New Delhi: US Vice President JD Vance has called Emily in Paris the “Shakespeare of our time”, offering an unexpected interpretation of the Netflix series. According to him, the series criticises millennial decision-making.
On Monday, Vance posted a video on social media, describing the show as the “masterwork of American television”, after one of his friends criticised it.
“Emily in Paris is about this sort of bubbly girl who goes to Paris and has a cool job and has great experiences and drinks fine wine and does all the things that you would do in Paris,” he said.
But Vance then offered a different reading of the show.
“What it actually is, is a massive cultural criticism of millennial decision-making,” he said.
Vance argued that Emily and Gabriel, the French chef played by Lucas Bravo, are clearly meant to end up together.
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‘They were made for each other’
“She should end up with the French chef. She should marry this guy. They should start a family, whether in Paris or in America. They should build a life together. That’s what they should be doing,” he said.
Gabriel, Vance said, should also end up with Emily rather than the “various crazy people” who move in and out of his life.
Instead, the two characters keep dating other people while focusing on their careers. Vance described their choices as a series of “absurd, sometimes hilarious, sometimes not particularly believable mistakes”.
For Vance, those choices are precisely what make the show a criticism of his generation.
“The fact that they keep on making atrocious decisions is kind of like the best bit of cultural commentary, I would say cultural criticism, of my generation, the millennials,” he said.
His solution was straightforward: “Fall in love, get married. You two were made for each other.”
Vance ended his video with an even bigger comparison.
“You gotta watch Emily in Paris. It is, at the risk of overstating it, the Shakespeare of our time,” he said.
This is not the first time Vance has publicly praised the series. During a 2024 appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, he referred to Emily in Paris as “a masterpiece”.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)