Digital Cover: Lily in Copenhagen

In recent years, something has been happening on Lily Collins' Instagram. Fjords and mountains, quaint yellow houses and lush, eerily familiar greenery have popped up in abundance. Then there are the recognisable galleries, coffee shops and restaurants, chief among them (soon to be shuttered) Noma. It would appear that around the same time the 33-year-old actress met and fell in love with director-writer Charlie McDowell (who, in the meantime, has become her husband) she began fostering another love affair of sorts. A love affair with Copenhagen and, eventually, Scandinavia at large. “I feel so attracted to this place,” says Collins, who was born in Surrey, England and raised in Los Angeles. “It’s a deep soul connection, like when you meet a person as an adult and you go, ‘Woah, how have we not met before?’” Her romance with our region culminated in her honeymoon, which brought Collins and McDowell on a scenic tour of Copenhagen, Lofoten and Swedish Lapland.

Though she’s sitting in her midcentury Los Angeles home, Scandinavia is all around her – the Frama soap in the bathroom, the Bjørn Wiinblad vase smiling from atop the bookcase. There’s even a handwritten letter from the late Moomin creator, Tove Jansson, on display – a birthday gift from Collins to McDowell. “My husband grew up loving Tove Jansson, loving Moomins, so this is very, very close to home and special to have,” she says. She grabs the letter and flips it over to reveal a tiny Moomin sketched on the back.

Before we get to chatting, Collins warns me that we might be interrupted by her dog walker coming to collect Redford, the third member of her idyllic little family (when Collins pops up on Zoom, I hear the audio of a dog training video blaring from her computer). “He’s adorable. He’s a terrier mix but he’s got this little old man face,” she says. “Wait, I’ll show you.” Collins disappears from my screen. When she returns she’s holding what indeed looks like a tiny, furry old man. “I know, you don’t want to be social,” she says to Redford, as he makes one of those "why are you doing this” dog noises. “Okay, you can go lay down now.”

Speaking with Collins I’m struck with the uncanny feeling of catching up with an old pal. This is due in part to our mutual Danish friends (among them Peter Ibsen, a gallerist the actress discovered via a Vogue Scandinavia story), but thanks primarily to Collins’ ongoing run as the titular Emily in Netflix phenomenon Emily in Paris. Just as Carrie Bradshaw is Sarah Jessica Parker and Blair Waldorf is Leighton Meester, Emily Cooper is Lily Collins. That isn’t to say that Lily Collins is Emily Cooper (we all know how acting works) but Emily is imbued with so much Collins – the bubbly optimism, the unbridled enthusiasm – it’s hard to know where exactly one ends and the other begins. Even the actress’ newish eyebrow-skimming bangs were incorporated into the show as a major plot point in the first moments of Season 3, which exploded into the public consciousness on December 21st (Season 4 has already been announced).

“Honestly, I just did it,” Collins says, when I ask her if she had to get the green light from production to cut bangs between seasons. “[Series creator] Darren [Star] and everyone saw me two days later and said, ‘Why does it feel so normal that you have bangs? We love it so much. It feels very you. It feels very Emily’.” In fact, the new look became the starting point for the character’s entire wardrobe this season (costume designer Marilyn Fitoussi “incorporated more French into Emily’s aesthetic”) – a wardrobe that will surely be dissected and critiqued, analysed and, eventually, replicated by fans in the weeks to come.

“Going into that first fitting, it truly is the stereotypical comment of being a kid in a candy shop,” says Collins, noting that each fitting lasts about eight hours. “You go in and it’s like, ‘I’m back, she’s back. Okay, who am I this season?’”

While playing dress up in Emily’s closet is great fun for Collins (aside from the high heels, which, during filming of the first season, regularly sent the actress to the foot doctor), for brands hoping to appear on the show, the stakes are high. Take, for instance, Danish brand Rotate Birger Christensen, whose cocktail dress enjoyed a star turn during a pivotal dinner party in Season 2 (following an earlier appearance in Season 1). After the episode dropped, the brand was flooded with requests for the dress; a response that’s bound to repeat itself with Rotate’s renewed appearance in Season 3. “We feel very lucky to have been featured amongst so many incredible brands in the show’s wardrobe across all three seasons,” says Rotate co-founded Jeanette Madsen. “Emily in Paris is all about fun, free and unconventional fashion, and that something that is at the core of Rotate’s values and is very inspirational to us.”

By the time Rotate made its way into Emily’s wardrobe, Collins was already a fan, having discovered the brand during her Danish travels. “I didn’t realise until I looked at the tag, like, ‘Oh my god, it’s Rotate’,” she says. She takes a long pause before asking, “By the way, it’s Rotate, right? Not Ro-ta-tay?” We both break into giggles as I confirm that yes, it’s pronounced Rotate. “So silly,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That felt like such an Emily move.”

Collins oft sneaks personal Easter eggs into the show. “I incorporated a lot of scarves and jewellery from my wardrobe that mean a lot to me,” she says, noting that costar Ashley Park tends to wear her own jewellery while Camille Razat looks to bring in up-and-coming French designers. In a scene set in Emily’s apartment, one can spot a vintage pink kimono hanging in the closet. It was purchased by Collins at a little record and antiques store in Rørvig, Denmark. “I said, ‘Guys, just as a little nugget, could I have it in the closet for Emily, so it’s hanging there?’

Though she has become closely, inextricably linked with Emily, it’s hardly Collins’ first character. The daughter of iconic English musician Phil Collins and Jill Tavelman, who currently works as an antiques dealer in Los Angeles, Collins made her onscreen debut at the age of two in beloved BBC sitcom Growing Pains. Throughout her teens, she dabbled in journalism and modelling before breaking through in The Blind Side in 2009. “Just after my 20th birthday I got The Blind Side and then on my 30th birthday Darren called me and left a voicemail asking me to be Emily,” she says. “It seems to be a decade thing. I have something to look forward to at 40” (Between 20 and 30 years old, Collins racked up a couple dozen credits and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for Rules Don’t Apply).

Related: Lily Collins and Charlie McDowell’s hygge Christmas trip to Copenhagen

It isn’t as if Collins’ career has been without its disappointments. Still, with plucky Emily-esque positivity she’s carried on. “Because I was told ‘no’ a lot in my career I decided to embrace the idea of ‘no’ meaning ‘no not now’ instead of ‘no this isn’t for you’,” she says. “That mentality has allowed me to protect myself from the rejection side of the industry and keeps me encouraged, even when things don’t go the way I expect or hope.”

Back in 2007, Collins experienced her very own Sliding Doors moment when she narrowly lost what would have been a career-defining role. “I remember when I was auditioning for TV shows and then testing for them, like Gossip Girl, you literally are signing six years of your life before you take the last audition,” she says. “Because if you get it, you’re locked in.” Collins was up for Jenny, the innocent, Brooklyn-dwelling sister of Dan Humphrey (played by Penn Badgley, currently the star of You, another beloved Netflix series). Collins wanted it “so badly”, but Taylor Momsen won out in the end. Had she gotten the role would we have been robbed of Collins as Emily? We’ll never know, but the actress does muse that had she been in Gossip Girl, her life would be “completely different”.

Meanwhile, it was another hard-fought battle to land Emily, one that had Collins, at one point, thinking, “that was a nice pipe dream”. “A lot of people were auditioning and vying for that role,” she says. She feels “very lucky” that the career-defining role came now, after she had built a substantial body of work. She notes that Emily as a character is, in fact, “not the norm” for her. “My friends joked with me, saying, ‘You always do things that are emotional and dark. Can’t you do something that we just watch and laugh at?’,” she says.

Collins, who studied French in her “local elementary school in the English countryside”, recalls the first time she visited Paris fondly. “When I was a little girl, I have this memory of being on a surprise trip for my birthday,” she says. Collins’ mother instructed her simply to “pack her bag”. It wasn’t until she was on the plane – a night flight – and her mum told her to look out the window that she instantly knew. “All I see is the Eiffel Tower down below. It was then that I realised I was going to Eurodisney,” she says. “I grew up loving anything Disney and was so excited.”

For Collins, there’s a specific perk to playing Emily; Paris is much closer to Copenhagen than Los Angeles. I ask what exactly incited Collins’ love for the Danish capital, and she points to a visit during the filming of Season 2, smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. “When I got off the plane [in Copenhagen], there were no masks,” she says, noting that McDowell had arrived a day earlier. “I was like, ‘Why is no one wearing a mask? What is happening right now? Am I in some alternate universe?’ It was literally a breath of fresh air.” Rediscovering the city with her husband under such strange circumstances “everything felt brighter”. “There was a greater appreciation for all the intricacies and the nuances of the city, and the food and the smells and the people and the sights,” she says.

Just as she felt that spark with Scandinavia, Collins felt an “instant connection” with McDowell, whom she met through work (specifically on the set of his film Gilded Rage) in 2019. “Honestly it was weird that we hadn’t met before because we’ve existed in so many of the same rooms,” she says. Though McDowell, 39, is a few years Collins’ senior, they both grew up the children of British celebrity royalty (McDowell’s father is actor Malcolm McDowell. His mother is the beloved American comedic actress Mary Steenburgen) and both have been working in the industry steadily for years (McDowell is best known for directing indie darling The One I Love as well as episodes of beloved series like Legion and Silicon Valley). “I felt like I had known this person forever and I was just confused as to how we’d never physically met,” says Collins.

Earlier this year, the couple, together with producer Alex Orlovsky, launched production company Case Study Films. “Before I even knew what the word producer meant, I’ve always loved being a part of building something from the ground up,” says Collins, who holds a production credit on Emily in Paris. What’s it been like working so closely with her husband? “It’s incredible to have a work partnership and also have that person be, you know, your your best friend and also your life partner to get to just chat and learn and grow and experience all these things together.” They already have two projects in the pipeline, mini series Razzlekhan: The Infamous Crocodile of Wall Street and the film The Accomplice – Collins will star in and co-produce both.

It seems Collins’ docket is full, yet she always finds moments to slip away to Copenhagen (a recent visit marked the actress securing her very own Rejsekort). There is, however, one thing about our region she isn’t entirely fond of. “I’m very sensitive to cold,” she says, adding that “cold water is probably one of my least favourite things.” But when in Scandinavia, you do as the Scandinavians do, so, on her honeymoon, Collins partook in a polar plunge. “I acknowledge that it is very healthy for you and really amazing,” she prefaces. However, when her friends asked if she “loved doing that”, her response was simply, “No”. “Cold water is not my friend,” she says. “But when you partner it with a sauna, it changes everything.”