Exclusive Interview
Lucas Bravo on Embracing His ‘Dark Side’ as ‘The Seduction’s Villain (VIDEO)
What To Know
- Lucas Bravo is known for his role as Gabriel in Emily in Paris.
- He plays a villainous character in HBO Max’s The Seduction, a prequel to Dangerous Liaisons.
- Bravo embraced the challenge of playing a morally dark antagonist.
[Warning: The following contains minor spoilers from The Seduction Episode 1.]
Most viewers will recognize Lucas Bravo as the French chef and love interest from Emily in Paris. While Gabriel has revealed a couple of red flags over the course of the Netflix show, he’s got nothing on Bravo’s latest role. In The Seduction, the actor takes on his most villainous character to date.
HBO Max’s Dangerous Liaisons prequel sees Bravo play Comte de Gercourt, the prince of the pleasure-seeking Libertines and rival to Vincent Lacoste‘s Valmont. In the premiere episode, which is now streaming, Gercourt is plenty charming… at first. It doesn’t take long for his dark side to emerge.
Bravo said that he was eager to dive into the antagonist character. “As an actor, you just want to be challenged,” he explained, adding that he’s always considered himself a chameleon in his craft. “And I love to run into my fears to desacralize them and to see that I’m able to do everything. So, every time I see an opportunity to do something completely different to what I’ve ever done, I’m going to run towards it.”
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The French series revolves around the young Isabelle de Merteuil (Anamaria Vartolomei) and her ascent to Libertine royalty. After she’s duped by Valmont, Isabelle is determined to take charge of her life. She’s taken under the wing of his knowledgeable aunt, Madame de Rosemonde (Diane Kruger), who instructs Isabelle to seduce Gercourt once their training begins.
Isabelle succeeds in catching Gercourt’s eye at a party, but once she gets him alone, she changes her mind about sleeping with him. Gercourt tries to force himself on her until she escapes. Isabelle embarrasses him in front of everyone, making a devious enemy during her first foray into the Libertine world. The Seduction is full of morally grey characters, but Gercourt sets himself apart from the get-go as totally dark.
As an introvert, Bravo said that the character was “the perfect stage for [him] to express a lot of the crazy,” something he hasn’t had much of a chance to do. As a result, the actor was ready to go all in with the character.
“We all have a dark side that we choose to fuse with our day-to-day life,” Bravo. noted. “Most of the time most people just swallow it down and suppress it and eventually it comes out and people are like, ‘Oh this guy just lost it.’ But it’s hard to live in a world where people are scared to verbalize their needs and wants from fear of losing validation and love and acceptance.”
Though he considered Gercourt “the perfect window of expression,” the actor made sure to clarify that he assuredly isn’t like his The Seduction character off-screen. “I’m not saying that all of Gercourt was inside of me,” Bravo said, “but I surely gave him all the little weird things that I don’t support in real life.”
The Seduction, Season 1, Fridays at 12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET, HBO Max
Reporting by Avery Thompson
