by Nathaniel R
Manny Jacinto shot by The Emma Experience
If you're like us here at The Film Experience, you felt ROBBED this summer when you saw Manny Jacinto walk into Top Gun Maverick and then basically vanish, used only in group shots of the top gun students... the ones that didn't get frequent close-ups and lines and thus weren't going to be selected for the difficult mission in Act 3. Of course these disappointments can happen when a film is delayed so long that someone who is barely in it becomes a bigger star in the interim...
Top Gun Maverick, the single biggest hit of 2022, was shot (gulp) four whole years ago way back in the summer of 2018. Post production went longer than expected and then COVID-19 happened. Paramount held on to it for years which seemed crazy at the time but proved a great strategy once the box office returns started coming in. So at the time he was cast (probably early 2018) Jacinto's only real claim to fame was a supporting player in the brilliant sitcom The Good Place which had just ended its second season.
with Jenny Slate in the comedy "I Want You Back"
Since then we've had two more seasons of The Good Place (which took some time to catch on and was beloved by the time it was wrapping up) and we've seen Manny work for / service Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers, attempt a threesome with Gina Rodriguez and Jenny Slate in I Want Your Back, and... (spoilers) not survive the dangerous plots of either the movie Bad Times at the El Royale or the horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor.
Manny Jacinto, who is Filipino-Canadian, turns 35 today and in addition to hoping he had a wonderful birthday, we hope that powers that be in Hollywood are finally catching on. He's got everything you could want in a rising star: comic timing, dramatic skill, and the very small matter of being pleasurable to look at for hours on end. He has three indies in post-production at the moment and though they're a nice spread of genres -- family drama (The Knife), female focused comedy (Cora Bora), and a sports thriller (Balestra) -- he isn't the lead in any of them. Hopefully they're juicy roles, still. If you were his management, what kind of role would you be trying to land for him at this juncture?