“Paris is full o’ traffic and overpriced restauran’s and scam ar’is’s, just like any ova big ci’y. It’s selling you somefink dat’s not real,” says Lucien Laviscount, aka Alfie, boyfriend of Emily of Emily in Paris, in an accent so riddled with glottal stops that it prompted The Telegraph to decree season two of the show – in which the titular character moves to France to find its inhabitants chain smoking, croissant eating and witheringly rude – ‘now as offensive to the British as it is to the French’. 

London-boy Alfie eats at greasy spoons and calls everyone ‘mate’; they should have had him do a rendition of Chim Chim Cher-ee and called it a day. So I almost do a double take (as far as that’s possible on Zoom) when Lucien Laviscount greets me in a broad northern accent. Not only has the chaffing Dick Van Dyke delivery disappeared, also gone is the character’s razor-edge shave and Photoshop-worthy fade, replaced by an untrimmed beard and slightly shaggy haircut.

Although Laviscount may have been born in Burnley, growing up in nearby Read, the man sitting in front of me is ‘Antigua’ Laviscount – the actor spends “as much time as he can” on the island where his dad was born. He’s currently wearing a pale-grey T-shirt, but ‘Antigua’ Laviscount can often be found sporting a gold chain and harem pants, sans shirt, showcasing insanely chiselled abs (yes, I scrolled back to 2020 on his Instagram to establish this – it’s called research). 

“When I’m away working, just having it in the back of my mind that Antigua is ‘home’ is enough to get me through,” says the impossibly symmetrically-faced 31-year-old. “I love to be out here. The culture, the vibe, the energy – it’s just so different from the city and the smoke.”

‘Showbiz’ Laviscount, meanwhile, is exceedingly polished and infinitely debonair. He can be found on the sleb circuit doing slebby things, like being papped at London Fashion Week, or presenting Harry Styles with a Brit award, or saying “f*** the Tories” on the Oscars red carpet (that was in 2023). 

Laviscount was in a New York restaurant when, in 2021, he got a call from Emily creator Darren Star, letting him know that he’d been cast in the show – a romantic comedy-drama lauded/derided by critics for its brand of OTT silliness that draws you in until you’re powerless to do anything other than watch the whole series back-to-back as your neurons perish. He’d met Star for the first time over Zoom just 36 hours earlier. 

“I bolted out of my seat and ran out of the restaurant into the middle of the road. I think my friends were a bit spooked – they didn’t know if I was happy, or going to be violently sick.” Laviscount had been in the game long enough to know that being cast in Emily in Paris – viewed by 58 million households in the month of its debut; a UK top 10 series for 40 consecutive days – had the potential to turbocharge his career, and change his life. 

He was introduced to the industry aged just 10, when he was stopped in the street while shopping with his mum and asked to be in a Marks & Spencer advert. The campaign featured David Beckham, who, unexpectedly, Laviscount credits for helping kick-start his acting career: “David comes over and he says, ‘Hey Lucien, you’re a funny lad – you should get into acting’. And he gets an assistant to call an acting school in Manchester, and they got in touch with my mum. That’s how I started,” Laviscount told Grazia in 2021.

The Lancashire lad landed his first major role in school television drama Grange Hill in 2007, before appearing in more than 30 episodes of Coronation Street and 18 episodes of Waterloo Road. In 2011, a 19-year-old Laviscount competed in Celebrity Big Brother, where he struck up an unlikely romance with 31-year-old former-Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona. A low-budget OK! couples shoot – titled ‘Lucien & Kerry: It’s Love’ – followed. Laviscount has since been linked with singers Kelly Osbourne, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson, as well as American actress Keke Palmer and, most recently, Shakira. 

Roles in slasher comedy Scream Queens (2015) and crime drama series Snatch (2017) followed, but it was the Emily gig that broadcast those chiselled cheekbones to a global audience. So, just how has life changed for the former tabloid favourite? 

“To be honest,” says Laviscount, with an anti-climactic pause, “it hasn’t, really. The job offers do seem to come in more frequently these days, though. Being on a show like Emily gives you a platform to be able to make more decisions about your career. To be able to be on a show that so many people watch, and receive so well… I’m just counting my blessings.”

Next up is a big-budget rom-com called This Time Next Year – directed by the principal of the genre, Mr Nick Moore (Love Actually, Notting Hill). And then there’s the rumour that just won’t go away. The name’s Laviscount, Lucien Laviscount. It’d make sense; he is British, after all. And the right age – producer Barbara Broccoli has said the next guy will carry the mantle for 15 years. It must get grating, but, come on, I have to ask: what would it mean to be the next 007? 

For the only time in our interview, Laviscount defers to his manager, who’s mutely waiting in the Zoom wings. “We can’t say anything, but we’re big fans and we would be very honoured if he was given the role.” Take from that what you will.  

As we continue to talk, it becomes clear that Laviscount the Lothario, the red top muse, the red carpet exhibitionist, and the Netflix man-about-town are all, well, personas. The man in front of me is grounded and down-to-earth. He loves Antigua for its “nice family vibes”. He’s a fan of documentaries, but when he’s stuck for something to watch, he’ll stick on Emily (“I get a kick out of recognising all the little quirks that happened on set”). 

Laviscount wakes up at 6am every morning to go to the gym, and is back home early on a Friday night “to be up and out on Saturday morning”. He’s more of a “homebody” than a party boy, not even swayed by the allure of a nice hotel: “I hate hotels. There are only a few that I like [The London Edition and Bulgari London, FYI]. Every time I’m in a hotel I have to move things around a little bit, just to make it mine.” Indeed, the best thing about his new-found notoriety, he says, is the ability to “[make] people happy”. “Like, having a picture with people walking down the street – that’s really lovely. It’s almost like a superpower, to make someone’s day like that.”

"At the end of the day it’s up to me to get myself out of bed, put on a brave face and then come out the other side thinking, ‘I can accomplish this, I am good enough, and I am meant to be here’."

Lucien Laviscount

When conversation turns to more personal topics, the actor begins to relax, revealing that irrepressible charisma that galvanised Emily director Star to buy Laviscount a Eurostar ticket the day after auditioning him. He smirks, heavy with insinuation, when I ask him about the time he’s felt most nervous: “I’m not gonna say that! Ahem. Let’s say going through customs at the airport. Getting my GCSE results. I’m generally a nervous wreck, to be honest.”

Along with a dry sense of humour, Laviscount emits an enthusiasm for life: he is passionate about “feeling good”, “being happy” and “finding things that excite and challenge” him. Oh, and music, art, literature, and “a little bit of poetry”. He is unfazed by detractors: “If you have a problem with me, text me. And if you don’t have my number, then you don’t know me well enough to have a problem with me.”

Clearly the would-be Bond is a confident man; assured rather than arrogant. Yet despite the Antiguan cool, I detect a vulnerability – the uncertainty, perhaps, of a young actor who, until a couple of years ago, was “hunting from job to job”.

“There are always going to be times when you’re in your feelings, but at the end of the day it’s up to me to get myself out of bed, to put on a brave face when I’m not feeling too brave and then come out the other side thinking, ‘I can accomplish this, I am good enough, and I am meant to be here’.” Laviscount’s ultimate fear is “not fulfilling [his] potential within life, within work, within love, within anything… I’m absolutely sh*t scared to get to a point in my life and to look back thinking, why didn’t I just do that? I should have done that.”

There are, of course, those who think Big Brother and Bond simply can’t coexist – the same voices, perhaps, that have always impressed  a heavy sense of expectation on Laviscount. “I just want to do the best for everyone – the people that believe in me to take on a role, the crew that’s working 14 hours a day, the writers who have spent hours and hours [on a project]. I get nervous because I want to do my best for them.” It’s all getting a bit serious, and then Laviscount remembers himself, and cracks a joke: “And my mum. Love you mum!”

Behind the megawatt exterior is a plainspoken, humble, and sometimes-out-of-his-depth individual but, the seasoned performer that Laviscount is, one flash of that dazzling smile is enough to convince you that he’s never entertained a shred of self-doubt in his life.

Where would he be, and what would he be doing, if he could be anywhere in the world right now? Laviscount doesn’t miss a beat: “Talking with you.”

Smoothie. 

Read more: Matthew Goode: “You’re never more naked than when you’re centre stage”