The first season finale of The Acolyte dropped on Tuesday, known for the last few weeks as Horny Tuesday. They’ve not yet announced if The Acolyte will be renewed. But I’m sure they’ve been paying attention to the collective thirst that’s exploded online, especially after episode five. IYKYK.

 

 Manny Jacinto. Sir, do you know what you’re doing to us? Have some mercy!

 

GQ has just published a new profile of Manny in time for season finale week. As writer Yang-yi Goh says in the piece, Manny’s “brought sexy back to Star Wars”. Not just sexy though. If it were just sexy, it wouldn’t be this intense. It’s also romance. We are shipping a new Star Wars couple. The Stranger (his character) is not only a hot villain, he’s a hot villain-BOYFRIEND. 

I just watched episode eight last night. The season is far from perfect. But they’ve done many things very well. The casting, obviously. But it’s also the intimacy, the hard and soft masculinity. This is what you get with a female showrunner (Leslye Headland) who isn’t out here prioritising the feelings of the Star Wars manbaby fandom but understands that there are women out there who want to be included, who want to fist-pump over the action sequences and nerd out over whatever whatever Force lore and… also… swoon! Give us the trope of the bad boy dark sider but also give him weapons of seduction in addition to a lightsabre – in more ways than one, LOL forever. Manny Jacinto has turned me into a horny, corny bitch and I am not sorry!

As mentioned in the GQ profile, while Manny has had some success with his previous projects, playing the (hot) Stranger in The Acolyte with so much nuance and sensitivity has taken Manny to the next level of fame. We need so much more Manny in our lives, definitely not less – although it’s the “less” of it that’s making headlines today because he talks in this interview about having all his lines cut from Top Gun: Maverick. 

 

It was the biggest movie of summer 2022, like the most major movie event. He was supposed to feature more prominently and in the end, he shows up for a few seconds and has nothing to say. Now he reveals he wasn’t all that surprised. 

“It’s flattering that there was a little bit of an outcry, but it wasn’t shocking to me. There was this sense of where the film was going [on set], like I can see them focusing the camera more on these [other] guys and not taking so much time on our scenes. Fortunately, it still was a great experience—you get to see this huge machine at work, see how Tom Cruise works, and you get to be a small part of this huge franchise.”

 

Despite his typically cheery Canuck optimism, however, Jacinto admitted the disappointment lit a fire under him. “It kind of fuels you, because at the end of the day, Tom Cruise is writing stories for Tom Cruise,” he said. “It’s up to us—Asian Americans, people of color—to be that [for ourselves]. We can’t wait for somebody else to do it. If we want bigger stories out there, we have to make them for ourselves.”

That frustration and familiar disappointment bled into his performance as the aptly named Stranger. Strangers are outsiders, they are “others”, and as an Asian actor, Manny certainly knows about being othered. 

“Having an Asian identity and fitting into American [society], fitting into Hollywood—I’ve had to fight so hard to fit in. And that’s a huge aspect of the Stranger.”

 

That might be why, despite the fact that this moment has been so huge for him, he still doesn’t seem to be able to allow himself to enjoy it and also seems skeptical about being a sex symbol. And this is the part that hit hardest for me: 

“I think whether it be being Asian, or Filipino, or Canadian,” he says, “there's always going to be this sense of always being in disbelief that people actually find you attractive.” 

That conditioning, that’s the dark side of the Force, truly. It’s so f-cking powerful – the imagery, the messaging, that there’s only one way to be the best and look the best and that you’re not the right colour or shade or background or name for it. I have felt that every day for my whole life, and it’s heartbreaking that this is what I have in common with Manny. But, given that he’s a generation behind me, maybe his heartbreak won’t last as long. He’s not counting on Hollywood to change. As he says: 

“Maybe it’s my lack of faith in this industry, but the people of color who find success, I feel like they still have to work at it and continue to fight for roles. The people I look up to—if you look at Steven Yeun, or Kumail Nanjiani, or even Donald Glover—they all had to, in some shape or form, create [projects for themselves] in order to continue to have a platform. Or even look at Dev Patel! He’s a huge star, but he had to make Monkey Man himself [to get an action role like that], and that was even shelved at one point. That's crazy to me. So that's why I have this caution towards whether or not the industry will move things forward for my career. If anything, it fuels me to try and create things on my own terms and hopefully lead projects that way.”

 

This is how Manny will be leveraging his momentum coming out of The Acolyte. And as he’s well aware, he’ll still have to fight to get people to take his calls, hear his pitches, finance his projects. So as much as he puts his energy into creating things on his own terms, we also have to put in the energy and show up for him and other artists who are trying to carve out space in a rigged system. 

Click here for more of Manny in GQ, and join us at The Squawk today where we are swooning over him. (app link here)

Photo credits: ZUMAPRESS.com/ MEGA/ Wenn

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