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Pajiba 10 FYC: The Ascension of Charles Melton

By Chris Revelle | Pajiba 10 | December 16, 2023 |

By Chris Revelle | Pajiba 10 | December 16, 2023 |


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Charles Melton is an excellent actor who puts on a stunning performance against Natalie Portman and Julieanne Moore in May December. Never, never in a million years did I think one of the statuesque teens of Riverdale would emerge to star in a Todd Haynes movie with two of the most A-Listy A-Listers of Hollywood. That’s not a knock on Riverdale, it’s just that the pure CW-ness of that show doesn’t have you expecting potential Oscars futures. For his carefully observed and heartbreaking performance of Joe Yoo, Melton won the Gotham Awards for Best Supporting Performance, an award that has predicted Oscars victory over the past few years.

There’s this classic movie star face that Melton possesses that gives an extra sparkle to every smirk or look. Even his name feels like it belongs in classic Hollywood on marquees and on painted posters: Charles Melton. His looks are made for sumptuous black-and-white photography. Melton is hot, there’s just no way around that. He’s got a face chiseled from marble, the body to match, and a fantastic mane of hair. Let these images destroy any doubts for you:

See? Were I a lazier opinionated gadfly, I would stop there on the logic that my case is proven. Hot man is hot! We can all go home. But there’s more! Hot man is not simply hot; hot man is also a great actor.

If you haven’t watched May December, a film both intensely uncomfortable and extremely funny, you should do yourself the favor of it. It’s a seemingly impossible balancing act the film achieves between surprising camp-adjacent comedy and an emotional examination of complicated people and while Portman and Moore are the pillars, Melton is at the center of the story between them. As Joe, a man in body, but a child by every other measure, Melton speaks with a slow, soft, bashful quality. His eyes, like an insecure middle schooler’s might, avoid contact, usually staring down or ahead in conversation. His shoulders slope forward and down, giving him a hunched quality as if he’s holding a small flame in his hand and is trying to shield it from the wind. Melton projects sadness and crushed hope and misguided desires in every glance of his eyes as Joe. As Joe begins to awaken to the realities of his relationship and reckon with the experiences he lost, Melton’s alluringly calm face splits and quivers, laughing and crying at the horribly twisted-up mess he’s in.

With Joe, Melton also achieves naturalistic chemistry with the young actors playing Joe’s kids. In their interactions, Melton shows you the gentle love Joe shares with his children and how the kids comfort him in return. The scene in which Joe smokes on the roof with his son is infused with bittersweetness: Melton shows Joe’s child-like wonder at sharing a joint for the first time as well as the dawning realization that he never had these kinds of moments, these rites of passage, himself. It’s a stark contrast to Joe’s moments with his wife Gracie (Moore) during which Melton pushes Joe’s feelings away from the surface. Gracie is a yawning pit of need and way Melton calmly but vacantly comforts Gracie tells you how many times Joe has had to talk Gracie down. The realization that their relationship has robbed Joe of a life and identity that’s truly his doesn’t play in one grand moment of shouting and tears. Melton shows the tall stack of battered feelings that get Joe there, quietly stacking them until Joe is crying and laughing all at once with his son or sobbing to himself behind a fence as he watches his children graduate. Joe’s epiphany is layered and complex in its weight, but Melton delivers every ounce of it with such tender naturalism.

So yes, vote for Charles Melton in this year’s Pajiba 10 because he’s a classic slice of beefcake, but vote for his incredible rise as well. Seeing a man of color ascend into the rarefied ranks of the hot and skilled is worth celebrating.