As Season 5 of Emily in Paris premiered, I found myself asking some age-old questions, like: Will Emily be able to speak fluent French this season? And will Emily and Gabriel get together again? I also found myself wondering how long Emily had been in Paris. Well, the cast tried to answer that last question about the show's timeline, and all I have to say is…yikes.
The Cast Of Emily In Paris Did Not Come To A Consensus About How Long Emily Has Been In Paris
While Emily in Paris has been on since 2020 and we’ve gotten five seasons, it’s clear that the amount of time that’s passed in our reality is not how much time has passed in Emily’s. So, the show's actors and the creator pondered this question and tried to answer it during an interview with ET.
Some of them actually tried to work out the timeline and make a solid guess with real numbers. Here’s what the Emily in Paris cast came up with:
- Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (Sylvie): I’d say like two or three years. Maybe three, ‘cause we’ve had summers. No, maybe two. Two.
- William Abadie (Antoine): It’s so funny, you should mention that, because I had an argument with a colleague of mine, I was like ‘It’s been four years!’ She was like, ‘No, it’s been four months!’
- Ashley Park (Mindy): For me, I think between the first two seasons and then the next two, it was only like a couple days. And I think that that was over the course of beginning of spring into end of summer. And then we had our winter. I think it’s only been a year.
So, it’s been anywhere from four months to four years based on the range above. That’s…not helpful. I have to say, though, I appreciate the thought and effort, and they provided a wide enough range that I'd assume the right amount of time is in there somewhere.
However, maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about time, I mean, it is just a construct, right? Well, that’s what the show’s star and creator want you to think, as they explained:
- Lily Collins (Emily): It is a timeless loop. You know what, it’s a beautiful, aspirational, stunning show that I think time is just – it’s just a construct. Who cares?
- Darren Star (creator): All I can say is time is elastic. Time is elastic and very subjective.
- Arnaud Binard (Laurent): The vision of Darren [Star] is such a, some sort of a fantasy, you know? So, yeah, it’s timeless.
You know, this is the philosophy I like to believe in when it comes to Emily in Paris. If a season were to premiere on the 2026 TV schedule, the time it takes place during would not worry me. I’d just want to vibe in Paris (or Greece) with Emily and co. and live my best fashionable life.
Here’s the thing, though, while the cast and crew didn’t have a definitive and scientific answer, and I've chosen to accept that time is irrelevant here, one guy actually did attempt to figure out how long Emily’s been in Paris.
Someone On TikTok Really Tried To Figure Out How Long Emily Has Been In Pairs
In a 21-minute TikTok, samageiger earnestly tried to figure out “how long Emily has actually been in Paris.” He went through the show’s timeline up to Season 4 (Season 5 hadn’t premiered yet) and diagramed it, as you can see below:
The conclusion he ultimately came to was unclear. However, he did provide some guesses, saying:
The show kind of makes it impossible to say. Logically, I would tell you that about two years of events have transpired. That being said, we’re dumped into this world in late-summer, early-fall in Season 1, have months and months pass, then have our Christmas episode in Season 4. Emily’s world exists in a Groundhog’s Day style of unstable chronology that will flash back to late-spring, early-summer at any time.
He explained that Emily in Paris mostly exists in “perpetual warmth,” however, Christmas really threw a wrench in things and “forces us to reckon with the reality of temporal chronology.” So, what he said above might not be right. To that point, he tried to come to a conclusion again and said that at “face value” with all the “spring resets” and “weirdness,” Emily has been there for maybe ten to 11 months.
Ultimately, like the cast, he couldn’t come up with a solid answer and said:
All of this is to say, I have no idea how long to tell you that Emily has been in Paris. All of this is a disaster.
Well, no matter who you ask, there’s no clear conclusion here. However, I think that’s fine and plays into the fun of Emily in Paris, which you can stream in full with a Netflix subscription right now.
As Lily Collins said, it’s a “timeless loop,” and time is just a construct, so maybe we shouldn’t be thinking so hard about this.
