All for Elle! Joey King spoke candidly about the initial awkwardness of working with her ex-boyfriend Jacob Elordi on The Kissing Booth 2 in a new interview.
“No one’s thinking to themselves, ‘That was easy,’ because it wasn’t,” the actress, 21, told Cosmopolitan in her September 2020 cover story, published on Tuesday, August 11. “I’m sure people will analyze every moment and every detail. And you know what? Let them.”
King explained that “at the end of the day,” she was “just thrilled” to reprise her role as Elle Evans after introducing the character in the first Kissing Booth movie in 2018.
“There’s so much I want to say. What’s the most, um, correct way to go about this?” she wondered aloud during the interview. “Elle Evans needs her Noah Flynn, and whatever that means for my personal life, I’ll do anything to make sure the story of my character who I care about so much is complete.”
Sparks flew between the Act star and Elordi, 23, in 2017 when they filmed the Netflix teen rom-com, in which they played a couple. They made their red carpet debut that August at the WordTheatre event In the Cosmos: Where We Come From, Where We Are and Where We Are Going. The costars’ real-life romance ended in late 2018, but they reunited the following year to film the sequel, which premiered in July.
“Going back and doing that and making the sacrifice, obviously, what everyone is thinking about, I’m not outwardly addressing, but what I’m kind of on the sly addressing, making those sacrifices was totally worth it,” King said on the “Mood With Lauren Elizabeth” podcast in October 2019 when asked about acting alongside the Australia native after their breakup.
In September 2019, the Emmy nominee confirmed that she moved on with producer Steven Piet. She more recently sparked dating rumors with her Kissing Booth 2 costar Taylor Zakhar Perez, but he denied that they are an item. Us Weekly broke the news in February that Elordi, for his part, is dating his Euphoria castmate Zendaya.
