Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Lupin Pt. 4.
- In Pt. 4 of ‘Lupin,’ Assane Diop has spent four years in prison, but then must escape to become Lupin again and expose a copycat.
- Omar Sy is the co-showrunner for Season 4, shaping a series that mixes genres and leans on family roots.
- The series broke global records for Netflix, but Part 5 hinges on audience reaction to the latest episodes.
The Netflix series Lupin picks up for Part 4 with Assane Diop (Omar Sy) still in prison, four years after we last saw him. Wanting to keep the promise he made to his son to leave Lupin behind, he learns that a copycat is hitting museums with a heist of his own. Although it’s impossible for him to be responsible while he’s locked up, in order to prove his innocence and reveal the real culprit, he must escape and become Lupin once more.
Collider recently got the opportunity to chat with Sy, who also became the showrunner this season, about the challenge of creating something new and different for each season of the hit French series. During this interview, he discussed how rewarding the success of the show is, that Assane is superpowered, what he most enjoyed about playing this character, why this copycat throws him off balance, the visual of wearing the straightjacket, that the foundation of the show is family, and whether there could be a Season 5. He also talked about his love of Disneyland and sharing that with his kids.
COLLIDER: I absolutely love this show, and it’s a pleasure to talk to you. So, thank you for that.
The thing that I love about this character is that it’s not just that he’s steps ahead of other people, but it’s more that he’s playing an entirely different game from everyone else. Do you think that’s rooted in the fact that this is a man who really has just been underestimated his entire life?
SY: That’s exactly it. He’s, I think, superpowered. That’s how and why we created the show. We wanted to make him a man who’s supposed to have a weakness. Like all superheroes, every superpower comes from a weakness, and his weakness is that he’s always been underestimated or even not seen. That’s how he plays the game with the other people, and that’s why he is ahead of everyone.
Omar Sy Loves Getting To Play Characters Within His Character in ‘Lupin’
“We can do so many things with him and put it in the same show.”
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Image via Netflix
I love the idea that if you want to clear your name, why do it discreetly when you can do it with flair? Your character definitely brings the flair, which is part of what makes the show so fun to watch. What have you most enjoyed about getting to play this character, all this time now? What is the best thing about exploring him, especially in these new episodes?
SY: From the beginning, it’s having a character playing other characters. I always think about that thing when you have a mirror, and you put another mirror in front of it. It’s like infinity. It’s endless reflections. That’s what you see with this character. We can do so many things with him. We’re creating different characters in the same show, and we have different genres in the same show. Sometimes it’s drama, sometimes action, sometimes it’s even comedy. I love this character for that because we can do so many things with him and put it in the same show. Our job is just to find the right balance of all of that, to get the episodes that we have. It’s always very entertaining, even for us.
Did that feel a little bit different this time around because he is dealing with a copycat? Does it feel like it throws him a bit, in a way that it hasn’t before?
SY: Exactly. That’s why we did this. When you have a show, having the success that we’ve had, why would we go again? What can we say again? Where can we put our character to say something else? We had a character that no one knew so that he could play. Now, he’s famous. Some people know exactly the way he’s going to act. So, how can you play that game now, when you have someone who knows exactly what he’s supposed to do and acts like he can act? That’s why we could go again. Of course, it’s going to be surprising. Of course, it’s going to be challenging for him. We want him to be challenged all the time.
What has it meant to you to see the success of this series and to hear from fans? This show has had some really big milestones. It’s the first French series to break the Netflix Top 10 list in the U.S., and it’s the most watched non-English language series in the world on Netflix. How does that feel? How does it feel to know that you’ve connected so deeply with so many people all over the world, and what is it like to hear from fans?
SY: It’s difficult to put some words on that. You cannot feel more rewarded about your work, especially for French people talking about this famous French book in the public domain. It’s this thing that we grew up with. We presented that to the world, and the world is responding. It’s amazing for us. We are so happy and proud and so grateful that it happened. That’s why, when you go again and you want to do a new season, you need to make sure that you’re going to propose something interesting, surprising, and entertaining. You want to bring more novelties, but at the same time, you want to make sure that the fans are going to have what they’re looking for. It’s just amazing. We’re so happy.
We’ll probably never know if whoever was responsible for that recent real-life heist at the Louvre were fans of this show, but when you found out that that happened, were you surprised that anyone would actually try to pull something like that off in real life?
SY: Oh, for sure. At first, the first thing for me that was really hard was to believe that it was real. I was so surprised that it took me a lot of time to really process that it was really happening. So then, when I realized that it was, I was like, “Wow, I hope that we’re not responsible and that we didn’t inspire them that much.” We were very, very cynical. At one point, we were like, “Maybe it’s just very good press for our show.” It was really, really surprising.
Did you wonder how they did it, to give yourself some ideas for the show?
SY: No, because what they did was actually so close to what we already did in the first season, so we could not do it again. It was so close that that’s why we were so surprised.
You’re also a showrunner for this season. How did that come about? Was that your idea? What was the experience of being involved on that level like?
SY: On the previous seasons, I’ve always been involved that much and that early. It’s just that I would have all the conversations that we had, but sometimes there was some disagreement. At some point, you have to make the decision to do that or not, and I was so frustrated sometimes that something that I wanted to do didn’t go through. So, I said, “Okay, if I [am going to do this again], I need to have that power to make the decision.” That’s how I became a showrunner. But I’ve always been around and talking about what we going to do next because I love the character so much and it was very important for me, from the beginning, to be involved with what’s going on.
The Big Challenge of Making ‘Lupin’ Is Finding the Right Balance Between the Book and What They’ve Created
“How can you be something that everyone knows and, at the same time, go somewhere else?”
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via Netflix
Image via NetflixWhat were the biggest challenges specific to this season? Doing eight episodes, and what you had to do in this group of episodes, what were the biggest challenges in pulling Season 4 off?
SY: Really, it’s what I was saying at the beginning about, how can you keep what the fans want to see? How can you be something that everyone knows and, at the same time, go somewhere else? Finding that right balance was a real challenge for us and bringing more novelties with the new technology. We were going a little bit far from the book and making it more our show. We created the show based on the book (by Maurice Leblanc). And now, because we have so much that we have created, it’s about finding the right balance between the book and what we have created. That was the big challenge.
There’s something so striking about your character walking down the hallway of the prison in the straightjacket and being led into the clear box with the guards and the prisoners surrounding it. What was it like to be in that moment and to be inside of that? There’s just something so visually incredible about looking at it.
SY: That was the perfect example of what was, for us, the show. That’s the show itself, without thinking about the book. There is Lupin the book, and there is Lupin the show. That example, that visual, is exactly an example of, “The show is that. That is the show itself. This is what we created.” That character in that prison, in that box, was just us. We tried to have some moments like that while, at the same time, having some moments more related to the book.
This series has always been about family. For Assane Diop, it’s really about his family’s past with his father, his family’s future with his son, and reclaiming his family name. What has it been like to play with that, to play with the relationship with the son, and to get to explore those moments with the father? It’s such an interesting throughline of this whole series, that you really get to explore the family aspect of it.
SY: Thank you so much for that. Yeah, for us, it is very important. It’s the foundation of the show for us, actually, so it is really important for us. The show is based in that, but that also comes from the book. In the book, Lupin is becoming Lupin because this unfair thing happened to his dad. He became Lupin because of that, so that’s how we created our character in the show. We really took that and, for us, that’s the base of the show. It’s about how our character, Assane, can be Lupin and Assane, at the same time. It’s the schizophrenic battle between the two sides of him trying to get together. That’s really the theme of the whole show. Every season, we have to face that.
Whether a Season 5 of ‘Lupin’ Will Happen Depends on Audience Reaction
“We want to see if they do react, and how they are going to react.”
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Image via Netflix
Are you still hoping to do more episodes? Will there be a Part 5 of this series?
SY: We really don’t know. For us, it’s really one step after another. For now, we have the fourth season. We want to see how the fandom, the audience, responds to it and see if we have more to say. First, it’s about how the audience responds to the novelties that we propose. We want to see if they do react, and how they are going to react.
I want to ask you a bit of a silly question. I was looking at your Instagram page and saw some photos of you at Disneyland a couple of years ago, and you seemed to be having a lot of fun in Star Wars Land playing with lightsabers. I’m just curious, are you a theme park guy? Are you a Star Wars fan? Personally, I am a theme park fan and spend a lot of time in them.
SY: Definitely theme parks are my favorite thing in the world, and I share that with my kids. We love going there when we are all together. And of course, I’m a huge Star Wars fan, and I also share that with my kids too. So, we love going there. We love playing with the lightsabers. We love the shows. We love the movies. It’s part of our family trips and it’s very important for us.
I figured if you can tell somebody is having fun in a photo, then they’re definitely having fun.
Lupin is available to stream on Netflix.
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