A STAR-MAKING TRANSFORMATION
Melton, known for playing ‘Riverdale’ jock, found his process while preparing for breakout ‘May December’ role
It was an unseasonably rainy November day in Los Angeles, and I had gone to Charles Melton’s house with a dual mission. The first was to discuss the new film “May December,” in which the actor does more than just hold his own opposite Oscar-winning co-stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore: He gives the movie its bruised, beating heart.
And the second mission? Well, that was to make some truly excellent kimchi. Melton keeps his fridge so well-stocked with kimchi that he often sends friends home with jars of it. “Just remember, kimchi is a probiotic,” he said.
Six-foot-one, shaggy-haired and easygoing, Melton has the warm glow of a Himalayan salt lamp. Although he spent six years playing a conceited jock on The CW teen soap “Riverdale,” Melton wears his beauty and brawn as lightly as a nice jacket.
In “May December,” Melton plays Joe, a diffident 36-year-old father married to the much older Gracie (Moore). The two have seemingly managed to fashion a picture-perfect life — three children, two dogs and a beautiful home by the water — although the original sin of their union provides an awfully shaky foundation: They met when Gracie was a married housewife, and Joe was just a seventh grader. Tabloid infamy followed as Gracie was convicted of raping Joe, bore his baby in prison and, after serving a yearslong sentence, married him and had two more children.
Enter Elizabeth (Portman), an ambitious actor poised to play Gracie in a movie that will exhume the scandal this couple has worked so hard to move past. In a bid to have the story told their way, Gracie and Joe agree to let Elizabeth shadow them, but as the actor peppers the couple with invasive questions, poor Joe is finally forced to confront the enormity of what he has locked away for so long. Robbed of a normal childhood by Gracie, Joe can’t quite articulate his feelings — sentences often get lodged in his throat — but in Melton’s hands, Joe’s wounded attempt to make sense of his situation is shattering.
In May, after the film premiered to raves at the Cannes Film Festival, director Todd Haynes told me that Melton was its linchpin.
“It’s a consummate performance by somebody who doesn’t even realize how thorough an actor he is yet,” Haynes said.
And as with “Elvis” star Austin Butler, another hunk from The CW turned serious thespian, Melton has been drawing plenty of Oscar chatter with his breakthrough role: He recently earned Golden Globe and Gotham nominations for his supporting role,
heady stuff for a man whose most significant laurel until now was a nomination for best kiss, at the MTV Movie & TV Awards.
As we spoke, Melton met every question with enthusiastic openness. At 32, he has been pondering big questions about self and purpose, and our conversation offered such a welcome opportunity to go deep that he often dropped into dreamy reveries.
He told me that last summer, when he received the audition pages for “May December,” he was similarly ready to go deep.
It was not long after Melton had wrapped the sixth season of “Riverdale,” which found his mind-controlled character stabbing comic-book hero Archie Andrews with one of the ancient Daggers of Megiddo. (This is just what happens on “Riverdale.”)
As he read the lines and character description for Joe, “there was this sense of repression and loneliness that I related to,” Melton said.
Those wouldn’t necessarily be the first two qualities you’d associate with Melton, an outgoing athlete who loves to hold a game night, but Joe’s predicament reminded him of a pep talk he’d gotten when he was 11: His father, on the verge of a yearlong deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, pressed Melton to step up and take care of his mother and younger sisters in the interim, effectively becoming the man of the house.
“As an 11-year-old kid, you’re like, ‘I’ll do it!’ ” Melton recalled. “I would never change anything I experienced — no one did anything wrong — but in looking at that part of my own experience and then looking at Joe, it’s that similarity of the feeling of stepping into something whether you’re ready for it or not.”
Although Haynes was unfamiliar with Melton’s work and nearly discounted him because of his model-handsome headshot — “I just didn’t see how he would fit into this world,” the filmmaker told me — once he pressed play, Haynes was intrigued by Melton’s unique take on the character.
“Charles just brought this sense of somebody who was almost preverbal, who was almost prenatal, like you were watching somebody learning how to see and how to speak and how to walk,” Haynes said. “He was extremely restrained and subtle in what he did.”
To prepare, Melton threw himself into the role in any way he could think of. He spent hours every day consulting with his acting coach and therapist, trying to figure out Joe’s tricky, tangled internal wiring. He rewatched “Brokeback Mountain,” studying the ways Heath Ledger expressed repression in his physical bearing, and “In the Mood for Love,” observing how Tony Leung conveyed so much inner turmoil without saying a thing. And after conferring with Haynes, Melton decided to gain 40 pounds for the role, smoothing out his sharp jawline and adding a suburban-dad paunch.
“The reward was me discovering my process,” he said. “His reality is so distorted by the projections of society, the last thing he wants to do is to show himself. He protects himself, even in his body.”
After leveling up as an actor with “May December,” Melton could be at a career crossroads: Will Marvel come calling, ready to poach a hot new name with superhero looks, or will Melton throw in with the likes of Butler and
Jacob Elordi, who are using their heat to help finance auteur-driven projects?
“All one hopes for with an actor like Charles is that he gets roles offered to him and projects coming to him that excite and continue to stretch him,” Haynes said.
The monthslong awards gantlet will surely raise his profile even more, and Melton is excited to embark on all it has to offer, although he has lately tried to ground himself in simpler pleasures, like family visits, camping trips and accepting licks to the face from his Siberian husky, Neya.
“I have good people in my life, Kyle, really good people who know me and love me,” he said. “I don’t need any more love, but if I get it, it’s awesome.”
At the very least, Melton is about be seen in a whole new way, and he’ll have to wrestle with all that entails. But as we parted ways — me with several jars of take-home kimchi — he promised that no matter what happens over the next few months, he’ll be ready for it.
“I’ll still be me,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just have nicer shoes.”