Taylor Zakhar Perez
Taylor Zakhar Perez is an actor, born 1991.
Joining a teen franchise at part two is usually a losing position, because the audience has already picked a side. That is where Taylor Zakhar Perez arrived: cast as Marco in The Kissing Booth 2 and The Kissing Booth 3, walking into a Netflix romance whose fanbase was fully formed, and walking out with more career than those films had any obligation to hand him. Born in Chicago in 1991, he had spent years in small television parts before that.
The interesting thing about him as a performer is how little he pushes. In Red, White & Royal Blue he plays Alex Claremont-Diaz, a president's son written as motormouthed and permanently on transmit, and Perez underplays the charm instead of selling it, which is what keeps a very heightened romantic comedy attached to the ground. It is not deep work. It is disciplined work, and romantic leads who can stay still are rarer than they ought to be.
He took a sharper turn as Shane in the 1970s-set comedy Minx, where the register is drier and the script is doing more, and he is set to return as Alex in Red, White & Royal Wedding. At this point he is a genre specialist, and the genre plainly likes having him.
Movies (5)
TV (1)
Where to start with Taylor Zakhar Perez
Red, White & Royal Blue first, and it is not close. The film gives him the most to do, pairs him with a co-star he plays scenes with rather than at, and is the clearest evidence of what he actually is: a light comedian who can carry a romance without mugging.
Minx comes second, because it shows him being funny in someone else's register, in a period comedy with a much sharper script than anything else here. Then, if the appetite holds, The Kissing Booth 2 and The Kissing Booth 3, the films that made him castable. They are what they are: broad, long, and entirely uninterested in your opinion of them.
Red, White & Royal Wedding brings Alex Claremont-Diaz back, so the first film is required homework. Alpha House is early and skippable.