Meet Camille Razat, the fashionable heroine of Emily in Paris

“So being French means what? Smoking perhaps?” she laughs, picking up a cigarette. In Emily in Paris, the worldwide hit dreamt up by Darren Star of Sex and the City fame, Camille Razat plays what is meant to be the archetypal young Frenchwoman. Her face and her high-octane acting have become familiar the world over in the form of a character also named Camille, a friend to Emily, the American heroine of the series. The sophisticated and sometimes arrogant daughter of Champagne landowners, a châtelaine and hopeless romantic in her spare time, Camille personifies a French art de vivre that is sometimes stiff and formal but always seductive. Razat knows perfectly well that in reality things are a little different, painting an identikit picture of the French woman (and the Parisienne in particular) as someone “multifaceted,” citing a lineage that goes from Jane Birkin to Jeanne Damas to explain how Gallic natives are perceived outside their own land.

Interview with Camille Razat, lead actress in the Emily in Paris series

When Numéro met up with her in her sleek Parisian apartment, Razat was getting ready to shoot the fourth season of Emily, which débuted in 2020. She was the first to be cast. “I did six auditions, one with a 40° fever... The last was a Zoom meeting with Darren Star, who gave me directing instructions to see if understood English and if I was able to adapt my acting.” Because, explains the actor, who turns 30 this year, “I can’t just make it all up by myself, I have to respect the spirit of the series.” Her analysis of Emily in Paris, which she refers to as “pop-culture candy,” is right on the mark. “What’s interesting is that the series sells a dream. Attracting such a large audience isn’t easy, so there’s fashion, Paris, a seductive light-heartedness. You mustn’t forget the series started during COVID. What’s more, it’s about love,” she continues, before adding, “People love to hate it – that’s very French!”

"For a long time I wanted to be a war reporter – I’ve always had a taste for adrenaline." Camille Razat

Razat will one day leave Emily in Paris. She knows it. A career is waiting for her. She will remember the pandemic years – when shooting was often difficult – and the delays caused by last year’s Hollywood strike. For a series that seems so far from the contingencies of reality, this is not just anecdotal – it’s as though real life could not refrain from reminding everyone of its existence. A real life in the wider sense, one that Razat discusses with a candour that is rare in the business. A few years ago, she spent time in Los Angeles preparing for the series that would make her famous. “I have to say I was really unhappy there. I don’t understand how people in LA behave. I’m direct, without too many filters. In California, it’s complicated.” Over the course of more recent trips, she has met up with agents to discuss international roles, without, however, throwing herself into the lions’ den. “I’ve never yet met an American agent who did anything other than try to butter me up. I need someone demanding who will be able to say it to me as it is, because no one is going to roll out a red carpet for me over there. There are countless girls like me. We’re talking about Hollywood. I met a well-known manager who said to me, ‘You’re 28, you’ve got two years left.’”

"I’ve met tons of wonderful actors who are technically much better than me but who don’t manage to get parts. But there are some things you can’t invent – a particularity, a charisma, a voice. You either have it or you don’t." Camille Razat

When she first started posing for photographers, Razat was just three years old. She spent her early childhood in Montberon, near Toulouse, before moving to the city as a teenager after her parents split up. “I’ve worked my whole life long. I was hired by a modelling agency in Paris when I was 15. I was going back and forth between Toulouse and the capital, I messed up my exams, and ended up moving to Paris alone at the age of 18. But I wasn’t really right for modelling, since I’m neither terribly thin nor very tall. And at the time that was important.” We could try to tell the story of a failed vocation that led her to the glories of acting, but Razat cuts us short. “For a long time I wanted to be a war reporter – I’ve always had a taste for adrenaline and the fight against injustice. What I wanted to do was to avoid boredom. I love sports and horse-riding. I wanted to build something in my life. I was also mad about photography.”

As a young adult, Razat sat the entrance exam for the Gobelins, a prestigious school of video, photo, and graphic design, but even though she was granted a place, she never went. “To improve my communication skills, I signed up for a theatre class. At which point I said to myself, ‘Oops, now my goose is cooked, I really like this.’” She did three years at Paris’s Cours Florent drama school and began to get acting jobs. “I don’t know what it is that allows some of us to get a lucky break while others don’t. I’ve met tons of wonderful actors who are technically much better than me but who don’t manage to get parts. I had to work very hard because I felt I lacked certain skills. But there are some things you can’t invent – a particularity, a charisma, a voice. You either have it or you don’t. Becoming an actor wasn’t a conscious choice, but when I was acting, nothing else existed. I found something that made time stand still.”

"You need a little bit of ego if you’re not going to get walked all over." Camille Razat

Emily in Paris is not the only thing in Razat’s life. She has garnered praise for her performance in the series Disparue, worked with Josée Dayan, and did a one-woman stage show, Le Vieux Juif blonde by Amanda Sthers, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, in which she played six parts. “That’s where I learned the most. By far.” Today, she hasn’t yet met the director who will transform her. She expresses her admiration for the work of Yórgos Lánthimos, Ruben Östlund, and Nicolas Winding Refn, “for aesthetic reasons.” Among other figures she admires, she mentions Emma Stone, Golshifteh Farahani, Alicia Vikander, and the imperial Gena Rowlands. “I had a directing shock with Cassavetes and an acting shock with Rowlands. Every time she appears, there’s something possessed about her, a certain violence, an intensity, as though it were a matter of life and death. And yet she’s right on the mark. I’d love to be able to act like that, to be free enough to do that.”

Though you cannot just decide to be free, it is something you can perhaps learn. Or provoke. So Razat continues her search. She has made a film about the Pleynet sisters, pianists who suffered from a rare disease. We’ll soon be seeing her in a series for Disney + created by Virginie Sauveur, in which she plays a detective grappling with a longhaul case. She has founded her own production company to launch projects that excite her. Always well-dressed, she takes a close interest in fashion, as demonstrated by her recent support for Fendi. “I like how timeless their clothes are, they never really go out of fashion,” she confides. “Few brands know how to do that. You can wear a Fendi collection from 1994 and it still looks just right today. I like their more sculptural pieces.” And of course new acting jobs are on the horizon too, to which Razat will bring to bear her lucid concept of what it means to be an actor. “I don’t over-intellectualize it, which makes me malleable. I have no problem considering myself a narrative tool. You need a little bit of ego if you’re not going to get walked all over, but I like to see the satisfaction in the eyes of a director who has obtained what they wanted. That doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas of my own, on the contrary, but I don’t put myself above anyone else.”

Season 4 of Emily in Paris (Netflix) is currently filming.