I first met Lily Collins almost two days to the day over Skype for her GLAMOUR UK cover interview whilst she was promoting her heartbreaking and tear-jerking performance as Fantine in Les Misérables.
WATCH: Lily Collins on raising the volume of her voice after turning her back on old habits, managing anxiety, self reflection & finding someone who makes her feel like her ‘most authentic version of myself. ‘
What ensued was a one-hour love-in with one of the most self-reflective – which is rare in Hollywood – and beautiful-inside-and-out humans you could wish to meet. Now, after more challenging roles (Lily’s favourite pastime) in the likes of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile and Tolkien, Lily is changing the tone in new TV showEmily In Paris where her comedic timing is matched only by her wardrobe.
The new Netflix escapist hit that combines the sassiness of Devil Wears Prada with Gossip Girl‘s wardrobe, follows Emily, an American social media savvy advertising executive as she navigates a less than welcoming Parisian office and the pull of handsome French men as she tries to stay authentic to herself. Something Lily has come to learn herself.
Here, in the latest episode of GLAMOUR UNFILTERED Lily opens up about her own journey towards truly finding herself, helped by finding her voice as a producer on Emily In Paris for the first time, turning her back on old habits and finding a fully supportive partner in the shape of her future husband. I defy you not to fall in love with the authentic Lily in the process…
Je suis excité for the arrival of Emily in Paris, coming to Netflix because it’s the bit of escapism we all need right now – isn’t it?
funny because we shot it a year ago at this time, which is crazy because now Americans aren’t allowed to even have that type of experience in Europe. To watch this show and remember what it felt like to shoot it at a time where I’m literally flipping through photos of travel in order to feel like I’m traveling is just such a weird concept. It’s something that’s positive and lighthearted. It’s a laugh, it’s pretty to look at and it’s wish fulfilment for travel. For me, it’s something that I’m really grateful to get to share because they feel like it’s a little bit of that escapism that we all need right now.
What have you been doing to get escapism in this tough time we’ve been in?
Oh my God. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, like Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, that book which I was telling you about, I’ve listened to podcasts and my boyfriend taught me how to surf. We’ve been going on road trips, going up into nature, trying to really feel connected to something greater and breathe in a calmer way and meditating. I’ve been trying to figure out who I am, who we are individually, as well as a society, when we’re stripped away of those distractions or being able to be around people that we love and care about or not be able to perform our craft or our jobs in the way that we normally would do. It’s like we get so used to defining ourselves by all of these other things that when we’re left with just this kind of metaphorical mirror of who am I, what am I doing?
It’s been a really interesting time for me of self-reflection and sometimes it drives me crazy. I’m someone who’s just really introspective and wants to learn and grow as much as I can, and this has kind of been a really good time to do that.
What do you think you’ve learned about yourself through this experience?
I’ve learned that I have more anxiety than I thought that I did. I’ve had to really question and figure out the root of that anxiety and it’s not just a question of everything right seeming so uncertain and what’s going to happen to the state of the world. It’s more like when this all started, and we were in quarantine at the very beginning there was this mass influx of content that people were putting out there. And I, at first felt, like ‘I have to say something, I have to do something, what am I going to do? I have to have a product by the end of it. I have to have written something, I have to have done something important,’ instead of realising, ‘okay, wait, this is also kind of a moment where we can stop.’
We can reflect, we can sit with ourselves. We can figure out who we are as individuals. I really just had to use the time to sit back and go, ‘okay, wait, why am I feeling anxious? What is it about myself that makes me feel uncomfortable? Or what kind of a partner am I? What kind of a friend am I? What kind of a daughter am I?’ And how do I deal with uncertainty and out of control situations in a way that is not how I used to deal with it? I’ve spoken about my experiences with eating disorders and body image and all those things and I wanted to make sure that throughout new experiences that I have in my life where they’re uncertain and you’re out of control that you don’t ever revert back to what you used to revert back to.
Writing my book was a really good moment for me to feel like I’ve really grown. To really sit back and go, wow, however many years ago I would have dealt with this in a very different way, but I’m in such a different place in my life. Now I read books, I listen to podcasts and I have these kinds of ‘difficult conversations,’ that I need to have with myself and with others. I’m now not afraid to and I don’t take it out on myself.
It’s the hardest and the most rewarding thing to have these difficult conversations with yourself isn’t it?
Sometimes I’m my own worst critic. I have multiple voices in my head that are telling me things and I have to quiet them. That’s been a problem for me in the past of learning which ones to silence and which ones to grow and which ones to build. I feel like over the past year, but really over the past six months, whether it’s through conversations I’ve had with other people or listening and reading to things, my conversation with myself has gotten a lot stronger. a lot bolder and a lot more self-assured. I’m now starting to, within the last really couple of weeks, implement that voice in a way that I’ve never before and it’s weird. It’s kind of an out of body experience to either have a professional conversation where you’re now in a workspace and I’m vocalising myself in a way that I wouldn’t have before and standing up for myself. Or its with friends or with family.
It’s actually so incredible you did this work before lockdown to feel like you are your own ally in this uncertain time?
When I finally wrote about my old habits and had to explain them in a way, either in the written word or afterwards, like doing interviews or just kind of sharing about my life, that meant that I then had to understand them better. When I wrote that, I knew that I wanted to get a lot of stuff off my chest and feel lighter going into the kind of the next phase of my life, the next decade of my life and little did I know that then we’d be all faced with this time to really think and self-reflect.
Every single time I have an experience or a conversation or I am feeling anxious I write it down because I think, ‘Oh, I’ll want to remember this stuff for the next book or the next chapter. Or even just the next time I have a freak out.’ You want to go back and read it and go, ‘Oh, I didn’t blow that out of proportion, that happened. I felt that, why did I feel that?’ By the way, some people say I’m too introspective but is it selfish? I’m sorry that you don’t want to ask those questions and I’m not judging you, but don’t judge me for being self-reflective. Its about me making sure I am the best version of a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend, a future wife and a future mother I can be.
You are going into Emily In Paris as a producer for the very first time – how much has having that authouritive voice helped you?
I was so grateful that this was my first experience and it was on a Darren Star project, it’s with Patricia Field, it’s this show Emily in Paris and we’re shooting completely in Paris, which was the first American show to do that. It felt like an opportunity for me to really lean into asking for help, advice and trying to be nurtured on set in a way that I would hopefully have a great experience and want to do it more. I was being asked of things about costumes and casting and then it was followed through. There’s something about feeling empowered to have your voice.
Do you remember a time when someone’s tried to quieten your voice before and it’s that frustrating?
I mean, my God, I wrote about it in my book as well, but I was in an emotionally abusive relationship where it was very much the whole time like, ‘shh, shh,’ if I had an opinion, it was, ‘shh.’ Or if I spoke up a little bit, because I was in passionate about something, it was, ‘shh.’ It was just very confusing to me because I felt very little and very small. I wasn’t even listened to; it was just an automatic shh. That stuck with me. I think that so often those kinds of experiences can actually teach you, or it taught me, the value of really staying strong in what it is that I believe in because ultimately what I was going to say was not something that was going to blow up.
With Emily she really believes in what she can do and what I love about what we did in the show is that there’s no transformation scene, where she goes into a dressing room as Emily from America and comes out as this Parisian version of Emily. She doesn’t have to change who she is to be embraced. I think that that’s something we all learn throughout life and I learned it and I’m still learning it. I’ll continue to keep learning it that you don’t have to change who you are. You don’t have to silence your voice. You don’t have to not believe in yourself in order to fit in or to be nurtured or to be embraced. As long as you’re open to the possibility of new conversations and maybe someone else teaching you something, then you can stay who you are and evolve and grow. That’s what being human is, right?
Emily is almost treated like an alien at times and is isolated – have you ever felt like that in your own life?
I think when I first moved from England, when I was five going into six years old in school, I came into a foreign situation. I had a different accent, I didn’t really know what school was like in the States and I definitely felt that sense of, I was an alien coming into a situation where everyone already had their friends, and everyone knew what was going on. The same thing happened to me in high school, I went into ninth grade in a year at a school where everyone started in seventh. I was like a fish out of water, going into high school at another formidable time in my life where everyone knew everyone, everyone had their cliques and their friends. I remember just standing at my locker – I was definitely channeling Avril Lavigne – and I thought, ‘I literally don’t know anyone!’ I found myself in those kinds of situations also within the industry, every time you go onto a movie set or a TV set and don’t know anyone, you’re like, ‘I’m a fish out of water. I’m starting fresh. I don’t really know anyone.’ But that is what life is, going into these situations and just pivoting. You’re not always going to get along with everyone perfectly, and you’re not going to want to be best friends with everyone, but at the end of the day, if you stop there for a reason, you know what it is that you can give, you’re open to learning, then you’re going to pivot and you’re just going to learn and grow from it.
Do you think given that journey you have been on and this idea of authenticity, that you feel a more like your authentic self, sitting here today than you ever have done before?
Sitting here wearing a Spice Girls t-shirt talking to you, I feel like the most authentic version of myself! I truly do feel like I’m with someone that makes me feel like the most authentic me I’ve ever felt. I am living my truth and the volume of my voice has never been so high. I feel like all the decisions that I’m making and the way in which I vocalise those decisions are coming from my centre. I feel balanced and I still have moments though, where I feel destabilised. We all are going to have those moments, but I’ve got these tools now and the people around me to figure out my voice. I’ve found the most, back to the roots of Lily living in the countryside as a little kid running around. I now am finding myself camping outside, feeling that same-ish version of old me, the bold version of me. Somewhere along the way, I felt that I became quieter. Then all of a sudden, it’s like the volume has been brought back and it’s a really nice feeling to kind of sit within yourself and be like, yeah, I feel me.
Emily Paris will be streaming on Netflix from Friday 2nd October