David Iacono lumbers into Jurassic World Rebirth like another relic resurrected from a bygone era: the classic slacker burnout, like Jeff Spicoli or
David Iacono lumbers into Jurassic World Rebirth like another relic resurrected from a bygone era: the classic slacker burnout, like Jeff Spicoli or Bill and Ted, who can be as frustrating as they are grudgingly charming. Xavier is the boyfriend of Teresa Delgado (played by Luna Blaise), who’s on a family sea voyage with her father, Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and kid sister (Audrina Miranda). He loses points with them immediately when he says he’d rather not take a shift at the wheel. He wore himself out sleeping, you see.
This is the point where moviegoers are likely to turn to each other, exchanging a knowing look: This dude is definitely getting eaten, right? “I think that was a lot of people’s reactions,” Iacono says. “It was mine at first as well.”
In real life, the 23-year-old actor is much closer in personality to his other breakthrough character: bookish, polite, aspiring marine biologist Cam on Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty. He has been modeling since childhood; one of his earliest film roles came around age 12, when he played one of the schoolkids in the Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy comedy St. Vincent. A decade of guest roles on TV shows followed, with appearances in The Slap, NCIS: New Orleans, and Blue Bloods leading to a recurring role on The Flight Attendant.
By Leo Jacob.
Then came The Summer I Turned Pretty, which turned him into one of the internet’s boyfriends—the meek kind that your parents would approve of. “I felt so comfortable playing Cam because he was very similar to me in a lot of ways, in the way he finds confidence in his awkwardness,” Iacono says. “I fell in love with playing that character, and that’s why people really responded well to Cam. That being said, I think people will be pleasantly surprised because I was able to tap into a different part of myself for Xavier.”
Iacono sums up the difference this way: “Cam is comedic in the awkward way. Xavier is comedic in the ‘I don’t really give a crap about anybody’ way. So I have both ends of the spectrum there.”
Xavier is not a bad guy, per se. But he’s not great. He shirks his sailing chores and treats his girlfriend’s dad like a video game side quest he can afford to skip; he’s also slovenly, oblivious, and seems to contribute little to the world—apart maybe from exhaling carbon dioxide, which is technically good for plants.
“I think I might’ve leaned too far into it at first,” Iacono says, “because I actually had a lot of conversations with [director Gareth Edwards] where he was, like, ‘You’re doing great. But I don’t want people to hate you too much because we need to win them back over by the end. So if you can be a little bit more likable, that would be appreciated.’”
Against all odds, Xavier does kind of grow on you. In one early life-or-death moment, he reacts with unexpected bravery to save another character’s life. Of course, he squanders any goodwill moments later, when Reuben tries to give him some positive reinforcement. Xavier shrugs it off and says, whatever, “guapo,” punctuated with a slap to the older man’s belly.
Some villains you love to hate; Xavier is a sort-of good guy you hate to love. “I watched it last night here in New York, and I actually got a pretty good cheer from the audience when there’s this one moment where I’m heroic,” Iacono says. “I guess he can be a little bit unlikable at first, but I think he exceeds a lot of people’s expectations.”
The Delgados (plus Xavier) are the familiar archetype in a Jurassic movie: the innocent bystanders who get swept up in dino peril. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey play the other side—the seasoned professionals who are nonetheless ill-prepared for what they find on an island where genetic scientists created mutant monstrosities from their cloning program.
Not every moviegoer can personally relate to a special ops strike team dispatched to harvest DNA from once-extinct giant lizards for the sake of lifesaving medical research. But almost everybody can sympathize with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s the stressed-out Delgados.
Xavier, by comparison, tends to be shockingly obtuse about when his life is in danger. One crowd-pleasing sequence is straight out of Mr. Magoo, when the stranded adolescent man wakes up in a swamp and stumbles to go to the bathroom, unaware that two velociraptors are closing in. “That was my first day on set,” Iacono says. “We were not on a green screen. We were in Thailand in the jungle, and it was pouring rain. I think my nerves were pretty high.”
His lackadaisical performance inevitably gets a rise from the audience. “Everybody laughs at the pee,” Iacono agrees.
Xavier’s very first scene establishes a high bar for low behavior. Iacono still remembers how screenwriter David Koepp, who adapted Michael Crichton’s novel for the 1993 original, introduces the adolescent layabout in the script. “It was: ‘Xavier comes up from the bottom of the sailboat. He is tired and his stomach is itchy,’” Iacono says. “I tried as much as possible to just be gross. David was, like, ‘That was one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written, and you ran with it. Thank you so much.’”
It’s a strange thing to be complimented for being annoying. Then again, “that felt so validating,” Iacono says. “I was just trying to be nasty and gross. I would spit a bunch and just scratch and sniff, like a sticker.”
He credits Koepp for writing relatable humans for the dinosaurs to menace. But how relatable is Xavier, really? Could it be that Koepp has a child who once brought home a Xavier-like date to meet the parents?
Iacono laughs at the idea. “Yeah, this was his outlet just to be angry.”
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