Zac Efron’s celebrity storyline(s)

Zac Efron was on holiday in Sardinia recently, seen by the pool, and it’s been a while. For someone as famous as he was in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Zac has kept a much lower profile over the last decade. But he is making interesting performance choices, with perhaps a theme emerging from his next three projects.

Zac has two films in post-production that should be ready for release since filming has been wrapped on both for at least a year. In Famous, Zac plays a nobody called Lance Dunkquist and also the movie star who looks a lot like him. This is a psychological thriller, a meditation on celebrity and fame and, perhaps, parasocial relationships. He obviously would know something about it.

Then there’s Judgement Day, a comedy co-starring Will Ferrell, where Will is a reality show judge (like Judge Judy) and Zac is one of the people with a grudge against him for a previous ruling that he thinks ruined his life – and takes the judge hostage as revenge. So another story about the relationship between celebrity and civilian.

A couple of months ago, it was announced that Zac will star in and executive produce a series remake of Angel Heart for HBO and A24. The 1987 film is now a cult favourite, starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet, and there’s some lore here too. Because Lisa was best known at the time as Denise Huxtable and there was an X-rated scene in the original cut of the film that had to be edited down to meet ratings requirements. So much of the media coverage at the time had to do with Lisa’s nude scene, how it blew up her wholesome image from The Cosby Show. And Bill Cosby was apparently furious that Lisa agreed to do it. At the time, of the controversy, Lisa said that in taking the role, “I was not concerned with how Denise was going to feel. Nor was I looking to destroy her reputation. Instead, I felt obligated to my career and my (freedom of) artistic choice.”

Over time, the film has been much more embraced by cinephiles than it was when it was released. So it makes sense that they’re adapting it into a series – and while Lisa defended her decision in that period to do the movie and perform what she was asked, I’m pretty sure in the updated version we likely won’t get a repeat of the situation since she was not even 18 yet when she filmed it with Mickey Rourke who was then in his early 30s.

Zac is likely taking over the Mickey Rourke role which… I mean, there are some similarities here when you compare certain career beats and personal choices. While Mickey played a private investigator in the film, though, Zac will be a “down-and-out NYC paparazzi, who makes his living finding and photographing people who don’t want to be found, who is hired by a mysterious man to find a missing woman. But the deeper he digs to find her, the more it looks like a group of powerful elites, and maybe something supernatural, are covering up the disappearance”.

So this part will require him to perform as someone who follows people around taking pictures, when in real life he’s the one who’s often followed and photographed. To go back to my point then, this is another story in which Zac seems to be blurring the line between his own experience as a celebrity and those who fixate on them. Which adds an intriguing layer to his performance and what he might be trying to work through in his interpretation of these characters. Also, they haven’t yet announced any other cast members but it would be kind of cosmic if Zoë Kravitz was cast in the role her mother once held.