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Jacob Elordi says he woke up to 4 million new Instagram followers one day — and almost quit acting because of the attention

Mara Leighton   

Jacob Elordi says he woke up to 4 million new Instagram followers one day — and almost quit acting because of the attention
  • "Euphoria" star Jacob Elordi told GQ he didn't prep his social media for stardom.
  • Elordi went to bed the night "The Kissing Booth" debuted and woke up to 4 million new followers.

Jacob Elordi went to sleep a regular person and woke up the following day wildly famous.

In a new GQ profile Elordi, 25, recounted waking up the morning after Netflix's "The Kissing Booth" debuted with 4 million new Instagram followers.

Elordi, who now plays the antagonist Nate Jacobs on HBO's hit drama, "Euphoria," explained the surreal experience. "I had to go through and delete my high school pictures because that was the Instagram that I used for my life," Elordi told reporter Clay Skipper. "I wish people could understand how drastic that change was."

But the Instagram explosion was just the beginning. The first time a paparazzi photographer took a picture of him, Elordi said, "it felt like, all of a sudden, I was a poster. Like I was a billboard."

Elordi told GQ all the attention actually made him want to quit acting. It "might sound quite sensitive and dramatic, but I am sensitive and I'm very dramatic." Elordi said. "I hated being a character to the public. I felt so far from myself."

Rather than quitting, though, he made two "The Kissing Booth" sequels and nabbed a leading role in "Euphoria," HBO's most popular series since "Game of Thrones."

These days, promotional shots and red carpet photos dominate Elordi's Instagram page.

Fame, he said, "initially really bothered me. Just even the fact that somebody that you don't know knows your name is quite, like, disembodying," he told "Entertainment Tonight" in 2020.

He credited ex-girlfriend Kaia Gerber with helping him navigate the attention.

"She handles herself wonderfully publicly," he told Men's Health in December. "I've learned so much from her about how to handle it, how to deal with it and just kind of be whatever about it, you know?"



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