Chances are good you were first introduced to Jacob Elordi in a school hallway: The actor rose to the top of Netflix queues everywhere as high school senior Noah in The Kissing Booth, and cemented his one-to-watch status as the abusive Nate in HBO's Euphoria. Yet while Hollywood is eager to give the star as much work in the young-adult genre as it can, the actor is already setting his sights on other stories.
In a recent interview with GQ Australia, the 23-year-old explained why he’s not keen on being type-cast as a high school jock. “Nothing against that but I’ve sort of done it and it would be really hard for me to find joy in that,” he said of the roles that he was offered after The Kissing Booth became a huge hit. “I’m also getting older now, and I’m starting to look older, so to keep going back to high school is kind of taxing.”
That isn’t to say he isn’t grateful for the opportunities that Euphoria in particular has offered him. He said “the coolest shift happened,” after the gritty series about a teenager named Rue (Zendaya) whose substance use issues consistently tear her life apart. Jacob believes his work as Nate, who is abusive both to longtime girlfriend Maddy (Alexa Demie) and new student Jules (Hunter Schafer), “put me on the radar, that I could maybe act, and it allowed me to sit down with these guys whose work I admire – they knew my work and they had enjoyed it,” he said. “So I could have these really adult, creative conversations with like-minded people.”
It’s pretty common for Hollywood to hire adults to play high schoolers — see: the entire cast of Riverdale — especially given that work rules are different for actors who aren’t yet 18, so in many ways, it’s simply easier to hire an adult. But Jacob, who is reprising his role as Noah in The Kissing Booth 2 and is on hold to film Euphoria season 2 once production can resume, isn’t waiting for Hollywood to wake up and hand him roles he’s interested in. Instead, he’s using his time in quarantine to create the kind of work he’d like to see on screen.
“I get super restless so I just make work for myself,” he said of his downtime in Brisbane, Australia. “I’m working on a screenplay right now, that’s sort of this Australian-set story, and I’m onto a second draft.” His routine is relatively simple, but not without work: “I’ll sit for a couple of hours and write and do rewrites, and then I’ll read and then I have a little area where I can paint,” he explained. “It’s been really good to just have time to get back to the basics of what I like to do. There’s no rules to it and I don’t have a deadline, so it’s fun to just throw sh*t at the wall and see what sticks.”
While Jacob is currently attached to two of the biggest projects in Hollywood right now, he’s not worried about following the buzz. “I’ve never really considered myself a ‘brand’ that’s got to stay relevant,” he said. “I’m still a firm believer that if you do good work then hopefully you’ll be able to keep working. I might land flat on my face with that, but it’s not something I really spend a lot of time thinking about.” For now, he’s going with the flow in his childhood bedroom — and seeing what comes of the art he creates there.
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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: "Kissing Booth" Deleted Scene Features Jacob Elordi and Joey King Being Very Awkward