Taylor Zakhar Perez Reacts to 'Kissing Booth' Co-Star Jacob Elordi's Diss of Netflix Film Series

"Red, White & Royal Blue" hottie Taylor Zakhar Perez was in of two of the three "Kissing Booth" movies with "Saltburn" star Jacob Elordi, so he expressed surprise when Elordi trashed the franchise, BuzzFeed reports.

Elordi is one of British GQ's Men of the Year, along with Tom Ford, Andre 3000, Offset, and half a dozen others. In an interview with the magazine, Elordi talked about rejecting attempts to label him as "pretentious" for caring about the quality of the work he does, even as he acknowledged how important his role in the "Kissing Booth" films was to his career. However, he didn't seem to regard the trilogy, which streamed at Netflix, as measuring up to his artistic standards.

Telling GQ that he had been reluctant to make the films, Elordi called them "ridiculous," and added, "They're not universal. They're an escape."

In comments to Variety, though, Zakhar Perez – who joined the series after the first film had been produced – defended the trilogy from Elordi's assessment, saying, "I thought it was a shame because, to my knowledge, everybody else had such a wonderful experience."

Referencing the 2020 and 2021 release dates of the second and third installments, when the COVIC-19 pandemic was in full force, Zakhar Perez added: "Especially when those movies came out, it was a time when we really needed something like that."

The young actor continued, "I know from our fan interactions, getting stopped everywhere I go, what 'Kissing Booth' means to people and what it brought them during such a dark time. I guess the silver lining is he still made people laugh and feel good."

Variety recalled that "Elordi played Noah Flynn, the football jock love interest of Joey King's Elle Evans," and following the events of the first film, "the second movie finds Elle as a senior in high school and caught in a love triangle with Noah and the new guy at school (Perez)."

BuzzFeed noted that "Jacob shared that he starred as the 'bad-boy jock with washboard abs' because he, more or less, needed a job," and he disagreed with the notion that when actors make a commercial film they might get to make a movie they deem more artistically weighty - the "'one for them, one for me' category."

"That one's a trap as well," Elordi said. "Because it can become 15 for them, none for you. You have no original ideas, and you're dead inside."

Variety added that Elordi, who was at the same event as Zakhar Perez, said that none o fhis "Kissing Booth" cast mates had reached out to him about his comments to GQ. But, lest his critical words be taken as all he had to say about the rom-com trilogy, he told Variety, "I'm incredibly grateful to everybody in it."

Check out some of the thirsty posts Zakhar Perez has shared at Instagram: