Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu on Sylvie, style and ripping up the rulebook
'I'm gonna have a little cigarette, because I'm French, right?' declares Philippine Leory-Beaulieu. Dressed casually in a red knitted sweater, with slightly tousled hair, she’s the textbook definition of an effortlessly chic French woman, even via the unglamorous stage of a Zoom call. Only knowing Leroy-Beaulieu from her role as the formidable Sylvie Grateau in Netflix’s Emily In Paris, I was half-expecting to be greeted by a certain froideur. So I’m pleasantly surprised to discover how thoroughly genial she is: chatty, smiley and good-humoured, emitting a stream of laughter as she smokes with an elegant, practised air.
We’re chatting today ahead of the release of the fourth instalment of Emily In Paris, which, like other vociferously watched shows before it, such as The Crown and Bridgerton, has now been split into two five-episode parts. Four years after bright-eyed American marketing executive Emily Cooper burst on to our screens, seasoned fans now widely agree that it’s Sylvie, her frosty, irrepressibly stylish boss, who is really the most captivating presence on the show. After launching her own marketing agency and reuniting with her husband in season three, Leroy-Beaulieu, 61, says we’ll get to see more from Sylvie’s point of view this time around. ‘It’s been a lot of fun this season, because we all get to know her better. And we – I mean, the authors, Darren [Star], me, the public and everybody else – we all know each other a lot better. So we feel much more comfortable. There’s more creativity because we’re freer.’
Leroy-Beaulieu remembers being instantly drawn to Sylvie when she first read the script. ‘I liked the political incorrectness of Sylvie, which was already very provocative, even in 2019, and that seems like a really long time ago compared with what we’re going through now.’ As an actor, she relishes being able to add dimensions to her characters – something she says Darren Star, the creator of Emily In Paris (and, famously, Sex And The City) is very much on board with. ‘He’s giving me these surprises all the time,’ she smiles. ‘I’m like, “Oh, that happened to her!” And that’s a lot of fun, because I love to navigate these multilayered characters. And that’s what human beings are, you know? They’re not just one thing.’
While she’s now rightfully acclaimed for playing Sylvie, Leroy-Beaulieu is a veteran of French film and TV. Born in Paris and raised mostly in Rome, she returned to Paris as a teenager to study drama, following in the footsteps of her father, the actor Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu. She made her screen debut in Roger Vadim’s film Surprise Party in 1983 and, two years later, earned a prestigious César nomination for Most Promising Actress with her role as a compellingly errant mother in the French comedy Trois Hommes Et Un Couffin (Three Men And A Cradle).
It was after playing Catherine Barneville, the scorned wife of an agency partner in Netflix’s cult hit show Call My Agent! that Leroy-Beaulieu came to larger recognition outside of France, and was approached to read for the role of Sylvie in Emily In Paris. The casting director, she explains, warned her that the character was intended for a younger actor, around the age of 40. Thankfully, by the time she did her first reading, Star had just watched Call My Agent! ‘I had to wait like two months,’ she recalls. ‘I thought they had forgotten about me. But I think they were just like, “Oh, shit, now we have to make the part older, it’s going to change the whole story,”’ she says airily. ‘So the whole thing was they were moving pieces around before they could come back to me.’ Star, she says, is in a league of his own when it comes to crafting compelling female characters. ‘He loves women,’ she says emphatically. ‘I don’t know many writers that have this talent for portraying women like he does. He’s really somebody that dreams women bigger than they dream themselves.’
Leroy-Beaulieu is tight-lipped about Sylvie’s evolution in the new season, although in a video announcing the release date of the fourth instalment, she summarises it in one word: revenge. ‘Oh, I can’t say too much,’ she smiles cryptically. ‘It’s difficult to say without saying. She’s going through this, “Should I or should I not do what I’m going to do? Because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s going to put everything into question – my marriage and maybe the agency and everything.” But she will choose to do it, even though it’s a very risky thing that she’s doing. She’s quite brave, and she has this integrity that I like.’
Sylvie has certain traits, she says, that resonate on a personal level. ‘I do have some sides of her, you know? I’m very irreverent. I also have a sense of humour that can be kind of nasty sometimes. I was raised in Italy and, in Italy, we can sometimes be very nasty, in a funny way, you know, to each other. But it’s always full of affection and love. It’s like, “I see you,” you know?’ Playing an antagonist intrigues her. ‘I understand what a villain is made of. For an actor it’s always fun, because there are so many layers.’ People are surprised, she laughs, when they discover how friendly she is in real life. ‘They’re always like, “Oh, but you’re much sweeter than Sylvie!” That’s a character.’
Strength and determination aside, there’s no denying that Sylvie is also the show’s arbiter of style. Leroy-Beaulieu says she inherited her philosophy from her mother, the model Françoise Laurent, who worked at Christian Dior for 20 years. ‘What she taught me about style is if you follow fashion, you’re out of fashion,’ she says. ‘She was very free. She was somebody who was very creative. So, obviously, she wasn’t following fashion, you know, she was creating it. It’s a big difference, because you realise that a woman that wants to be herself has to just create her own style.’
It would be remiss of me, I say to Leroy-Beaulieu, if I didn’t mention the scene in series two where Sylvie emerges Bond girl-like from the Mediterranean Sea wearing a tiny black bikini. It feels liberating to have a show that isn’t just celebrating 20-something women. ‘I was freezing cold,’ she laughs. ‘It was raining. It was cold. We were down in the south of France, but it was cold. They shot the scene at seven at night, saying, “Oh, the light is more beautiful.” I said, “Thank you,”’ she adds, sarcastically. But there was one upside to shooting in the cold. ‘Well, at least the skin is tight, you know, cold sea,’ she says drolly. ‘Everything’s tucked and taut.’
How does she feel about the fact that she’s so beloved by the younger generation? ‘I was really surprised with the kids,’ she marvels. ‘There are so many young people that just go, “Sylvie!” and I’m like, “What?!” And that was a real big surprise.’ She’s perplexed by the admiration, but suspects it may be because Sylvie doesn’t heed to expectations around how a woman should behave. ‘I guess it’s because she is irreverent and provocative and kind of free. And, you know, that’s what they like, that she doesn’t comply,’ she says.
While Leroy-Beaulieu’s presence in the show has provided positive representation of a powerful, older woman, she says she doesn’t think too deeply about age – an attitude she inherited from her father, she explains, who completed his last parachute jump at the age of 85. ‘I always thought of age as just a number, and the rest is energy. If you don’t get caught up in that conversation, like, “I’m old, I can’t do anything anymore,” you know, “I’m going to get sick because I’m old.” No, it’s not true. Just don’t tell yourself that. Just go for what you feel. You know, if you have energy, that’s the only thing that’s important.’ Her daughter, Taïs, an artist who lives in East Sussex, wants to age naturally, which she loves. ‘You know, she’s like, “No, no, no, Mum, don’t do anything. You don’t do anything, right?”’ she laughs. ‘And I understand that. I think it’s great. It’s great to have wrinkles. It’s great to just have your face.’
Is there any specific role she’d love to take on in the future? ‘Maybe there’s stuff I would love to do, but I know that the way roles come to you is sort of magic,’ she says, thoughtfully. ‘You know, sometimes you read something and you go, “Oh, my God, I didn’t know I would love that, and I didn’t know I would be drawn to this, but I have to do it.”’ She had that feeling about 100 Days, a film she’s about to start shooting in Brazil that tells the true story of Amyr Klink, who became the first person to row across the south Atlantic in 1984. In the film, she plays Klink’s mother, a character she describes as the opposite of Sylvie. ‘The character is all about love only. So that’s exactly what I need after Sylvie.’ Proposals for other projects are coming in, she explains, but she’s adamant that she won’t be pigeonholed. ‘They want me to do another Sylvie, which is a no-go,’ she says firmly. ‘I hope people are going to have a bit more imagination and ask me to do stuff that maybe I don’t even know I can do, but you know, they think, “Oh, she’ll be able to do that.”’
In any case, she’s inspired by the growth she constantly experiences as an actor. ‘We have that privilege of exploring ourselves in such a deep way that gives us this insight about not only ourselves, but other people, too,’ she says. ‘It’s like we become much more forgiving with humanity when we’ve done our shadow work. You have this compassion that you didn’t have at the beginning, that I didn’t have when I was 20, you know?’
‘As much as I’m a fighter, I’m also trying to be a fighter for love and light. I know it’s corny – and I hope you’re going to write that – but I think it’s what I’ve learned.’
The first part of Emily In Paris season 4 is released on Netflix on 15 August. Part two is released on 12 September.
This interview is taken from Red's September 2024 issue, on sale now.
You Might Also Like
