Lily Collins Sees Baking as a Form of Therapy

W MAGAZINE – The Emily in Paris star rises to the gluten-free, vegan dessert challenge.
For W’s second annual TV Portfolio, we asked 26 of the most sought-after names in television to pay homage to their favorite small-screen characters by stepping into their shoes.

“I’m playing the most American character I’ve ever played,” says Lily Collins, the star of Netflix’s hit comedy Emily in Paris. “I’ve never felt more American, but in my real life, I feel very British. And yet I felt so disconnected from my European side, having to be Emily.” Collins is speaking from Paris, where she has begun filming season 2 of the series—which is coming off of a recent Emmy nomination that left her and her costar Ashley Park in bits. “[We] were together on set in my apartment when she read her phone and said, ‘Were we? Are we? We were nominated for the Emmys!’ ” the actor recalls. “We didn’t know they were being announced, and then we just started screaming and had to yell, ‘Cut!’ ” Collins, who was born in Guildford, Surrey, in the English countryside, might star in a Paris-based show as an American girl, but her roots, she says, are firmly planted in the U.K. This is part of the reason she chose to honor The Great British Bake Off for W’s TV Portfolio, in which she embodies judge Prue Leith—also, because she herself loves to bake. “There are these specific chocolate chip cookies that I make, which I’ve been asked many times for the recipe,” she says of her signature dessert. “Eight years ago, I started Googling ideas, and at this point, it’s all just based on memory and sight.” We’d like to think she’d do well against Paul Hollywood’s judging eye.
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