Jacob Elordi says he ‘didn’t want to make’ ‘ridiculous’ Kissing Booth films

‘Euphoria’ star co-led rom-com trilogy with Joey King and Joel Courtney

Jacob Elordi has reflected on his starring role in The Kissing Booth trilogy, calling the rom-com movies “ridiculous”.

The 26-year-old Australian actor co-led the film series, which debuted in 2018, opposite Joey King (The Act). They are based on Beth Reekles’s young adult novels of the same name.

He returned for the second and third Kissing Booth films in 2020 and 2021 after shooting to fame playing bully Nate Jacobs in Sam Levinson’s gritty teen drama, Euphoria.

In a new interview with British GQ, Elordi revealed that he “didn’t want to make those movies before I made those movies”.

“Those movies are ridiculous. They’re not universal. They’re an escape,” he said.

The trilogy commanded an enormous viewership on the streaming platform; however, the films were widely panned by critics.

On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, Kissing Booth has a critic score of 15 per cent while Kissing Booth 2 is at 27 per cent and Kissing Booth 3 is at 25 per cent.

When confronted with the idea that the movies were part of Hollywood’s common “one for them, one for me” culture, Elordi responded: “That one’s a trap as well. Because it can become 15 for them, none for you. You have no original ideas and you’re dead inside. So it’s a fine dance.

Joey King and Jacob Elordi in ‘The Kissing Booth 3‘ (Marcos Cruz/NETFLIX)

“My ‘one for them,’ I’ve done it,” he added.

King, however, has defended the popular trilogy. She told The Independent last year that she “couldn’t be prouder of those movies”.

“I loved them so much and playing that character made me happy. I’ll never regret those movies, and I love them so much no matter what anyone says,” she said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Elordi disclosed that he had turned down an audition for Superman, explaining that the role was “too much”.

Although he didn’t name the exact superhero project explicitly, he said it was “too dark for me”.

“How is caring about your output pretentious?” Elordi questioned. “But not caring, and knowingly feeding people s***, knowing that you’re making money off of people’s time, which is literally the most valuable thing that they have – how is that the cool thing?”

Elordi can currently be seen starring as Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s biopic Priscilla, which is out in US cinemas now. The film is expected to release in the UK on 1 January 2024.

Last month, Elordi shared that his first encounter with Presley’s music was in the hit Disney animated movie, Lilo & Stitch.

“[Priscilla] will be very uncomfortable viewing for Elvis fans,” Geoffrey Macnab wrote in his three-star review for The Independent.

Macnab found the award-winning director’s movie “devoid of the exuberance of Baz Luhrmann’s more hagiographic 2022 biopic of the King”.