Big year for Jacob Elordi. He is currently earning solid reviews for his performance as Elvis in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla and, as just mentioned in the previous post about Margot Robbie, he has a supporting role in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, also a possible contender this award season.
Jacob was at the premiere as part of the Saltburn team last night just a couple of days after the release of his GQ cover and interview.
One of the big headlines coming out of his profile is what he had to say about The Kissing Booth series, the Netflix movies that opened him up to an audience of primarily girls and women. Up until this year, that’s what Jacob has been known for: The Kissing Booth and then, of course, Euphoria. Interestingly Jacob doesn’t say much about Euphoria in the GQ piece, but he does talk some sh-t about The Kissing Booth:
“I didn’t want to make those movies before I made those movies,” he says. “Those movies are ridiculous. They’re not universal. They’re an escape.”
I mean, it’s not like I disagree with him because The Kissing Booth movies are, indeed, terrible. But it’s his tone, it’s the utter disdain and the sanctimony – because what he’s basically saying is that he was always too good for The Kissing Booth. It’s sh-tting on the thing that gave him his start, that opened up more opportunities.
When it’s pointed out to Jacob that these are often the choices that actors make at the beginning of their careers that can lead them to the work that’s more meaningful, the “one for them, one for me” approach, this was his response:
“That one’s a trap as well. Because it can become 15 for them, none for you. You have no original ideas and you’re dead inside. So it’s a fine dance,” he replies. “My ‘one for them,’ I’ve done it.”
I wonder though if Jacob knows this is a cliché. To be so dismissive of the so-called “silly” work that precedes the more serious roles. So many of the handsome white movie stars have walked this path, from Leonardo DiCaprio to Ryan Gosling to Robert Pattinson. They’ve all been quick in the immediate aftermath of the swoony stories they’ve starred in to distance themselves from those parts, seeming to go out of their way to take on weird and dark characters to assure the industry, and themselves, that they are more than just boyfriends and husbands, men you want to fall in love with.
What also happens during this stage is that they don’t sound like they’re having any fun. Which is what my takeaway was when I was reading Jacob’s GQ profile. Even questions about fashion – after all, this was GQ Magazine, a men’s FASHION magazine – are met with overwrought answers. Jacob is known for his collection of designer handbags and this is very cool, I love seeing a man rock up in a great clutch. But he doesn’t want to go there either.
If his predecessors are any indication, eventually he’ll grow out of this. We are, after all, living in the year of Kenergy, and perhaps the best performance of Ryan Gosling’s career in a movie that has him swaggering around in a fur coat and leather pants, LOL, doing dance numbers, revisiting his time on The Mickey Mouse Club. And in the process stealing the movie from Margot Robbie’s Barbie. Right now, Jacob Elordi can’t see this in his future.
