As we meander across the West Village, Elordi factors out a pool bar he likes to go to with a good friend within the neighbourhood. Not two minutes later, he spots that very same good friend throughout the road. “Come here!” Elordi shouts, waving at a silhouette within the distance.
You get a way that that is what life is usually like for Elordi – a collection of charmed coincidences, the universe rearranging itself in order that what he desires occurs exactly when he desires it to.
The good friend, a rakish long-haired painter named Marko Ristic, makes a mad sprint over. They linked years in the past by means of a mutual good friend in Los Angeles, quickly after Elordi arrived. He slept on Ristic’s sofa and they might hang around for days on finish, watching movies and tooling round.
“When we met, it felt like a childhood friend again. There was an innocence to it and also a connection over a lot of things, predominantly film,” Ristic says. “It’s quite surreal. Now, with him, when people come to him, it’s that –” He pantomimes somebody shoving a telephone in his face to take a photograph.
Elordi wanted this friendship when he first crash-landed on these shores. He was disoriented. To the skin observer who would possibly innocently assume that Australia and Los Angeles have comparable vibes – temperate climate, tanned beauties, plentiful avocado toast – Elordi will instantly set you straight. “If Australians are like freshwater fish, Americans are saltwater fish,” he says. “It kind of looks the same. The water is water, you’re swimming around, but you can’t breathe.”
There’s one thing concerning the camaraderie in Australia – mateship, as he places it – that he discovered to be missing in America when he arrived. “The isolation is a big thing. When I first moved here, everyone was very closed in on themselves. It seemed like ordering a coffee was like a standoff. You know?” he says.
“With the barista?” I ask, confused.
“Everyone. With people in line, walking into the coffee shop, the barista. It was very guarded. Everything’s very guarded,” he says. In Australia, “a coffee shop is sacred.” Imagine: a whole nation ingesting their flat whites collectively in concord.
“When I’m in America, I feel like I’m killing time waiting for my real life to begin,” Elordi provides with a sigh. “And I spend all my time here.”
Right now he’s peripatetic – bouncing round wherever filming brings him, and attempting to get again home to Australia as a lot as potential.
We settle into seats at a personal desk exterior a neighborhood restaurant, the place Elordi orders the fries – “my mom’s favourite food” – and brings up Truman Capote’s 1957 New Yorker profile of Marlon Brando. “That’s my favourite piece of writing in the world,” he says.
He’s happiest taking in something he can on his idols – to this present day, his favorite factor to do is simply sit round and watch motion pictures. When I ask the latest one he’s seen, I count on him to rattle a traditional from his Criterion queue.
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” he says excitedly. “I’ve seen that movie four times. That movie is so funny. Those kids, I think they’re so hilarious. It’s super, super meticulous and well thought-out. In the hotels, it’s been my comfort movie.”
