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.
