Jacob Elordi could follow Austin Butler with an Oscar bid for portraying Elvis in ‘Priscilla’
Austin Butler and Elvis Presley almost became synonymous last year as Butler swaggered to a Best Actor nomination for his charismatic, powerhouse performance as The King in Baz Luhrmann‘s extravagant biopic. It felt impossible to wrench away Butler from Elvis, particularly as he still had the Elvis voice inflections in interviews leading up to the Academy Awards, where he was nominated for Best Actor.
But that has only made Jacob Elordi‘s turn as Elvis in Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” all the more impressive. Coppola’s focus is Priscilla Presley, the young woman Elvis was married to from 1967 until 1973, and this A24 release couldn’t be more different from Luhrmann’s epic. Butler and Luhrmann painted an extraordinary spectacle while Coppola pares things down in a much quieter, slower, somber drama that explores the relationship between Elvis and Priscilla — passion, power, power imbalance, love, abuse.
Cailee Spaeny stars in the titular role of Priscilla (and knocks it out of the park Graceland) but it’s Elordi who comes away with the majority of the spoils. His Elvis, towering above the diminutive Spaeny as Priscilla, is at once charming and charismatic, babyish and pathetic, and abrasive and abusive. It shows a darker side to the rocker that most Elvis fans wouldn’t care to watch, but it’s a layered, perceptive performance. And he nails the accent. Critics loved Elordi, who, up until now, has been best known for his work on HBO’s “Euphoria.”
Jack King (GQ) explained: “Elordi is quieter, subtler, as is Priscilla, but you never think he’s not the King. This is all to say that Elordi’s version of Elvis is distinct from Butler’s turn — iconoclastic and less reverential, but it could be similarly awardsy. That’s a product, centrally, of a script that views him from Priscilla’s hard-pressed perspective, but it’s still to Elordi’s credit that he brings something fresh to an overwhelmingly mythologized character who was the central subject of a fawning biopic mere months ago.”
Rafa Sales Ross (IGN) wrote that Elordi “comes in as the underdog and sweeps Priscilla and the viewers off their feet in one big swing. Despite the film being about the woman, it could not have been told without a precise dissection of the man she orbited for such a vital part of her early life. Elordi understands this need for his presence without aggressively pursuing the spotlight and, under Coppola’s masterful guide, delivers the greatest work of his career so far.”
David Rooney (The Hollywood Reporter) observed: “Elordi finds his own way into the character, pouring seductive charm and undeniable magnetism into the sad eyes and sleepy speech patterns. But he never shies away from the more off-putting traits — the fits of pique, the petulance, the evasiveness and dishonesty.”
Elordi, then, would be a suitable contender for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, which would be the first Oscar bid of his career. At the moment, Elordi is outside of our predicted five nominees in this category according to our Oscars odds chart: Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), and “Poor Things” duo Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe. Typically, Supporting Actor has been a ripe field for veterans and more experienced actors to plow, hence our predicted nominees of Downey Jr., De Niro, and Dafoe. However, more recently, younger actors in breakout roles have also found success in this category. Barry Keoghan, who coincidentally stars with Elorid in another film, “Saltburn,” was nominated last year for “The Banshees of Inisherin.” In 2022, Kodi Smit-McPhee was nominated for “The Power of the Dog.” And, in 2017, Dev Patel was nominated for “Lion” and Lucas Hedges was nominated for “Manchester by the Sea.” Elordi fits in with those players, and his star power doesn’t hurt. Elordi isn’t exactly Brad Pitt in terms of star power (not yet), anyway), but he is building up a profile as a charismatic leading man and a talented actor. His contrasting performance in “Saltburn,” in which he sports a pitch-perfect Oxford English, rich, old boy English accent, is proof of that. And that is a powerful combination.
It also doesn’t hurt that Elordi’s Elvis is something of a bad guy. He’s not an out-and-out villain like Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” or Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds” (both of whom won Best Supporting Actor Oscars), but there’s certainly a dark edge to him. That helps in this category, as previous nominees have found. There’s a darkness to Brendan Gleeson in “The Banshees of Inisherin” and the same applies to Smit-McPhee in “The Power of the Dog,” Christopher Plummer in “All the Money in the World,” Sam Rockwell in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and Tom Hardy in “The Revenant.” All of them were nominated, while Rockwell won.
And then there’s the Butler element. Butler’s famous performance could help or hinder Elordi. Voters may have had enough of Elvis Presley for one year. They may view Butler’s performance as the definitive one and shrug off any other pretender. Or… they may see Elordi’s take on the character and be so impressed that the “Euphoria” actor managed to create something entirely different in the same role after Butler’s renowned take. Elordi’s version of Elvis is so different, in fact, it’s like he’s playing a different person altogether than Butler did. Voters may really take to that.
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