough*) but it’s been relatively light on villains. Until now, with the arrival of Genevieve and fans debating whether she’s bad, even evil.
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Played by Thalia Besson, Genevieve makes her debut on the Netflix series in part two of season 4. She’s Sylvie‘s (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) stepdaughter and Laurent’s (Arnaud Binard) daughter from New York, who arrives in Paris to interview with Vogue France. But her motives become questionable when she sets her sights on Emily’s boyfriend, Gabriel.
Is Genevieve bad?
While Genevieve may not be “evil” in the traditional sense, her actions and motivations throughout Season 4 of Emily in Paris paint her as a manipulative rival who is willing to deceive others for personal gain, making her one of the most antagonistic characters in the series.
She’s certainly evoked one of the most visceral reactions from Emily in Paris fans. She deliberately mistranslates Gabriel’s words to Emily, telling her that he no longer wants to see her, which is a deliberate attempt to create distance between them and pursue Gabriel herself. (Which, by the way, she lied to Sylvie about not being good at French when, clearly, she is.)
“gurl she is a snake, trying to ruin emily and gabriel and snatch him for herself but he aint even like her like that. her whole relationship with emily is fake af, [sic]” said one viewer on Reddit. “I hate her. Really sensed from the start that there’s something off about that New Yorker,” observed another.
“I had a bad feeling about her as soon as she came into the office. I thought she is going to want to be Emily and cause trouble. After she lied to Emily about what Gabriel said I thought she is definitely a snake. I don’t like her,” another wrote, while a fourth commented that they hadn’t watched the rest of the season because they disliked Genevive so much. “This scene made me not want to watch the rest of the season. I wanted to hug Emily and push Genevieve out of the way. I haven’t made it past this episode,” they wrote.
The show’s creator Darren Star is way more forgiving of Genevive than those fans, though. “I don’t know. What has she done, really? Aside from flirting with Gabriel who Emily isn’t with, she hasn’t been so bad,” he told Glamour.
“I wanted to bring in a character who Emily would, in a way, be a mentor to—Emily 2.0, like a young Emily, but also give her this sort of interesting backstory that was connected to Sylvie and her husband,” he continued. “Sylvie has a past. Sylvie has a whole full life that we’re always kind of discovering. All we know about Sylvie is what we know about her from work, and so we’re finding out more and more about Sylvie’s life. And this is a part of Sylvie’s life and her very complicated relationship with her husband.”
