“Emily in Paris” star Lucien Laviscount reveals his obsession over Jennifer Lopez

“Emily in Paris” star Lucien Laviscount reveals his obsession over Jennifer Lopez: 

“My love for J.Lo, it’s still strong. It burns it inside me, everyday.” And if you need further proof of his ability to delight and win over strangers, just look up his recent viral appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. When Barrymore asked him who his “childhood fantasy” was, he gazed into her eyes and flashed a megawatt smile. “I’m living the dream right now,” he said, throwing the host into a fit of giggles.

It makes sense that Laviscount would be in high spirits. After the 30-year-old Brit was cast last year for the second season of Emily in Paris — in which he played a love interest for Emily herself — his career took off with the specific cadence of a newly crowned Netflix star. He now has more than a million followers on Instagram, nabbed a role in an Amazon Original Christmas movie, and makes regular splashes in the fashion world by showing up to red carpets in hot pink and purple suits. (His style icon? “Lenny Kravitz,” he says. “I feel like it’s just the daringness of [his outfits], the ‘eff-you’ to society, when it comes down to swag and that whole image he puts out.”)

Laviscount wasn’t always sure Alfie would make it to the third season. After the cotton candy confection of a show became an immediate hit for Netflix in October 2020, the Emily overlords embarked on a search for a romantic foil who could shake things up in Season 2. Laviscount — who got his start on the U.K. series Grange Hill before appearing on shows ranging from British soap Coronation Street to the CW Riverdale spinoff Katy Keene — was in New York when he got a phone call from his manager, who said “Lucien, stop what you’re doing. [Show creator] Darren Star wants to see you tape for Emily in Paris.”

Now, with the third season of Emily in Paris out, Laviscount is poised to get even more attention as his character, Alfie, steps further into a love triangle with Lily Collins’ Emily and Lucas Bravo’s chef Gabriel as a series regular. “I’ll never forget the first few days on set,” Laviscount says, recalling his very first table read, when Collins gave him a hug and some words of encouragement. “And then everything from then on, honestly, my feet haven’t hit the ground.”

He received thirteen pages of dialogue and recorded it immediately with the help of a friend he summoned miderrand. “She was getting her nails done. She came back from the nail salon with half her nails done, the other half hanging on,” he recalls. “And we knocked out the tape within an hour.” Another hour after submitting his tape, he got a call that Star and Collins wanted to Zoom with him the next day. And just 45 minutes into that Zoom, Star told him he had the part. “[We] were instantly won over by his charm, his humor,” Star says, “and felt confident he would bring a fresh energy to the show.”

The blush-worthy moment went down after Drew admitted to cast members of Emily in Paris that her childhood crush was Darth Vader during the show. When Drew asked Lucien how he got his start in the industry, the British actor took his chance by quipping in the middle of his story, “I’ll be your Darth Vader, by the way. Whenever you need.”

As for how Drew reacted? Her jaw hit the floor and she teased, “Wow! We have to go to a quick break.”

The 47-year-old then threw it back to Lucien asking him, “Who’s your childhood fantasy, out of curiosity?” And, yes, Lucien kept the flirty energy coming. He noted, “I’m living the dream right now.”

The comment led Drew to put her hands over her face. While seemingly at a loss for words, she said with a smile, “This has never happened to me.”

It appears Lucien’s remarks not only left Drew quite speechless, but also quite charmed, as Emily in Paris star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who was seated next to Drew during this exchange, exclaimed, “She’s blushing!”