Though Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) is the star of Emily in Paris, it’s safe to say that Mindy Chen (Ashley Park) has become a fan-favorite ever since viewers met her in season 1.
In the series, Mindy comes from a wealthy family. While living in China, she performed on a TV show called Chinese Popstar, but things went awry when she got stage fright and was eventually made into a meme on the internet. She then decided to move to Paris to live out her dreams and be on her own.
During season 2, Mindy joins a band and belts out several songs, including “La Vie en Rose” in French.
So, can the actress speak French in real life?
“I took French all of middle school and high school, so I know how to conjugate every verb,” she revealed. “You learn a language when you’re in the country, and I thought it would all come back. I’m the kind of person who cannot say a sentence in French if it’s half-assed at all. I wanted it to be perfect. Mindy is an heiress, so she has perfect English. She’s fluent in probably five other languages. It’s like secondhand to her. So, when I would have lines in French, I would say them over and over again. I’m determined to become more fluent.”
Park — who has starred in many Broadway productions, including Mean Girls, Mamma Mia! and The King and I — clearly has talent, and in the latest episodes, she gets to show off her incredible voice.
“The music was my wishlist of genres. I was like, ‘We’re global. I would love to do a K-pop song.’ And I couldn’t believe we got the rights to ‘Dynamite’ by BTS. My favorite thing to do is interpret songs that are well-known and make them my own,” she said of her process. “I was like, ‘I love Celine Dion more than anything,’ and they let me sing a Celine Dion song and an old Broadway standard, ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.’ It was so fun to do a variety of songs because I had no idea that when I was cast that Mindy would even sing.”
In the season finale, Mindy blows the audience away when she sings a new bop.
“Darren [Star] had come up to me and said, ‘I think we should do an original song,'” she recalled of how everything came together. “I was like, ‘Great. I don’t read music though.’ Luckily, my friend Freddy Wexler (who had just won a Grammy and wrote the song ‘Stuck with You’ for Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande), was available to collaborate. It was very important to us that the song really is a story piece. As the song is being sung, the characters are going through something. Mindy and her love interest start writing the song, and they don’t finish it. It’s a big storyline moment.”
So, there you have it — while Park isn’t fluent per se, it sounds like she is getting there one step at a time. Oui, oui!
