Jacob elordi euphoria tv#

Though Elordi was an emerging thespian, he was an athlete too, a member of the school’s rugby team, and he was beginning to feel the dichotomy between those two worlds. Both his parents have T-shirts with printed images of nearly every character he’s ever played.Įlordi became fixated on acting when he was 12, the age at which Nate, in Euphoria, was beginning to sculpt his alpha male identity, developing a routine that involves pull-ups and screaming so loudly that no one could ever accuse him of being effeminate. A stay-at-home mum, she volunteered to work at his school lunchroom, so every day, while he was eating the lunch his parents packed for him, he could also hang out with her. “I think she sees him as me,” Elordi says. After Nate got arrested in season one for assaulting his girlfriend, she called Elordi, clearly upset. “He’ll still be like, Are you going to shoot the one…where you’re kissing? In the booth? ‘No, Dad, I’m making good movies, I swear.’ Is that the one where you’re an American? ‘I’m American in all of them, Dad.’ ”īut Elordi’s closest relationship is with his mum, Melissa – he calls her “the most present, loving, just beautiful, angelic human being on this planet” – and she gets a bit more invested in each of her son’s characters. His father is happy for him, Elordi says, even if he doesn’t totally understand his famous son’s new life. He calls his dad a “totem of the kind of man that I would like to be.” A housepainter by trade, John Elordi spent 13 years building the Brisbane home Elordi grew up in, instilling in his son a work ethic and toughness. Playing Nate, Elordi tells me, is a matter of imagining the opposite of his own adolescent experience. So much of what Nate does is meant to cultivate an übermasculine identity that he feels might protect him from turning into his dad. On the inside, though, he’s engaged in a struggle with a secret: As a young boy, he discovered a stash of recordings his father had made of himself having sex with young men and trans women. His toxic behaviours include, but are not limited to, drinking (and driving), blackmail, assault, choking, catfishing, gaslighting, more assault, and having sex with his best friend’s ex (who also happens to be his ex’s best friend).

Jacob elordi euphoria tv#

On the surface, he’s a classic TV bad boy: the stud quarterback who loves the gym and has a raging alpha male dark side. Euphoria is a show about constructing your identity in a very online world – and the painful process of closing the gap between who you are and who you want to be.Įlordi’s character, Nate Jacobs, feels that distance acutely. For this generation, the anxiety you once felt walking into the canteen – that sense of figuring out who you are while everyone’s watching – follows you everywhere there’s wifi. It’s thrilling and panic-inducing at the same time, and that’s largely because creator Sam Levinson’s neon-and-glitter aesthetic captures just how intense and dramatic high school can feel. The kids of East Highland High are doing what most of us did as teens – pushing boundaries – but they’re just doing it to the extreme, with a lot more opiates and underboob. Squint and he’s a very tall version of Jeremy Irons from the ’80s version of Brideshead.Įuphoria is a show about high school in the way that Drive to Survive is a show about cars. He’s spent years emulating these stars, and has the classic Hollywood looks that could one day place him in their ranks – strong brow, expressive eyes.

He’s carrying his Saltburn script around in a worn leather binder that used to belong to Gary Oldman – a gift from Oldman’s son Charlie, a close friend. He wears a Saint Christopher medal, like Steve McQueen did. He pierced his ears because Daniel Day-Lewis did. In high school, he started reading biographies and profiles of them and stole off to the library to watch their films. Since he was young, Elordi has known who he wants to be: the actors he grew up revering, both legends like Brando and Olivier and also more recent ones, like Ledger and Bale. “When I’m out here,” he says, “I can kind of be anyone or do anything.” He can already feel himself starting to slip into his new identity. At Fennell’s suggestion, Elordi has been reading Brideshead Revisited to get in character, and he explains that his outfit – a billowy shirt and a pair of linen trousers – is an attempt to inhabit the “loose privilege” of the novel’s protagonists. and to prepare for his next role as a British aristocrat in Saltburn, director Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman. He came to Twentynine Palms to get some distance from his life in L.A.