Jacob Elordi’s Mom Once Warned Him to Never Work With Guillermo del Toro After Seeing PAN’S LABYRINTH DVD Cover

Sometimes the universe has a sense of humor. Jacob Elordi is currently riding high, heading into awards season and preparing to attend the Oscars with his mother, Melissa. Yet years before he became a professional actor, she gave him a very specific piece of advice that feels hilariously doomed in hindsight.

After seeing the DVD cover for Pan’s Labyrinth, she told her young son he must never work with the man who made it. That man, of course, is Guillermo del Toro, the director who would later cast Elordi in his long-gestating take on Frankenstein.

Elordi recently shared the story while appearing alongside del Toro at a BFI IMAX screening in London, and it all goes back to a Blockbuster visit when he was about 10 years old.

As Elordi remembers it, he was already drawn to the darker corners of the video store. “I would raid the horror aisle,” he said, recalling the moment he first spotted Pan’s Labyrinth on the shelf.

The cover of the DVD was enough to leave a mark. He said: “And I saw the tree and the little girl, and I turned it around, the DVD case, and I saw the Pale Man. And I remember thinking, what is that?’”

In Australia, the film carried an “M” rating for mature audiences, which meant parental discretion was required. His mom eventually agreed to let him rent it, but not without a very memorable condition attached. “You must never work with this man.” Elordi laughed as he told the story, then added, “And lo and behold.”

Del Toro couldn’t resist jumping in. “It’s good to disobey one’s mother.”

Fate stepped in years later when Elordi landed a role in del Toro’s Frankenstein under intense circumstances. The actor originally slated for the part dropped out just nine weeks before filming began, giving Elordi only about four weeks to prepare.

Any pressure that might’ve come with that timeline didn’t seem to shake him. He said he was “so excited and so sure when I read the screenplay for the first time, that I had no fear… there’s no other filmmaker on this planet that could make a truly great Frankenstein film.”

For del Toro, this movie has been a lifelong obsession. He first read Mary Shelley’s novel at age 11, and the story has stayed with him for more than three decades. Speaking to the audience, he described the project in deeply personal terms.

“I just felt this book should exist, because [Frankenstein’s] Creature is me. You know, I identify entirely with the Creature. And I wanted to tell the story the way Mary Shelley wanted to tell it, which is, it becomes every human. It is the origin of humanity and understanding as paradise lost … I know this sounds exaggerated, but it’s my religion. I was born and raised Catholic, and then at 11, I became a Frankensteinist.”

Although Frankenstein was produced for Netflix, del Toro made it clear that movies like this are meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible, surrounded by other people. Gesturing to the massive screen behind him, he said:

“This is the best way to experience any story: collectively, and it is the best way to see movies. I mean, it takes 35,000 iPhones to make that screen… but it also is the communal [aspect]. I think that movies — the way I see them — whether it’s The Shape of Water or Pan’s Labyrinth or this [Frankenstein], you know, they bring a sacramental beauty to them.

“If we commune with them, we can gain a spiritual tendency for empathy, for humanity, for forgiveness, for something that we need. If we experience it as a community, all the better, because we have never been so connected and so alone as we are right now.”

Pulling out his phone, del Toro summed up modern life, saying: “So we are the loneliest humans that have ever walked the earth, and yet we never can stop looking at this fucking thing,” he then pointed back to the screen and adding: “I urge you to look at that f*cking thing. Have a good time.”

As for Elordi, it’s hard not to appreciate how perfectly this story came full circle. A creepy DVD cover at Blockbuster, a mother’s warning meant to protect her kid, and years later, an awards-season run for a Frankenstein film made by the very director she once tried to steer him away from.

Turns out some advice is just meant to be ignored.

Source: Variety