Joey King will not be shamed into regretting her decision to star in Netflix’s “Kissing Booth” trilogy between 2018 and 2021. The three films were streaming juggernauts and turned King and co-star Jacob Elordi into social media superstars. The second installment remains the eight biggest Netflix original movie, with 203.9 million hours viewed in its first 28 days.
While “The Kissing Booth” trilogy dominated Netflix’s streaming numbers, it tanked hard with film critics. The original film sports a 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the two sequels didn’t perform much better with 27% and 25% ratings, respectively. Critics hated the trilogy, but don’t expect King to ever say she regrets her decision to lead the franchise.
“I couldn’t be prouder of those movies,” King told The Independent while promoting her new action movie “Bullet Train,” in theaters Aug. 5. “I loved them so much and playing that character made me happy. I’ll never regret those movies, and I love them so much no matter what anyone says.”
King added, “In the past couple of years I’ve really stepped into myself in a way where I feel much more comfortable with who I am. I feel good about who I am as a person. With that comes the ability to stand up for yourself and what you believe in, because you actually believe in yourself at that point.”
Although critics loved to bash “The Kissing Booth” movies, King told Variety in 2020 that the trilogy was “critic-proof.”
“I understand that critics weren’t all over this movie, but that’s the thing — it’s not meant for critics to be like, ‘Wow, what a movie!’ It’s meant for people to watch and have a great time,” King said. “I’m thankful that I got to do ‘The Act,’ where critics were like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome.’ But also not everything you do has to have critical acclaim. It doesn’t mean it’s not successful. And it doesn’t mean it’s not one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on. The fan reaction to it is all the criticism I need as far as just the way it fills my heart.”
“The Kissing Booth” trilogy is streaming on Netflix.