Introducing your soon-to-be favorites: ELLE’s Hollywood Rising Class of 2025: David Jonsson, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Tati Gabrielle, Benito Skinner, Esther McGregor, Nicholas Alexander Chavez, Suzanna Son
From industry legacies to breakout talents discovered through social media, theater camp, or even a family band, these 14 young stars share one undeniable trait: raw, magnetic talent paired with unstoppable ambition.
They are poised to dominate screens big and small this year, with roles in everything from THE LAST OF US and THE GILDED AGE to a Wes Anderson indie and the next JURASSIC WORLD installment. They will embody icons like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and Sammy Davis Jr., and that’s just the beginning.
DAVID JONSSON
On how getting kicked out of school for fighting at 14 led to him becoming an actor: “Acting was never even a thought until I got kicked out,” the 31-year-old Brit says. “After that, I found youth theater, and that was a way of channeling a lot of things.”
On his upcoming film, an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, which will premiere this fall, and costars Cooper Hoffman and follows a group of young men who sign up for a grueling competition, with only one winner: “It’s really brilliant—a beautiful movie about endurance,” Jonsson says. In true King fashion, it’s equal parts gory, twisted, and heartfelt.
The role was not only technically challenging (Jonsson puts on a very convincing American accent), but also physically demanding. “We walked at least 10 miles every single day. At least. And then on longer days with bigger scenes, we walked more than that,” he says. “But that’s why we do it. For the thrill.”
One of his favorite things about being an actor is the ability to transform. He put on 25 pounds for The Long Walk, after losing 40 pounds for another part. “I don’t think every actor wants to do that,” he notes. “But I love it.”
On playing the legendary entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in the forthcoming film Scandalous!, by first-time director Colman Domingo and alongside Sydney Sweeney, who plays his girlfriend Kim Novak: “When you take on a titan like Sammy Davis Jr., you try to understand the man on the inside,” Jonsson says of his prep for the role. “That process takes time, and I’m on that journey. Fingers crossed that it comes across on-camera.”
SAURA LIGHTFOOT-LEON
On the importance of not separating her real-life experiences from her roles and how that gives her ‘a richer body language’: She admits her instinct has been to “hide away something precious that actually influences everything I do,” in an attempt to forge her own distinct path. But “the moment I really started finding myself in the characters I was playing, the more I struggled to push away that side of me,” she says. “My past is me, and I don’t try to separate that from my work anymore. It lives within me. It gives me a richer body language.”
On how that spills over to her work as CIA field officer Danny Morata in The Agency and what fans can expect from Season 2: “Where that line is drawn is not only part of a covert agent’s life, but also an actor’s life. It’s like, ‘Where does the me who’s acting in these scenes stop and the character begin?’ So that’s fascinating.” (She teases that season 2 will depict Danny “in a very different light. Season 1 was sowing the seeds. This season is a whole other beast, and it gets scary. She gets real. That’s all I’m going to say.”)
TATI GABRIELLE
Tati Gabrielle: The actress now champions her voice as her greatest asset—both on set and in life.
On finding roles that acknowledged her identity as a Black and Korean-American woman. “In the first couple of years [of acting], nobody knew where to place me. I wasn’t Black enough to be Black. I wasn’t Asian enough to be Asian,” she remembers.
On not letting her people down and ensuring her roles reflected the realities of women of color: Before accepting her role in You, she met with showrunner Sera Gamble. “I told Sera that since I’m going to be Joe’s new obsession, and all of the women before me have been white, there are certain things that, as a woman of color, are not going to go the same way,” she says. “[Black women] have been forced to grow up in a world where we have to be aware at all times. We think differently. We have to protect ourselves differently. So Marienne cannot be oblivious.”
On learning the weight of her choices as Nora in The Last of Us: “All of these characters are so blatantly flawed, and [The Last of Us] doesn’t necessarily try to redeem them. Nora started teaching me that you are your choices. You can have as much intention and heart as you want, but what the world sees are your actions. Your choices define you,” she says. “And you can’t run from the things you’ve decided on.”
BENITO SKINNER
On not following the orthodox path to television for the Prime Video series Overcompensating, which he created, wrote, produced, and stars in.: “The internet has allowed these iron gates of Hollywood to be opened for so many more voices,” he says. “I have these people who have really taken to my comedy and are championing it.”
On how Charlie xcx agreed to score the soundtrack for Overcompensating after the two became friends at one of Charli’s iconic parties: After a few drinks, and encouragement from O’Connor (who now helps to manage Charli’s socials), Skinner went up to the British singer and asked her to take a look at his script and score the show. She said, “Sure, babes.” Skinner sent her the script, and she signed on to the project immediately.
On the point of his show: He wants people to feel loved, welcomed, and, when mistakes happen, forgiven, while celebrating the relationships that made him. “All of these people are hurting and really want to be loved so badly,” he says. “That’s the whole point of the show—wanting to be loved so deeply, and going about it in the totally wrong way. I don’t think that’s just a queer experience. I think that’s everyone.”
ESTHER MCGREGOR
On how her background and advantages (McGregor’s father is actor Ewan McGregor, and her mother, Eve Mavrakis, is a production designer) gave her career a boost, and also provided her with an example of what it could look like: “I definitely came out singing, for sure,” she says. “But being in close proximity to anything will build its charm—I immediately fell in love with it.”
“I want to give the gratitude that I think deserves its place, in terms of being raised in a family in film. Being able to be on sets really aided that love and that breath and that heartbeat. As much as I don’t think I would be able to do anything else, who knows? It was the way that I was born, the world I was born into. So I feel very thankful that I’m able to do what I do, because I need it.”
On seeing some of her own passion in Mirren, her teenage character in We Were Liars, a Prime Video adaptation of the ultra-popular 2014 book by E. Lockhart: “I tried to conquer the world the same way that she did at that age. I was poisoned with empathy, and I found it really hard to be deceiving, or to be untruthful and messy and not perfect,” she says. “She’s one of the first characters I’ve played who has this bounciness of youth. Her youth is very energetic.”
Mirren has also helped McGregor confront challenges of her own: “In my personal life, and I think Mirren is the same way, I will always be able to be happy for others and in front of others, but hold a lot of emotion and deep feeling,” she says. “Something that I have to work on daily is this idea of perfection, and having to make sure that you are perfect for everyone at all times.” One of the many things she loves about acting? It lets her see more of herself.
NICHOLAS ALEXANDER CHAVEZ
Reflecting on his time in Florida selling cars, shortly after the pandemic stuck and acting jobs in LA dried up: Although he was grateful to have a paycheck, something told him that acting wasn’t quite out of the picture just yet. “I knew that deep down I was an artist, and I was trying to figure out how that could be let out.”
Chavez credits a “mindset shift,” brought on by advice he received from someone close to him that turned things around. “I realized that whatever you’re doing, you should just give it 100 percent, because you’re there anyway,” he says. He started showing up to work with the idea that he wanted to “be the best at selling cars today” so he could “be the best actor tomorrow.”
“The universe just takes you on the journey that you need to go on,” he says. “It was a weird journey that I didn’t expect, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
SUZANNA SON
With both Fear Street and Monster, Son is trying on a new personal scent as well: horror: “I like playing characters who react the way a normal person might react to horror,” Son says. She’s a fan of the genre: “They feel like dreams I had as a child,” she adds. “I used to have terrible nightmares, and nothing really reminds me of those nightmares other than a very esoteric horror movie.” Now Son finds herself down the rabbit hole, creating horror that feeds other people’s nightmares. During the first day of shooting Fear Street, Son came face-to-face with one of her own fears: screaming in public. (She calls the experience shooting the film “Matt Palmer’s boot camp.”)
On how she isn’t turning her back on music—in fact, she’s “very close” to releasing five or six songs of her own: “I want to start singing live this year,” she says. But don’t expect to see her headlining Lollapalooza anytime soon: “It won’t be crazy big. Just $30 tickets, little shows here and there…I want to start small and have my audience grow with me.” When she’s writing songs, she weaves the roles she’s played into her lyrics. On her upcoming release, she says some songs are from her perspective, and some are filtered through her characters.
[Photo Credit: Justin French for ELLE Magazine]
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