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'Emily In Paris' Cast On Season 5, The Show's Legacy, & What's Next

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The "French Girl" Red Lip Trend Is Effortlessly Chic
The "French girl" red lip is having a moment thanks to 'Emily in Paris.' Here's how to nail the perfectly imperfect look.

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HR exec from viral Coldplay kiss cam video breaks her silence
Kristin Cabot, the Astronomer HR executive seen with her boss Andy Byron in a viral Coldplay concert kiss cam, has spoken out about the incident. In a new interview with The New York Times about #coldplaygate, Cabot opened up about losing her job and the public shame and harassment she’s faced since that night. “I made a bad decision and had a couple of High Noons and danced and acted inappropriately with my boss,” Cabot told NYT. “And it’s not nothing. I took accountability and I gave up my career for that. That’s the price I chose to pay.” While attending a Coldplay show at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts in July, Cabot and Byron, Astronomer’s then-CEO, were featured on the band’s nightly “kiss cam.” Cabot, with Byron’s arms wrapped around her, immediately tried to get away from the camera. Quickly, Byron followed suit, crouching out of frame. On stage, Chris Martin joked that the couple were either “having an affair or just very shy.” The clip became a social media sensation, collecting over a 100 million views in 72 hours. Cabot and Byron were the talk of the internet, though Cabot thinks she was made out to be “a punchline and a target.” In an interview with The Times (U.K.), Cabot said she had a “big happy crush” on Byron before the concert. The paper also reported that both of them had already separated from their spouses before that night. “I don’t think my separation would have come as a surprise to him, but his definitely did for me,” Cabot said. “To have someone else going through it at the exact same time that you can talk to was an amazing support.” Cabot told NYT that her sudden virality resulted in being called a “slut,” “gold digger,” and “homewrecker” online and in public. She was doxxed and received death threats, and paparazzi even showed up to her house. At a gas pump, she recalled, someone said to her, “You don’t even deserve to breathe the same air that I breathe.” In the days after the incident, Cabot said that she was not in a sexual relationship with Byron. The kiss cam caught them right after their first (and only) kiss. “I was so embarrassed and so horrified,” she said. “I’m the head of HR and he’s the CEO. It’s, like, so cliché and so bad… We both just sat there with our heads in our hands, like, ‘What just happened?'” They made plans to inform the Astronomer board of directors. Soon, TikTok and X were engulfed by the clip and the jokes it produced. Byron stepped down from his position and, after an internal investigation, Astronomer allowed Cabot to return to her role. She declined and submitted her resignation, explaining: “I could not imagine how I could stand up as HR chief when I was a laughingstock.” She and her second husband Andrew (who was also at the Coldplay concert on a date) have since filed for divorce and she has had limited contact with Byron. In a report by PEOPLE, a source confirmed that “Kristin and Andy had an excellent working relationship, a great friendship. There was no affair. It was inappropriate to be hugging your boss at a concert, and she accepts full responsibility for it. But the scandal, the downfall, the loss of the job—all of that is unfair. These are real people and real families. The way people have taken a lot of enjoyment at their expense, it’s hard to see.”

5 songs you need to hear this week (December 18, 2025)
Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a “Song of the Week” designation. You can hear these songs in our ongoing Best New Songs of 2025 playlist, which gets updated weekly. Song of the Week: DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ, “Rainfalls” One of the most prolific electronic artists of her time, DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ is only reachable by DM or email. And, in a seemingly never-ending battle with major streaming services, her music is only reachable via Bandcamp. That’s where her new 4-hour masterpiece, the recently-released Fantasy, currently lives. Near the end of the tracklist is “Rainfalls,” a monster, 12-minute dance track that features 15-30 samples at any given time—100 or so in total, if Sabrina’s own approximations are correct. Femme and pixelated, “Rainfalls” is emotive. A vocal sample pokes through a Bruce Hornsby’s “Changes”-style piano, declaring that “we’re gonna do our very best to take you on a journey through my personal life. There’s nobody else there, it’s just me” before swelling into a four-on-the-floor heartbeat flushed by spanky synths and discombobulated voices. To describe “Rainfalls,” I go back to this Sabrina quote from my interview with her last year. Talking about the Avalanches song “Since I Left You,” she wrote to me: “[The song] has a very uncanny feeling where it sounds alive and organic, but everything is brought back to life from the dead, like old Victorian corpus photography where they posed the deceased around as if they were still with us.” That’s the crux of “Rainfalls” and its self-referential, skyscraping hypnosis—zigging and zagging through resurrections of techno and splashes of house music in an overwhelming but tenacious pile of pop ideas. The color of Sabrina’s primordial ooze is unmistakable and, hours and hours of music later, still one of a kind. —Matt Mitchell Fantasy by DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ Doll Spirit Vessel: “Godless” After three years of quiet (following 2022’s What Stays), Philadelphia’s Doll Spirit Vessel floats back into the spotlight with “Godless,” a hushed, slow-burning reintroduction that leans into restraint. The song begins with little more than fingerpicked guitar and Kati Malison’s voice, fragile and steady, before gradually blooming into something more ornate as violin and soft chimes drift into the frame. It’s haunting without feeling overwrought, intimate without collapsing inward—three minutes that unfold patiently and leave a long afterimage behind. “Godless” doesn’t announce a comeback so much as calmly reminds you what made Doll Spirit Vessel compelling in the first place: a gift for atmosphere, tension, and songs that seem to breathe on their own. —Casey Epstein-Gross FLO: “Recently Deleted” FLO made one of my favorite debuts last year, Access All Areas. To celebrate that record even further, the British “empowerment pop” trio shared the “unlocked” version this week, with four new songs and remixes from Kehlani, Bree Runway, DIXSON, and Chlöe x Halle. May I direct your attention to “Recently Deleted”? A retro dime billed as a thank you present to FLO’s supporters, the song finds passionate, grown-up R&B simmering in the staccato afterglow of a breakup. FLO are totally in their feels: “You’ll always keep my picture framed, ‘cause you think of me when you’re alone—when you’re touching her, you hear my moan. You’re faking it and, boy, it shows.” Velvety production and lyrical girl-group choreography abound, this is the kind of song you put out when your talent is undeniable. Putting a modern, “storage on the low” story to the tune of a ‘90s slow-jam throwback? “Recently Deleted” is headstrong yet goes down like sugar. FLO are quintessential. —Matt Mitchell more eaze: “bad friend” God bless mari rubio! Country, pop, ambient—the multi-instrumentalist Texan does it all, and her next more eaze album, sentence structure in the country, plans to sew the three together. You can hear…

Emily In Paris hops over to Rome for another frivolous fantasy
Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) may be a thinly-sketched TV protagonist, but Emily In Paris continually reminds viewers that, for better and worse, she’s a proud risk taker. In season one, she moved from Chicago to Paris for work despite not knowing anyone or speaking the language. She then cultivated a cohort of friends, love interests, and co-workers in a brief (almost fantastical) period of time. It kept her rooted in a new home, visa issues be damned. But season four ended with a twist—nay, a much-needed moment of growth. Emily bid adieu to her French problems to set up her marketing agency’s Rome office. It’s a career step up for her, but Emily is a stranger in a strange land once again, with this season drawing from a deeply familiar well. The endeavor isn’t a success or failure exactly. If you’re still watching Emily In Paris, it’s to be lulled into comfort by its splendid scenery, outfits, and culinary shots (courtesy of production designer Anne Siebel and costume designer Marilyn Fitoussi, among others who bring the show’s excessively colorful world to life). Does a sensible or grounded narrative matter when Emily and her pals bop around Europe to attend lavish events and meet wealthy people at every turn? No one is tuning in for coherence. Series creator Darren Star and the writers embrace frivolity, and season five swaps out Parisienne bakeries for picturesque Italian streets, providing a sufficiently beautiful and mind-numbing escape over its 10 half-hour episodes. Emily still faces her fair share of problems while trying to manage Agence Grateau’s expansion. On top of the list is finding more clients, which allows EIP to quite openly integrate partnerships with L’Oreal and Fendi. Her attention is most devoted to luxury fashion brand Muratori, the day-to-day operations of which are managed by her boyfriend, Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini). Mixing business and pleasure is never a good idea, and it’s surprising Emily hasn’t figured that out, considering she dated her previous client, Gabriel (Lucas Bravo). Speaking of the Michelin star chef, he pops in and out less frequently. Still, his appearances are the only weighty and interesting aspect of season five, as they help close an emotional chapter in Emily’s life. Emily In Paris is the type of show where Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), Luc (Bruno Gouery), and Julien (Samuel Arnold) stick around in Rome due to their respective love entanglements, abandoning their office and pissing off loyal French customers. But who cares if it means Sylvie brings an old acquaintance into their workplace? Minnie Driver chews the scenery here as Princess Jane, a goofy Italian queen bee/wannabe TikTok star who joins Agence Grateau and ruins a lot of their plans. One of the campaigns is a commercial for Muratori in the vein of Cinema Paradiso, a concept taken extremely seriously by Emily and Sylvie. Another involves rebranding a company’s reputation after homophobia allegations, with Emily likening it to the reconstruction of Notre Dame. Emily also miraculously finds a way to rope her own Avengers into the mix. Need a singer at a promotional event? Her BFF Mindy (Ashley Park) will fly in. Have the caterers flaked? Gabriel will drop everything to cook at the shindig. Does a client need financial advice? She’ll call her ex-boyfriend/banker Alfie (Lucien Laviscount). Again, who cares if it means Mindy—a famous pop star in China but a struggling singer in France for some reason—enters a party on a yacht while covering Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and then jumps into a giant martini glass? Unfortunately, Emily In Paris recycles the love-triangle trope to no end with Mindy. Can this show please give her a storyline that has nothing to do with dudes, so an ace performer like Park can shine? Much to the relief of President Macron, Emily does return to Paris halfway through this season, only to be hit by a wave of homesickness. Naturally, that’s when she bumps into a man who works at the…

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