The other day I was on the set of Emily in Paris as… an extra. I used to tell myself that I would never apply to any extra casting calls. Sitting and standing still in the background, that’s not for me, so “Thank you, but no”. A lack of money has the power to make your mind shift on ideas that you thought were fixed, and as the end of the month was drawing near, making a couple of hundred bucks to sit and stand started to seem actually quite okay. So I signed up to an extra casting calls newsletter, and landed the first one I applied to. The casting call simply stated: “Stylish outfits required. Extras will have to come with a selection of three outfits to portray fashion journalists.” Did I have a selection of three stylish outfits in my wardrobe? No, but I had a secret weapon: a 2000-euro made in Italy tailored suit that I had not paid a single penny for. Sent a couple of photos of me wearing it. Got the part. The TV show or movie that you apply for as extras are usually not disclosed in the casting call. Even the precise location is kept secret till the day before the shoot. So, a week before the shoot, I only knew that’d be a fashion journalist invited to a XYZ element of the plot in Paris intra-muros and that’d earn around 130€ for it, and I was okay with that. Two days prior to the shoot, contracts for extras were sent, and though in it, the TV show was titled Charade, the file was named: “EIPS5”. Sometimes my brain can’t connect two dots together, but this time, it did. A fashion journalist, and EIPS5, “That must Emily in Paris” Big show produced by Fitflix, big budget “I can to turn this into an opportunity!”
So I started doing research. I needed to find infos on the people that were executives, and yet, that were likely to be on the set. After a couple of hours of research, my main target was this guy:
Anthony Hellington
The day before the shoot, to say that I was prepared would be an overstatement, but I knew what the executive producer looked like, his background, the student movies he had made as an aspiring director, and when he had started working for Fitflix as a producer. I had also come up with a show idea that I’d picth to him if I were to see him on the set. When I went to bed the night before filming, shirts and suits ironed, I could hope that an opportunity would arise.
Day began at 6:30. All the extras gathered in front of the Palais de Tokyo, a modern art contemporary museum located Paris 16th arrondisseement. We went to one its under-street level room, where lined up to show the outfits we each had brought to the costumiers and costumières engaged by the production company. Behind the costumiers’ stands were a myriad of outfits, clothing items, or accessories that they could choose from to either dress us from toe to head, or to create an outfit that’d mix some the extra’s own personal clothes with others from the production’s selection. While we were in line, waiting, the set organizers revealed that the show we’d take part in was Emily in Paris. Bingo!
After getting dressed, all the female extras went to get their make-up and hair done by professionals. I had never seen so many women with so many distinct hair dressings. They also all wore bright red lipstick, skin-showing colorful tops and skirts, or gowns, with shiny jewelry. I’d feel a buzz just from looking at them. Men wore suits with a fancy tie or sort of hipster colorful clothes with a foulard tied around the neck. Aesthetically, it looked we were caught between the 60’s, a fashion show, and the district 1 of the Hunger Games universe.
First sequence was in a fancy restaurant. We were seated at round tables. With the extras I was seated with, we were quite far from where the actors played, but we could still hear what they were saying. So far, no sight of Anthony Hellington. The film crew shot the same sequence again, and again, and again, from all possible angles. As extras, we did what we were supposed to do: being in restaurant and pretending to talk to one another. Basically we moved our lips without uttering a sound. Between the takes, I cracked a couple of jokes to the other extras seated with me on the plotline unfolding in front of us. They laughed so hard that the film crew started to shsss us. But the extras couldn’t stop laughing. The jokes, that I cannot detail for legal reasons, were just too good. The film crew members started to look at us like: “what’s the joke about?”. They too wanted to have a good laugh. We eventually got quiet. Film crew kept on shooting the same sequence over and over and over till midday came. Lunch break.
Afternoon came. New sequence. Change of settings. We were in a Parisian palace nearby the Palais de Tokyo. The sequence was about Emily who decides to Y element of the plot. As I stood, with two other extras, drinking a glass of champagne lookalike, behind Lily Colins and Bruno Gouery, I kept glancing over the actors to the film crew, trying to see if Anthony Hellington was now on the set. Still no sight of him. They wrapped the sequence quite quickly, then moved to a new one. Emily had decided to Z element of the plot, and as a result there was a mock bakery on the set. So far I had done what an extra does. Sitting and standing still. I thought that would be it till the end of the day, but out of the blue, a girl from the film crew pointed at me and said: “You, come here. It’s for a transition scene. You’ll sit at the terrace table of the bakery, with her.” There, already seated, was the girl that I had sympathized with earlier in the day. With her Asian features, the make-up and the hair-dressing she got during the prep, a double low bun, she looked like she had gotten out of a maoist propaganda poster. This was precisely what I had said to her when I had approached her. “Yeah I know, she had replied, but don’t be fooled by my look, at heart, I’m a capitalist.” We had talked on and off between the sequences and at lunch break. The girl wasn’t an aspiring actress. She had a master in finance, and was in between jobs. Smart, pretty, witty, you bet I already had a crush on her. She smiled when she saw that I was the one that got picked up to do the transition with her. As I sat down, she said “They must have thought that we’d make a cute couple.” I blushed. Gosh, sometimes I still react like a kid when a girl I like flirt in a direct way. One of the woman of the film crew then came to tell us how the scene would unfold. A boulangère would come, serve us two viennoiseries, and we’d eat them, and that was it. So we did just that, but as the cameraman kept filming after that first bite, an uneasiness grew from being there, filmed, with no line nor direction to cling to. In a way, it did feel like a first date. I thought I’d make us look like two human beings with the ability to interact with one another, so I said: “Il paraît que c’est une des meilleures boulangeries de Paris.” There, my first line. As the camera kept filming, the uneasiness turned into laughter. CUT. The cameraman got up, even he, was laughing.
With that fry in the voice that is unmistakably American, I heard: “Change the guy.” (even though the production team is ninety-percent French, the director on the set was an American woman, probably in her late sixties. Fitflix produces show in France to abide by the laws that rule the movie industry in France. The laws make it mandatory for movie distributors, including streaming platforms, to produce movies or shows in France, that is why shows like Emily in Paris, or Carême, on AppTV+ exist. The film crew is French, and a part of the production team is located in France, but the boss on the set is an American.) “What? What did I do wrong? Didn’t my line sound natural? Is there another way to eat a pain aux raisins that’d be more cinematic?” I thought to myself in the span of a second. From that same unmistakably American voice were pronounced the words: “He doesn’t look eccentric enough.” I looked at the girl I had just shared the less intimate date I had ever done. Bewildered, I said: “But what about us ?
– But what about us ? She said, almost in tune.
– What about everything that we’ve been through ? I said, also almost in tune.”
She laughed heartedly, and on that good note, I got up, and a guy that certainly looked more eccentric than I did took my seat. I took one of the glasses of fake champagne on a plateau held by one of the fake waiters on the set and dashed out the room to drown my sorrow in golden-colored sparkling water. I passed the unemployed extras, sitting down on couches or right on the floor, till I got to a majestic gallery with walls made out of white stones and high marble colonnes with gold-covered sculptures at each end. Why wasn’t more eccentric? Had I ever been eccentric in my life? Was eccentricity what my life lacked? In a gigantic mirror carved into the left wall of the gallery, I caught a sight of my own reflection. I stopped and took a closer look at it. The American director was right. There was nothing eccentric about how I looked. In this setting, with my hair combed back, my square features, a skin tanned by a four-week stay at the Bassin d’Arcachon, wearing a tailored dark blue suit, a tie tied in a full Windsor knot, I looked like the next heir in line to a mega-industrial complex built by a dynastic family from Northern Italy. I sighed. Today’s defeat will be tomorrow’s victory I thought. I took a sip of the golden-colored sparkling water, and walked back to the set. As I was passing by the extras, sitting in the hallway leading to the set, all either reading a book, scrolling on their phone, or taking a nap, Damiens who I had talked to earlier today, and who made a living mostly out of his performances as Fabula, his drag queen persona, stopped scrolling on his phone and said: “I saw your scene. A star is born ahahha!” (in English in the texte). We had a good laugh.
The crew shot a couple more scenes with the main actresses in it. Ashley Park, who plays Mindy, wore a dress that made her look like a goddess of fire. Everybody on the set was mesmerized. On the Extra side, we did a bit more of walking around, a bit more of pretending to talk to one another, and that was it. Or so I thought… because out of the blue, I caught myself being on high alert, sniffing the air like a fox, instincts taking over. I could smell it. Opportunity was in the air. I turned around from the fake conversation I was having with two other extras, and there I saw him, Anthony Hellington. The executive producer was talking to the American director, and discussing choices for the scene they were shooting. Walking to him between two takes of a scene would have been stupid. So I waited, patiently. From what I had collected on him, I knew he was the chill type, and one moment or another, he’d take a break while still being on the set, and there would be my window.
There came the moment. The American director had walked out the set, everybody was either resting or chitchatting, and Anthony was sat down at a table behind the camera rail set up in the middle of the set. I walked to him. He was eating the pastrami sandwich the set organizers had served at the midday break. I had not eaten it, because I stick to a low glycemic gluten free diet, to keep my mind sharp and my energy constant throughout the day, but the sandwich sure looked delicious. As I got to him, he took a voracious bite in his sandwich. I said: “Hello Anthony” Mouth full, he kept chewing, so I went on: “What do you say about producing a show that’d be the complete opposite of this one. Instead of following a young American woman that lives in a fantasized Paris and unravel issues that are not, the show would be about a young French man, trying to become an actor in Paris, but it’d be a Paris more real, rawer, sometimes violent, and yet, through his struggles, the young man would find beauty and joy that could only be found in Paris. It’d be called Emeric in (broke) Paris. I think there’d be an audience for that.”
He looked at me, still chewing. After swallowing, his mouth still half full, in an ironic voice he said: “Why don’t you pitch your idea to Steven Spielberg?”. I didn’t like the tone he took.
“Yeah, I think you’re right. I might as well try my luck with someone whose work I actually admire, rather than with someone who works on a show that is nothing but a shallow, mind-numbing piece of entertainment whose sole accomplishment is to have Parisians quit their lazy tee-shirt jeans sneakers combo outfit to have them dressed up as the fashionistas the world think they are… Where is the 20 years-old aspiring director that made a gem of a short movie about a man trying to kill a bug in his apartment? Is he dead ?”
I took acting classes this year. So I trained to speak to audiences of hundreds of people, and I can assure you one thing, my voice was clear and loud AF. The silence that followed was nevertheless even louder. You could hear a fly bzzz in the room. Everybody on the set was now looking at us. I feared that once, again, I had gone too far. At this point, I contemplated two possibilities. I was either going to get slapped by the man in front of me, or straight up ejected from the set by the film crew without getting any of my personal belongings back. But something even more unexpected happened.
A tear, a single tear, rolled down Anthony’s left cheek. He got up and said: “I think you were the wake-up call I needed. Fitflix pays me so much money that I almost forgot that I first wanted to make movies that I actually enjoy watching. Tomorrow I quit my job, and I start my indie movie production company.”
An opportunity bigger than the one I had imagined had arisen right in front of me.
“Indie movies, you said.
– Yeah.
I ditched the “Emeric in (broke) Paris” card, the character’s arc wasn’t that clear anyway, and played a never-used before card in my literary bravado undertakings. I knew I needed to talk to his movie lover’s heart, and suggest to him a timeless story, that will resonate far and wide in the world and ages.
“What if I told you that I wrote a script. It’s the story of a young Jesuit, named Salavatore, that is sent to China as a missionary in the late 19th century. The young man is full of zeal, and has a fairly good mastery of the Chinese language, but his preaches don’t resonate in people’s minds, because their own cosmology is so far apart from the Christian one, that they simply can’t relate to what he preaches. One night, after preaching passers-by that would never stop, caught by despair, he goes to the foreigners’ pub, and have a glass of beer, which he never usually drinks, because of his ascetic nature. There, a half-Chinese half-British Shanghaian, that saw him preaching in vain, says: “You try convert Chinese to your religion, but you don’t understand how they think. If you want them to listen to you, and convert them to your god, you should first see the world as they do. There is a teacher, up in the mountains near the waterclear river. If you go up there, I think he will teach you.” Salvatore then walks for five days straight in the countryside of China, finds the teacher, and a beautiful master-to-student dynamic takes place. Obviously they both learn from each other, they’re both tested in their beliefs, and it ends with a grand finale. Think of this movie as the Karate Kid but with a degree in theology.”
When I said the word “karate” his eyes brightened up. He asked: “Are they Kung-Fu scenes in the script?
– Kung-Fu scenes? Yeah of course! And why not throw a couple of sex scenes!
– That was my next question!”
It’d be indie, but in an American way. We French like to bla bla bla too much. It is our pride. It is our vice.
“Great, your first script just got optioned !” He said.
We shook our hands. Mine was shaking out of disbelief to what had just happened. The film crew, the other extras, so far perfectly silent, started clapping their hands. The clapping sounds soon turned into a roar. Was I in a fantasy?
The American woman, director on the set, then came into the room: “HEY WHAT’S HAPPENING IN HERE?” with that typical American crispiness in her voice “We still have sequence 27 and 38 to shoot, so can everybody get back to work?” The cheers died down. “You have to come to LA as soon as possible” said Anthony Hellington. He took my infos, I took his, and then I went back to the spot where I had been placed to be a background silhouette.
They shot the two sequences, and the shoot ended. We all left the set, extras first, to go back to where the day had started for us.
Being an extra on a set certainly wasn’t a way to the roles I aspired to play, and maybe it wasn’t a way to any role. But as I was replaying in my mind the day unfolding from early morning to the last sequence shot, there was no doubt, it had been a good day. Walking back to the fitting room where we had dressed up in the early morning, I thought about what had had actually happened during the day. The crazy outfits, setting foot in magnificent places, seeing actors play on a set for the first time, and though it was for a soap-opera, being truly good in the genre, I being paid to wear a suit and sitting standing still (or walking to be fair), getting picked for a transition scene, then getting unpicked, getting to know some of the other extras, serving witty lines here and there, making the group of extras that I was seated with laugh so hard that the film crew started to wonder if the action wasn’t on the other side to where the camera was pointed to. There was no doubt, it had been a good day.
I reflected. Sometimes, being an entertainer means entertaining people from a stage. Sometimes it means entertaining people from where you are. I signed the presence sheet, and walked out to an early evening end of July Paris.
Le Journal de Minuit 
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