CREATIVE LICENCE

For the past couple of months, the Australian actor Jacob Elordi has been growing a mullet. “It is luscious,” the 23-year-old confirms from the front porch of his parents’ home in Brisbane, where he is currently staying. We were speaking over video call – this was mid-May and no one was travelling anywhere – but Elordi’s hair was no less striking in virtual form. Neat on top and pushed away from his forehead, the back was threatening to reach his shoulders; not quite the full ’80s Billy Ray Cyrus, but getting there.

“It is a huge sense of freedom,” says Elordi, running his hand through it. “Usually I have this all-American short back and sides, but I hate that haircut. I hate having super-short hair. So this is the first time I’ve been able to grow it.”

The mullet, for all its overtones of a certain kind of Australiana, speaks of something else. Namely, that Elordi is not where he should be: on a set somewhere in LA, filming the second season of acclaimed HBO series Euphoria.

“I was supposed to start shooting, but shit was starting