If you’d told me in August that I’d ever get sick of Noah Centineo’s effortlessly charming schtick, I would have laughed in your face and gone back to my fifth hungover rewatch of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before.
From being the only good thing about the bonkers-bad SPF-18 to the most good thing about the sneakily-probbo Sierra Burgess Is A Loser to giving endless interviews where he proved that he’s actually Peter K IRL, none of us could get enough of Noah.
And we’re definitely extremely here for the TATBILB sequel, which he and co-star Lana Condor announced adorably late last year.
But we’ve just found out what his next project is (not counting the Charlie’s Angels reboot) and it’s starting to feel like, I dunno, maybe, sorta… too much of a good thing? (Please don’t hurt me, stans.)
.@noahcent will pretend to be your boyfriend this summer! Well, he will in our movie "The Perfect Date" w/ @lauramarano & @CamilaMendes. He plays an enterprising young man who, to make money for college, creates a dating app & stands in for non-existent boyfriends. pic.twitter.com/Pg8iHxaPDQ
— See What's Next (@seewhatsnext) January 11, 2019
Yes, he’s playing another fake boyfriend – this time, it’s a young man improbably named Brooks Rattigan who monetises the fake-BF thing like a PG-friendly Girlfriend Experience.
The fantasy-fulfilment thing is a huge part of the YA romcom vibe here, and as new-gen role models for teenage dreamboat archetypes go, the caring, consent-educated, kombucha-drinking Peter K is almost as good as it gets.
But someone with the overflowing buckets of natural charisma of Noah Centineo could do something more interesting with it, surely.
Perhaps he just needs to get through the inevitable TATBILB threequel, and then he can emerge from his dreamboat chrysalis as a fully formed actor.
He can also emerge from that robe.
It worked for Zac Efron – and how.
From High School Musical and 17 Again to raunchy comedies like Bad Neighbours and Baywatch, Efron moved from floppy-haired Disney poster boy to perpetually shirtless grown-up effortlessly – and is now in the phase of his life where he gets to grow manly beards and play serial killers.
At the very least, perhaps we can hope that his love-interest role in Charlie’s Angels is more Sam Rockwell than Luke Wilson.
If bearded, shirtless, murdery Noah is where we’ll end up, I guess we can sit through a couple more movies of him scrunching his adorable face in a tux.