If you grew up in the 1990s or 2000s, chances are you recall seeing a book called Uglies lying around or in the hands of your peers. At a time when YA science fiction dystopian novels were all the rage, Scott Westerfield’s series had some thought-provoking things to say about societal beauty standards as he imagined a world where everyone gets cosmetic surgery at the age of 16. Joey King was one of those kids who grasped onto Westerfield’s ideas at a young age prior to starring in one of the latest of 2024 Netflix movie releases.
When CinemaBlend spoke to Joey King about the making of the Uglies film adaptation during the movie’s Los Angeles press day, the actress spoke about the long gestation period between the time she picked up the novel and releasing the movie as its star and producer. In her words:
I read it when I was 11 for the first time and just fell in love with Tally and wanted to be Tally so, so much. So when I brought it to Netflix, I was like 17, 18 years old and I had this just very similar but like slightly different outlook on the book and what it meant to me because I read it before I was a teenager and then I took the message with me through my teenage years, which was really important. And now being like someone who filmed it when I was 22, but I was playing 15 and a half and then now it's coming out, and I'm 25.
If you’re keeping score at home, that’s one year shy of 15 years when it comes to Joey King’s journey to make one of her favorite childhood books into the latest of upcoming book adaptations. Of course, it took King literally aging, too. While the actress has been starring in movies since she was nine, it took some gumption to approach a major studio like Netflix with a pitch. Per King’s comments, her hopes to play Tally carried over from reading it at a young age to her teen years at the dawn of her time in The Kissing Booth movies.
Joey King’s role in those YA book adaptations co-starring Jacob Elordi surely offered a new kind of pull with the streaming service after the movie series was streamed a crazy amount of times by viewers upon their release (with the second movie earning over 209 million viewing hours in the first month of release). Since The Kissing Booth 2, King has served as executive producer on many of her own projects, and Uglies is among them. King continued with these words during our interview:
I feel like I am able to view the feelings that I was going through when I read it and like just kind of being able to have a hindsight perspective that I just wish I had had then. But, that's not how life works. You get older and you get that perspective. You don't just have it when you're like 11 and 16 years old. So I'm really glad that I was able to bring this to life for like my childhood self, which was really the whole point for me was like, I loved it so much when I was a kid and to really just nod to myself a little bit, but also all the people who read this and had it resonate with them too.
From being an 11 year old to her current age of 25, King told us that while her perspective on the content of the book has changed as she’s aged, what’s never changed is wanting to give to the part of her who resonated with the book the first time she picked it up. Her co-star, Brianne Tju, who plays Tally's friend Shay, also spoke with us about how Uglies spoke to her over the years, saying this:
I first saw the book in elementary school at the Scholastic book Fair. And I loved the cover. That's what really drew me to it. But then also I started reading it and, I just got lost in the world and I really was drawn to these characters kind of, you know, they're not very in the book, they're not very close to their parents and they go to like this boarding school, they just have like this freedom and autonomy to a certain degree. And I was like, oh, I can't wait to be their age and make these decisions for myself – which is so interesting 'cause throughout the book the population, their choice is being taken away from them. And, I'm looking at it like, ‘Oh my God, I'm so excited to be able to make that choice’. And I'm glad that that's something I've realized that I have, which is choice for a multitude of things. But yeah, I loved the books growing up and I cannot believe that we're playing the characters in it. It's insane.
For fans of the Uglies book, there are definitely a few things to be excited for in the movie. It will be available to stream with a Netflix subscription this Friday, September 13.
