The French heist thriller was a huge global hit when it debuted on Netflix in January. Even the creator and cast were surprised.
Anybody who claims to have foreseen the sweeping, worldwide success of the Netflix series “Lupin” is probably engaging in a bit of revisionist history. When the first five-episode installment dropped, on Jan.8, the show’s team hoped that “Lupin” would do well enough in its home country of France, where the title — a reference to a popular hero of classic early-20th-century novels — would at least ring a bell, and where its star, Omar Sy, regularly tops polls of most popular celebrities. “At first we focused only on finding a story that would resonate with our subscribers in France,” Damien Couvreur, head of original series for Netflix France, said in a video chat. (Most interviews for this article were translated from their original French.) But “Lupin” exploded out of the gate, becoming a global phenomenon instantly and eventually Netflix’s most streamed non-English-language original. Now a new batch of five episodes — Part 2, as Netflix is calling it — has arrived and is available on Friday worldwide. For a show that set out with modest expectations, the release of its latest installment might be the TV event of the summer. “Being a British man, you just think, ‘I could believe that when I see it’ — you don’t want to get excited,” said the creator and showrunner, George Kay, about the success of Part 1. “We got a really nice balance across the world in terms of the reaction, which I understand is kind of unusual for Netflix shows, he added, pointing to the regional targeting of much of its programming. The 16-year-old Mamadou Haidara — who made his screen debut playing the teen version of Sy’s character, Assane Diop, in flashbacks — was just as surprised. “I didn’t see any of it coming,” he said in a video chat from outside his house in the Parisian suburb Vitry-sur-Seine. “I saw Twitter and Instagram going up and up — I loved it. I thought the series would do like any other series. But going nuts like that? I never imagined it.” (It’s a safe bet he did not imagine Netflix would begin selling “Lupin”-branded throw pillows either.
