Before I pressed “play” on Netflix’s latest A-list mash-up, A Family Affair, I’ll admit that Joey King was not the primary draw. I was more curious to see how Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron would build on their provocative pairing in the 2012 thriller The Paperboy (and that exceedingly strange jellyfish scene) as this film’s two romantic leads. Would they have chemistry, or would they mostly just feel awkward standing next to one another? Also, what’s Kathy Bates doing here? With such pressing questions as these, King’s presence was just the glimmering Maraschino cherry on top.
But that’s the thing about Joey King, isn’t it? The three-time Kissing Booth star and Emmy nominee is used to being underestimated, and yet, she delivers every time. In A Family Affair, she’s at her slapstick-y best, mugging for the camera while walking into doorframes and narrating her internal monologue like her life depends on it. One could argue she’s laying it on a bit thick—like, day-old Nutella thick—but at this point, that’s kind of her trademark. As a curmudgeon who usually prizes subtlety, I am once again asking: How the hell does she makes it work so well?
King began acting as a child, and her breakthrough began during the 2010s. She was utterly adorable as Beverly Cleary’s iconic mischief-maker Ramona in Ramona & Beezus, and she notched smaller roles in box office hits like Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Dark Knight Rises. Then, in 2018, she helped kick off Netflix’s deep dive into rom-coms with The Kissing Booth, in which she starred as a pitch-perfect girl-next-door type who falls for her best friend’s older brother (played by the smoldering Jacob Elordi in a retrospectively hilarious haircut). A year later, she became a household name by taking the lead in Hulu’s The Act—which dramatized the real-life story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and scored King her first Emmy nod and Golden Globe nomination. Since then, she’s made two more Kissing Booth movies, filmed countless fight scenes while wearing a poofy dress in 2022’s The Princess, and played a “sociopath and a bitch” in pink tweed in Brad Pitt’s Bullet Train, among other projects—which, yes, include her second Taylor Swift music video.
In all of these roles, King’s gift is her utter commitment to the bit. Her roles are often drawn with thick black lines and, save for projects like The Act and the historical Hulu drama We Were the Lucky Ones, which debuted earlier this year, little nuance. But even in her most Disney Channel Original Movie-coded projects, she finds moments for creativity. In A Family Affair, she plays a sharp-tongued, slightly self-absorbed aspiring producer named Zara (yes, Zara), who quits working for her narcissistic actor boss (Efron) after one too many ridiculous demands. One might not think any of this would demand much physical comedy, but between battling with her boss’s absurdly heavy front door and falling flat on her face at the sight of him in bed with her mother (Kidman), King really does throw her whole body into this role. Even if she’s just opening the sliding door on her mother’s closet, King adds small flourishes—a hip lean here, a hair-flip there… she always seems to be having fun.
At this point, King has developed her niche as a specific archetype—the not-like-other-girls girl. In The Kissing Booth, her only meaningful relationships are with guys, and she has a Juno-esque affinity for words like “dude.” In The Act, her mother isolates her by poisoning her to make her severely, chronically sick. The devoutly Feminist action film The Princess is mostly a montage of fight scenes, because unlike most prim and proper royal daughters, her royal character learned swordplay from a young age. (By the end, she becomes heir to the throne by beheading the vicious man who’d hoped to force her into marriage.) And in A Family Affair, she tosses off dialogue like “Sayonara, bitch!” with reckless abandon.
In 2022, The Independent labeled this ethos as the “every girl.” In spite of that broad appeal, King said back then that she often felt the industry discounts her.
“Because of how I look,” King told The Independent. “Because I’m a young woman. Because I’m very polite to people. I think I’m often underestimated or overlooked in a way that I’m just like, ‘Guys? Don’t fuckin’ do that! … I’m right fuckin’ here!’”
That experience, in and of itself, is probably pretty relatable to most of King’s audience, and most of her characters deal with the same thing. In A Family Affair, Zara feels exploited by her boss and dwarfed by her famous writer of a mother. In The Kissing Booth, she’s jealous of the parade of hot girls who ride on the back of her crush’s motorcycle. Her character’s primary motivator in The Act is the desire to live a normal life—including by being loved romantically. In Bullet Train, her twisted, villainous character counts on the fact that most men will write her off as a helpless, innocent girl. And naturally, most characters in The Princess wish she would quiet down and learn “her place.”
In projects like The Act and We Were the Lucky Ones, King proves that she can be more than the comic relief, but frankly, if she were to make 100 more Kissing Booth movies (or, perhaps, a Family Affair sequel?), I would be just as happy. Sometimes, a girl just wants to have fun.
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