Peter Kavinsky IRL! To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before actor Noah Centineo stopped by On Air With Ryan Seacrest on Wednesday, September 5, and our crushes were ignited all over again. In case you haven’t caught the Netflix romantic comedy, Noah plays Peter Kavinsky, a high school cutie who ends up pretending to be 16-year-old Lara Jean’s boyfriend after her secret love letters are released and her love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
Centineo, who you may recognize from The Fosters, is from Boca Raton, Florida, and shared with Ryan that he first got started in the business by modeling for catalogs like Macy’s as a young child, but his big break has come with the success of the Netflix rom-com, which is based off Jenny Han’s 2014 novel of the same name.
“I was kind of an out of work actor and it was a job opportunity and I couldn’t say no,” Noah joked when asked how the film came to him. “But at the same time, once I got the script, you realize that this is a film about a girl that’s terrified to put herself out there and to love and it’s a coming-of-age tale about her really learning to trust someone and to open up and it’s a lovely tale and also is a film that works to normalize ambiguity in the industry, and nowadays, I think that’s really important to a lot of people and that’s lovely so I got really fortunate.”
With his star on the rise, Noah has a bevy of films lined up, but he’s still also just your average 22-year-old.
“I live downtown now with my sister,” he dished to Ryan. “She’s an alumni of Pepperdine and so we live together now. It’s cool. We were separated for like seven years and now she moved out to LA and finished college and I was like ‘We should move in together, it’ll be cheaper.’ And she’s like, ‘I agree! I don’t have a job yet.’”
Prior to the release of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Noah found himself starring as Camila Cabello’s love interest in the “Havana” music video.
“It was the most random thing in the entire world,” Noah recalled of landing the gig. “I was on set and get a call from my manager and he’s like, ‘Hey man! We have this opportunity for you to do this music video for this artist’ … I was like ‘Well, who is the singer and what is the song?’ and he’s like Camila Cabello ‘Havana’ and I was like ‘Dude! My sister just showed me this song! I’m a huge Camila fan. Absolutely! Let’s go!’”
With his credits on the rise, the young heartthrob is fielding offers left and right and next will star in Netflix YA young adult rom-com Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and a film titled The Stand-In — plus, another with Jackie Chan!
“I have a Chinese language film that I’m super stoked about — Jackie Chan is directing it,” Noah shared. “It’s his first arthouse film. This is like his directorial debut.”
Noah joked that his character thankfully speaks English though.
“I’m very, very lucky ‘xiè xie’ is like my extent of the Chinese language, just knowing how to say 'thank you,'” he added. “I don’t even know if that’s coming out in America, but Jackie Chan is the man.”
Listen back to the full interview in the video above and catch Noah’s next Netflix film Sierra Burgess Is a Loser which drops on September 7. Stream To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix now!