With ‘The Kissing Booth 3,’ Joey King Closes a Chapter of Her Life (original) (raw)
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Exit Interview
The actress started on the Netflix movies when she was 17 and grew along with her high school character, Elle: “I went through a lot of important life moments in her shoes.”
Joey King as Elle in “The Kissing Booth 3,” debuting Wednesday.Credit...Marcos Cruz/Netflix
Aug. 11, 2021
In hindsight, it’s somewhat of a miracle that “The Kissing Booth 3” got made in the first place.
Not because the 2018 “The Kissing Booth” was initially a stand-alone film — before the summery rom-com, about a high schooler who falls for her best friend’s brother, became an unexpected hit on Netflix. And not because of the pandemic; this final chapter was shot earlier, in 2019, at the same time as “The Kissing Booth 2.”
With workdays that included wrestling in massive inflatable sumo suits, shooting a montage at a water park and racing go-karts in Mario Kart-like costumes, it’s remarkable that Joey King and her colleagues, who had a ball in the process, were able to focus enough to get the job done.
“If you put us in a room and you expect us to get much done that’s productive, it’s going to be hard,” King, the franchise’s 22-year-old star, said in a video call. “We’re like 12-year-old boys.”
The trilogy’s final film, which begins streaming Wednesday, follows Elle, King’s character, through her last summer before college as she juggles dating her boyfriend, Noah (Jacob Elordi), and checking off the aforementioned antics with her friend Lee (Joel Courtney) in a last-ditch effort to complete their childhood bucket list.
One of her next projects has a different vibe: King described “The Princess,” which she’s shooting this summer in Bulgaria, as an action movie, “‘The Raid: Redemption’ meets Rapunzel.” She sat down for a video interview (energetic as ever, it’s worth noting, at 6 a.m. local time) to discuss the end of the series that has defined this phase of her career and how Elle’s coming of age has mirrored her own. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What was it like shooting the last two films back to back?
Actually, we shot them at the same time — meaning in one day, we’d be shooting scenes from both movies. It was so confusing.
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