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JACOB ELORDI IS HERE TO SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL…
Barely minutes after Austin Butler left the building, another teen-telly graduate will step into a familiar pair of blue suede shoes. Perhaps you first saw Jacob Elordi in The Kissing Booth and its sequels. Maybe you shrunk before all 6ft 5in of him in high-school drama series Euphoria. Either way, you’ll soon see a lot more action from the Brisbane-born 25-year-old.
Elordi will play Elvis Presley in Priscilla,
director Sofia Coppola’s A24 adaptation of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s memoir Elvis And Me. While Mare Of Easttown’s Cailee Spaeny will play the woman who became Presley’s wife, Elordi has put in the homework for Elvis, going by a recent GQ interview in which Peter Guralnick’s biography Last Train To Memphis was spotted on the actor’s table. Looking for ways to understand Presley, Elordi alighted on an experience of suddenish fame as one hook. First drawn to acting at 11 years old by Heath Ledger’s pencil thing in The Dark Knight, Elordi skirted other career options to get there: his mother suggested modelling, while a potential athletics career was derailed by a back injury.
A bit-part in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017) encouraged Elordi’s ambitions, before Netflix teen romcom
The Kissing Booth brought sudden, “superintense” fame and all the anxieties that accompany teen-pic breakout stardom:
“I felt like I had to prove to everyone that I was a serious actor.” He went on to do so in Euphoria, layering toxicity and torment as alpha hunk Nate, who brought Elordi further fame and media attention – something Elvis might have said “Uh-huh” to, too.
Alongside roles including another toxic dude in portmanteau horror The Mortuary Collection and a love interest in ’70s-set comedy Swinging Safari, Elordi emerged unscathed from Deep Water, where he played Ana de Armas’ lover. Meanwhile, incoming gigs suggest an appetite for auteurs who will stretch him: we’ll see him as a British aristo in Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, before Coppola beckons for Elvis. Big shoes to fill? Perhaps, but, for all his anxieties, we reckon Elordi will walk in them just fine.