GREAT ARTISTS STEAL

Certain things are expected in a good heist show—and the Netflix hit Lupin does those things with style. It also has an extra je ne sais quoi, in the person of French star Omar Sy

- Devin Leonard

IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF LUPIN, THE breakout Netflix heist series, Assane Diop, a talented and charming Parisian thief, orchestrates a plot to steal a diamond necklace being sold in a charity auction at the Louvre. Once worn by Marie Antoinette, it’s known as the Queen’s Necklace. In preparation for the job, Diop finagles a position as a maintenance worker, enabling him to familiarize himself with the museum’s security system. He persuades three obstreperous members of a local loan-sharking crew to do the actual thievery—while at the same time crafting a second false identity for himself. He plans to attend the auction as a wealthy tech mogul and outbid all comers for the necklace.

The heist inevitably goes awry. The thugs try to double-cross Diop, but then he’d always planned to hoodwink them. He permits his accomplices to run off with a counterfeit version of the necklace and into the arms of the gendarmes. Diop slips the real item into a wastebasket, which he later returns to empty in his janitorial guise. Wouldn’t you know it? The Queen’s Necklace is still there. Diop deposits it in a trash bag, and off he strides past the museum’s unsuspecting guards and into the Parisian night.

It was that final twist that clinched it for Omar Sy, the French movie star who portrays Diop, when he read the script. “I thought that was really punk,” Sy recalls. “Just having the Queen’s Necklace in a trash bag was really cool.”

Lupin, which premiered in January, was watched by 76 million households in its first four weeks, making it the second-most-successful debut ever for an original Netflix show, after only