Actor details “annoying” sacrifice for X-rated scene with Natalie Portman
But it was his quiet, unsettling performance in 2023’s May December – alongside Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, two Academy Award-winning actors – that pushed him into more serious dramatic territory and revealed just how much he was willing to give for a role.
May December premiered on Netflix in December 2023 and quickly attracted attention due to its provocative storyline.
Inspired by real-life story
According to NPR, the narrative draws inspiration from the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau case – a real-life scandal that dominated American tabloid headlines and helped shape the sensationalist media culture of the 1990s.
Letourneau, a schoolteacher from Washington state, was convicted of raping her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau, whom she first became obsessed with when he was in her grade 2 class.
Their relationship, which began when Fualaau was just 12 years old, led to two children – both born by the time he turned 15 – and a marriage that lasted 14 years after Letourneau’s release from prison.
Letourneau was 58 when she died of cancer in 2020, less than one year after separating from Fualaau.
‘Arrested development’
The film follows Elizabeth Berry, played by Portman, an actor shadowing Gracie Atherton-Yoo (portrayed by Moore) for an upcoming role.
Melton plays Joe Yoo, a 36-year-old husband and father of three, whose life remains shaped by his disturbing past – he was just 13 when he began a relationship with Gracie, played by Julianne Moore, a woman in her 30s at the time and now his wife.
“There’s this arrested development that Joe has, this kind of internal tragedy from his adolescence being taken from him,” Melton told People. “[He has] the immense responsibility of being a father, while simultaneously experiencing the probing of tabloid culture. He had to survive and create this adaptive adult child in order to navigate his life.”
