Jacob Elordi

26:08The whole family can listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

26:18So when you start to get serious about acting, Do you remember who the first person was that kind of gave you some validation that said, stick with this?

26:28Jacob Elordi:Yeah, yeah. I did. Well, I did my first play when I played The Cat in the Hat in Seussical, the musical.

26:42Jacob Elordi:Something happened on stage, that kind of feeling when, and maybe they just felt sorry for me, I'm not sure. but when you feel when you feel that you have hooked the audience in a moment when you when you feel them sort of hanging on your words i think a small version of that happened or it was just like my mom's enthusiasm and love for me just beaming to me on the stage um whatever it was i think i felt a lot of validation when i did that um stage play when because i would i'd be down in the floor under the trap door right and then i think the line was um maybe some kind of hat wearing and then the the floor would come up and i'd go cat you know and from the moment that trap door sprung up and that like that energy that just surged through your through your body i think that was the kind of validation that i was like oh i'm i'm in trouble here i'm gonna have to do this for my whole life.

27:41Jacob Elordi:But then I had a great acting teacher. I went to these NIDA short courses when I was 14 on Sundays. And I had a teacher there named Zoe who I did a speech from Goodwill Hunting. Like, what do you want to hear, Skyler? That I put these cigarettes out of me? Whatever it is. That one that everybody loves to do and you're really intense and yelling. But she saw something in that and then she told her, agent and then through her agent I met another wonderful woman named Veronica and she would kind of she would just have long lunches with me and talk and talk to me as if I was an artist on the same level there and they were they were now they were in you know stage productions in Sydney and Melbourne and I've one they were the first actors that I felt like really kind of understood what I was what I was trying to say or the thing that I couldn't quite articulate but that I was driving at it's so funny to look back and think of kind of like the things that like you know we laugh about now it's cat in the hat but it's so meaningful and then you think of something like later later later on and like look i mean a lot of people like you know i work for mtv so a lot of people first from kissing booth and obviously like that at the time when you're casting that must have been so huge must have felt like the world was opening up it was it was um and making that film the first film was one of the greatest experiences i've ever had on a set it was like Like, I remember that was when I really had the thought, like, you know, the best day in the real world doesn't compare to even the worst day on a film set.

29:14Jacob Elordi:Like, you know, it was magic, like, to be with people from a different country and to be able to connect with people from a completely different culture and to stand around and think that filming these words or this thing was important in some kind of way. and just the level of play. And I took that movie dead serious. Like to me, it was like, you know, I broke down the kind of the teenage existential catastrophe that is Noah Flynn. You know, the tragedy of choice and, you know, all these things. But it was incredible, you know. I think Pacino and maybe Hoffman said something along the lines of this, but if someone is paying for the room and the space that you are and then asking you to come in and act in that space, then you're doing it.

30:14Jacob Elordi:Then you are an actor. If someone else is paying the rent on the building that you're acting in, and that's what that was. It's like someone is paying money for me to put on a leather jacket and wear a disgruntled tie and ask this young woman when her boobs came in over the summer. Like, it's so totally absurd. Living the dream beyond, again. But it is, you know. Yeah, I get it. And I was, you know, I farewelled my friends and family. Everybody came down to the airport and I got to fly business class and cut the line. And, you know, it felt like something was happening. And I remember I bought, like, new shoes for the trip, like some Adidas sneakers that I never would have been able to get.

30:58Jacob Elordi:And I'm still, I mean, to now, talking to you now, I'm still on that same trip. I never went home. I've stayed with the same suitcases, essentially. It does feel like, coming full circle, what you were talking about, this is almost like the end of Act One. It feels like Frankenstein, kind of like, if I'm writing the book, the biopic, Jacob Alordi, this is either the beginning of the second act or the end of Act One. And now you're between salt burn and euphoria and this, you're like, you get into the juicy stuff. This is the fun, this is the fun times. I've been so lucky. And, uh, I was understood very quickly, which, which is a great, uh, a great gift.

31:38Jacob Elordi:And I've been given the opportunity to act on sets with people, uh, that, uh, that, you know, so you, you don't get this opportunity and that's not, that's not lost on me. you know um was was it shocking look you have kissing booth is huge in its own way and then euphoria is huge in a totally different way and the reception to that could be more it's always very similar it's another obsessive like obsessive fan base but it's totally so similar it was actually really similar it was just like a different age bracket um and some of the and some of the same it was weird too because i had i'd had once euphoria came out i'd had people that been watching my work since they were 12 right and then i was ready i was meeting them at 16 or 17 and then i watched you in this so i felt old really quickly right just by the nature of the size of both those the sort of social size of both those uh jobs you know were you immediately defensive protective of nate when the film when the show came out and the reactions were i mean or the design of the character.

32:44You should have a strong reaction to him, but did it catch you off guard?

32:49Jacob Elordi:I think I was excited that it made some people so sort of... Because if you get a reaction from something that you play, that's kind of the dream. And someone, like people telling you that they're scared of you on the street is actually an excellent compliment. you know, because it means that you've done something. You've caused some kind of effect, not effect, like an actual, you've affected something, which is nice. But there was a moment actually when I was in New York in a room not too similar to this. I remember online, it was maybe one of the worst things that he'd done had just happened on television.

33:34Jacob Elordi:And there was this picture going around on the internet of my face on a TV screen and somebody was holding a Glock up to the face. And then I was watching people sort of live tweet because I spent far too much time on the internet. And I was watching people be like, oh, he's on 57th Street. He's here. Someone run him over with your car. It was like people were following where I was walking around the city. So I got incredibly paranoid.

34:07Maybe next season, let's make him sweeter.

34:10Jacob Elordi:At that point. But at the same time, it was like the X Games version of knowing that you'd had some kind of effect. It seems like in the years, in this kind of period of time, especially since Euphoria, like many smart actors, you've been director driven. I mean, you see the filmmakers you've worked with, whether it's, you know, Sophia or Paul Schrader, Emerald, Justin Curzell, Ridley Scott. Yeah. Is that kind of like the rule of thumb? Just put myself in the hands of the best. Let me learn as much as possible at this point in time. How are you figuring out this stage? Because you're getting opportunities.

34:50You're getting a lot of cool opportunities. So for the first time, you can say no to things. How are you figuring this out?

34:56Jacob Elordi:That's the kind of ultimate.

35:02Jacob Elordi:for me if you work with a great filmmaker filmmakers are solely contributing to cinema and and cinema is the thing that i want to be a part of so these people that i'm working with have single-handedly from ridley have pioneered this this art form this like this form of expression and then you have people like Kurzweil pushing the form and making films for the sake of making films. They keep my spirit alive because my spirit lives in movies and it has for as long as I've been conscious now. So for me, it's partly like I have a great reverence for them and a respect and these people are my heroes.

35:51Jacob Elordi:And if I wasn't working with them, I'm devouring their retrospectives or they are the kind of gods of my world. So there's that first and foremost, just a kind of a great respect. But then also you can guarantee whether the film is received or not received that if it's made by a filmmaker that I really believe even that I think is an artist in the gallery of kind of cinema, that film will, will have a room. It'll have a spot where it can go on the wall. And that's more important to me than, than being a career actor. I want to kind of, at the end of my time, walk into this kind of what for me would be this kind of holy temple of, of the posters on the wall.

36:37Exactly. The Jacob of Horty closet. Yeah.

36:40Jacob Elordi:A personal criterion closet because, because Guillemot is something really interesting um these films are our biographies first and foremost the filmmakers but every character I've played is a part of my my biography and I'm I'm never um I'm never hiding anything on screen or my goal is to hide nothing to um to be a performance artist and to put uh to put everything that I need to say on stamped in that you know piece a celluloid or in that moment in time. That is my biography, sincerely. Every single one, cinematic or not cinematic. So for me, I feel more comfortable and I feel better understood in my biography when it's articulated through the lens of a filmmaker who I respect and think is of importance.

37:35So I got to think at some point you send over, you email your representation, here's my top five here are the filmmakers i'm gonna i'm gonna do anything for give me a couple

37:44Jacob Elordi:who's on the list i have well my it's constant it's constantly uh it's constantly shifting and and uh and and changing um and i don't you know i'm not even going to answer because if i do then i'll be up all night thinking about i really wanted to say like this person or i really wish I'd said this person. But I will tell you, you know, I met Wim Wenders two nights ago and hearing him speak about Walter Salles at the Academy Museum Gala was a really – I've only ever read and watched Wim Wenders stuff. I've never sort of seen it. And to see him give this speech, which I would have read in a book of essays or something 10 years from now, was super profound.

38:31Jacob Elordi:So, you know, somebody like that would be incredible. And I would have loved to have worked with David Lynch. I think that, I mean, obviously, it's such an obvious thing, but there's a spark that left the world when he passed. And I obviously don't know him, but everyone, if you have, you know, dined with his catalogue, you know that something's gone. something that really was from a different place. And I think a filmmaker like that, that would have been, for me, that would have been, I could happily have sort of laid down. No, I tell this story a lot. I got a chance to talk to him over Zoom in his last years.

39:19And I still have, I don't keep a lot of swag. He sent me a mug, an autographed mug after a conversation that sits on my coffee table and it's like my most prized. Exactly.

39:30Jacob Elordi:That is really spectacular. That's really, really cool. Are there rules you live by in terms of conducting a career? I mean, Leo famously said, I think to Chalamet, no superheroes, no hard drugs. Do you subscribe to anything like that in your own career? No, because I think that to think in that way is a little bit like playing a movie star or something. It's so specific. Right. Whereas I kind of, because people ask this too, they'll be like, is there any kind of like film that you want to make or character that you want to play? And no, you don't want to close yourself off. I really don't think of it like that.

40:13Jacob Elordi:It really is this kind of, I've unfortunately I've been referring to the process as a cancer recently, but it feels like something that just kind of mutates and grows. And I keep going down different tangents with it. And it's, it's constantly changing my relationship to movies. And I think if I thought about rules, then I'd feel like I was trying to construct a career or something. It would feel very, very business-like or whereas, whereas I, I do really, I can, it sounds so pretentious, but I, I can sit, I consider myself like a player, really like a, like a stock artist in a company. And when I find these filmmakers or they find me, I feel like I'm being hired to do this one, this very specific thing, which is to act.

41:08Jacob Elordi:And hopefully I can keep my tools sharp enough that people want to, I can apply it in different sort of spaces and in different films. and hopefully the more films that I make with great filmmakers that your tool becomes more varied or something like that. But I don't have any kind of like Hollywood rules. Well, it makes sense. It's like, I mean, on paper, with all due respect, I don't have you cast in Guillermo del Toro as the creature. Not on the top of my list. And now, like, having seen you do this, it opens up so many more. But that's why Guillermo del Toro is Guillermo del Toro. That's why he's him and I'm me.

41:50Jacob Elordi:Do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally. he does but he does see with that with that lens and it takes it takes that kind of trust and it takes the the ability to see in that way yeah to to uh to to know you know um and he knew he knew before we spoke that that it was going to that it was going to work you know um i caught up with margot wonderful margot robbie recently light of the universe another yeah i saw you you guys around about no iris she's a witch and just like such a film geek herself you know you know her like she knows she knows all margot robbie she knows all yeah so you guys have cooked up something special i'm sure with emerald um she's teased it a little bit is this going to make our head spin this your take on wuthering heights emerald fennel doesn't do a normal wuthering heights what am i in for i think it's going to obliterate your heart i think it's going to i i i it's It's such a painful love story and such a tragedy, the whole thing.

42:56Jacob Elordi:And I just got to see the film recently. And it's so painfully beautiful and agonizing to watch them suffer, to suffer in the most beautiful frames you've ever seen. Linus shot the film. So it's just stunning. I haven't quite wrapped my head around it yet, but I mean, it's, I've not seen a film like it in a long while. Did you, going back to Saltburn and your last collaboration with Emerald, you must have known how it was going to push buttons. I mean, it's kind of part of the design of it. She's a provocateur in the best possible way. Were you surprised, excited? No, not really. I didn't think it was so extreme.

43:37Jacob Elordi:I found the world's reaction to be slightly prudish, actually. Oh, really? Well, you know cinema. there's so many films out there that are like that are like infinitely more more disturbing like but not many that play on like 4 000 screens i guess like this was a mainstream movie that was do you know the film lived two different lives though there was a life when it was just in cinemas and it had a different response and then once it hit a streaming service it it got a whole different uh the whole lens on the film changed which was which was an interesting uh to see how a film uh structure can kind of change through its endurance and through through the format that it's viewed in was really interesting um because once it goes on a streamer it gets looked at through more of a social lens than uh than an experiential um cinematic sort of experience you know a friday night uh experience kind of thing and it does change the way the film is understood i think well yeah i had the same kind of i had the same kind of conversation with harris dickens and one of your contemporaries about baby girl and how that was kind of like well yeah actually i saw the memeification yeah yeah like how it becomes a meme and it kind of like you know gifts and and and just becomes a different thing it's not it's not it's not it's not for better or worse but it does it does change the intention but there is something about giving there is something when you do serve a film up to the world it does become the world's and that and that is that is in its own way that's it's a good thing you know uh even if your point is lost maybe it's a nice lesson in like letting your point go um and then sort of and moving on and i'm a firm believer that once once i've sort of put the film in the can and i've finished it it's not it really it really isn't mine anymore and the interpretation of it the edit none of it none of it applies to the sort of job that i've just done um so the only feeling i had when we were making it was it did it did feel like our last special summer as a family or something it did feel like that wonderful uh yeah that it was the sun was out every day and and it felt like a moment like a personal sort of moment in time you know i uh i know it's a busy day so i promise to let you go in a minute but quickly um euphoria i guess you've shot i mean we we're just thankful it was shot because i mean for a while i think a lot of us were were you were you kind of like is this ever gonna happen i think every i knew i knew it i knew it would i knew it would come around um eventually um um but uh but just so much i mean so much the duration of that show has the world has changed as as the show has changed and the the way in which it came out pre-covid and then during covid and then now sort of post-covid it has marked a really for lack of a better word interesting time in in the world but also particularly in like american culture um so it's it's strange it's it's really it's really quite strange and i'm excited to see what how this season plays into the kind of i guess world that that sam sam sam created but it was it was um i saw i've seen you know dailies and things like that and it's it looks so good like it looks so so good and i think the score is going to be um the score is going to be something else i'm really really excited to and because i've only done one sort of portion of it right i'll get to watch the rest of it and just consume it which is uh which is really really nice do you have a do a favorite snippy direction from ridley scott that guy is just like he can really like cut you to the core i know um what's your favorite piece of direction ridley gave you on dog stars i got this so much um um yeah i think it was maybe him coming out of his trailer and just giving me the finger and saying, fuck me, man, you're all right.

47:50Jacob Elordi:Something like that. I mean, that's all you want to hear. He's one of the, what a totally sort of mesmerizing experience. I got to watch this man who has been plugging himself into cinema his whole life, and it literally pumps through his blood. Like when he arrives on set in the morning, the energy that he comes into the set with and carries through the duration of the shoot like he's he's living off of cinema you know it's not even about the end product it's about the actual tactile act of going and making a movie he's like a he's a he's a master craftsman and he's like my dad in a lot of ways like my dad survives because he works you know he's a he's a he's a he's a what keeps the sort of the engine running.

48:47Jacob Elordi:So I'm literally watching like cinema sustain a life, which is a pretty, a pretty profound thing to, to be in Italy watching, you know? Yeah. He's writing the storyboards for the next three movies. He's literally sitting there storyboarding in the car in the, in the back of a Maybach on the way to work. And, and there's something about, you know, he directs from this trailer, which is wrapped to look like the set. And you'll hear this voice sort of croak from inside, you know, Jake. and then you come and the curtain pulls back and Oz is sitting there in a body of lies bucket hat smoking a Cuban cigar with 20 monitors in front of him showing you exactly how he's going to cut from this frame to that frame.

49:25Yeah, because he's got 10 cameras going. It's like, what the fuck?

49:28Jacob Elordi:It's like, how the fuck? Like, he's cutting this movie while he's sitting in there. He's like, you're going to walk from this camera and then you're going to come in through here and you see, I'm watching playback on like 11 different monitors while he smokes a Cuban and then he pats me on the back and says, isn't this what it's about? you know isn't right this is this is what it's about this is it you know all right we're gonna end with this i promise we're over time but the happy sad confused profoundly random questions here we go i know the answer to this one dogs or cats jacob dogs come on i don't i don't i don't yeah i'm not anti-cat though i do i do love a cat okay do you collect anything um yes um um um curiosities the little tidbits and weighted things okay little little bags of treasure love it favorite video game of all time oh oh um uh kingdom hearts okay dakota johnson asked me this i ask everybody would you rather have a mouthful of bees or one bee in your butt mouthful of bees that is a rare not many people say that jacob yeah like like candy man that's the movie reference of course that clock what's the wallpaper on your phone oh oh right now my wallpaper is me and my beautiful friend Kaylee's Maney from Priscilla I adore her I love her what a performance um last actor you were mistaken for ah nicholas cage i mean amazing a little bit of a different age bracket it's a long it's the longer story i'll tell you tonight okay fair enough uh worst noted director has ever given you

51:20Jacob Elordi:um um what are you doing with your mouth stop doing that it looks stupid

51:29Jacob Elordi:i've worked with him for like seven years little euphoria action sam okay all right but you know what he was right it looked really stupid and finally in the spirit of happy sad confused an actor who always makes you happy you see them on screen you're in a better mood josh brolin good call movie that makes you sad um synecdoche in new york and a food that makes you confused you don't get it mango and mango and meat mango and chicken salad fruit fruit chutney anything oh no better answer minestrone soup it should be banned there's the jacob already hot take of the day it's just a fact man congratulations on the movie Frankenstein is fantastic the performance is honestly next level and I'm so happy this happened I've been back in the career for a while and I'm a big fan as you can tell I wanted to talk to you for a long time so thank you for taking the time and I'll catch up with you hopefully for a second in person tonight yeah sounds good man I'll see you then and so ends another edition of Happy Sad Confused Remember to review, rate and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

52:49I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't ready to do this by Josh.

53:00The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

53:44Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.