Henry Golding has big “main character energy”
Plus: Is it OK to let your dog sleep in your bed?
We’re doing things a little differently today by leading with a story from our powerhouse of an entertainment desk. It’s an interview with the actor Henry Golding by Inverse senior staff writer Eric Francisco.
In addition to the warm, original photography by Kaleb Marshall, the interview with Golding pulls back the actor’s thoughts on what it’s like to take on a role that wasn’t open to people who look like him until recently:
“Yeah, I’m half white. I’m half Asian. I’m never gonna be enough of anything. So I’m going to be who I am. I’m going to lead a movie the best way I can,” Golding tells Francisco.
At 34, the British actor is poised for a new sort of role and, frankly, one that caught our interest as fans of action movies. Golding is portraying Snake Eyes in the origin story of, yes, the G.I. Joe character. The movie’s piqued with thud-thud realistic martial arts, global intrigue, and Golding as a leading man.
Here’s a snippet from Francisco’s piece:
Golding possesses what you would call main character energy. Born out of TikTok, the term refers to puffing up one’s own chest as a means of self-care than a shallow ego boost. In a June 2021 essay for The New Yorker, Kyle Chayka writes that post-Covid main character energy is about trying to “reclaim control of our stories, exert ourselves upon the world,” and “take our places as protagonists once more.”
This is Golding’s narrative. He’s an actor with all the attributes of the main protagonist, but decades of systemic racism in Hollywood have kept protagonists from resembling Golding.
There’s a lot of praise I could pour on this piece by Eric — he and his childhood bedroom show up at least once — but I’ll let you read it for yourself.
Read the full interview with Henry Golding.
I’m Nick Lucchesi, editor-in-chief at Inverse, and this is Inverse Daily. The Inverse mission is to share big ideas about science and innovation in an entertaining style and look at entertainment and culture with deeply curious methods.
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- Before we go: Josh Hartnett (43), Jon Lovitz (64), Paloma Faith (40), Damian Marley (43), Charlotte Gainsbourg (50; pictured above in Melancholia) (Source: AP.)
