In January 2022, Jacob Elordi, who was not yet a household name, appeared virtually on TODAY to discuss Season 2 of his HBO teen drama “Euphoria.”
After the Australian actor shared how he perfected his American accent for the role (he listened to a lot of Eminem), Hoda Kotb confessed she had an “intimate” and “maybe inappropriate” question.
“Who are the people sitting on your bed that I can see in the mirror?” Hoda asked.
Elordi’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Whoops!
“You can see them?” he gasped. “That’s my mum and dad.”
Elordi then swiveled his camera to show his parents, John and Melissa Elordi, who appeared to be mortified by the unplanned cameo.
“You guys are so observant!” a laughing Elordi told Hoda and Jenna Bush Hager.
“What do they think about their son being a Hollywood heartthrob?” Jenna wanted to know.
“Lovely!” Melissa replies from off-camera.
The "Saltburn" star was raised in Brisbane with three older sisters, he shared with GQ. His father, John, immigrated to Australia from Basque Country, which is situated between Spain and France. John worked as a housepainter, while Melissa was a stay-at-home mom.
In a 2020 interview with GQ, Elordi recalled how his mom would volunteer at his school lunchroom everyday so they could spend time together.
“(She’s) the most present, loving, just beautiful, angelic human being on this plant,” he gushed while chatting with the publication.
Elordi noted that both of his parents have T-shirts bearing the images of nearly every character he’s played.
“Jacob always had this very strong self-belief but of course, as parents, you try and be pragmatic and we were very pragmatic. He always knew what he wanted to be. And as his father, there was a time I said to him, ‘Mate, acting is a one-in-a-million kind of situation,’” John told the Daily Mail in March 2022. "And he said to me, 'Well why can’t that one be me? Why can’t I be that one in a million?'
"That’s how confidently he looked at things,” John continued. So as a parent we just decided to back him to the hilt and trust that he knew what he was doing.”
