You may recognize him as Freddy Freeman, Billy Batson's foster brother in the films Shazam! and Shazam! Fury of the Gods and as Eddie Kaspbrak in the It movie franchise. Young American actor Jack Dylan Grazer is carefully crafting a formidable name for himself in Hollywood by being cast in some pretty big movies.Â
The 19-year-old recalls the exact moment he realized he wanted to be an actor.
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"I'll never forget it," he says in an interview with Esquire Philippines. "It was so great. It was my first show. And being on stage for the first time ever. I was a little nervous, but the feeling of ultimate liberation came over me when I heard my mom laugh in the audience—she had a big loud belly laugh. When I made my mom laugh and other people laughed, I was like, 'This is just the best feeling I'll ever know. Can I do this for the rest of my life?'"
Grazer's first show was at the Adderley School, a performing arts school in California.
"Growing up, I had a good but weird childhood." He confesses getting into trouble in elementary school and his mother thought it best to find an outlet for him by enrolling him in sports training programs: baseball, tennis, karate. He appreciated these programs mostly for the dress-up opportunities, but he ended up clowning around most of the time.
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Right beside the karate studio was a "musical theater studio" where a repertory theater group rehearsed and performed. Even as a child, Grazer was clearly interested.
"I was always looking through the window watching these kids laughing and dancing and doing all the stuff I did in my room when no one was looking. But they were doing it together and getting applauded for it. And I was like, 'What is this? This is freakin' cool! I've never seen people do this without getting yelled at.'"
Eventually, theater actress and the owner of the theater arts studio Janet Adderley invited him to come in and join the group. Jack was hesitant because he knew that his family could not afford to pay for classes at the time, but his lucky stars were shining and a family friend gifted him with paid classes at the institution.
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Grazer's mom invited a talent manager to watch one of his son's later shows at the school and the talent manager brought him to an audition for a role in a movie. He didn't get the part, but he got seven callbacks, which snowballed into casting opportunities in later projects.
Big break
The climb to teen stardom wasn't easy, and Jack admits that for a time, he was not getting as many projects as he would have preferred. Soon enough, his big break arrived.
"(The movie) It was the first thing that put me on the map, so that was it," he said, referring to the 2017 film adaptation of the Stephen King novel. "That was the first biggest thing I'd done."
Jack was only 12, turning 13, when he starred in It. He knew who Stephen King was and had already seen the made-for-TV adaptation of the novel.
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"It's the most incredible memory I have in my brain, working on that movie as a little guy and just having so much wonder and not even really feeling I was working," he says. "It was like summer camp with my best friends. We forgot at so many points that we were actually working 'cause we loved it! We loved it so much!"
A dream come true
A certified DC comics fan, Grazer was ecstatic when the casting team revealed that the role he had been auditioning for in a previously undisclosed project was of Freddy Freeman in Shazam!Â
"If I get this role, I'm gonna be part of the DC Universe!" he excitedly told his mom. "I grew up up being the biggest freaking nerd about everything Justice League.Â
"It was so freaking cool that I got the part, and the rest is history," he adds. "It's just been a dream come true," he said wistfully. "I hesitate to use the word 'surreal,' but it is. I'm still waiting to wake up from this crazy, crazy dream."
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Grazer got to reprise his role as Freddy Freeman in the sequel Shazam! Fury the Gods. The actor recognizes that being cast in another major film is a huge accomplishment, yes still sees and enjoys acting the way he did as a young boy.
"Freddy wants to be an adult. Freddy wants to be a big boy. He wants to figure it out. He wants to shoo everybody away so he can learn the ropes on his own. I can relate to that."
"The only thing that's work is memorizing your lines and channeling intentionality," he says. "But once you're past that point, it's really the most freeing, liberating sensation I know. And I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything—any substance, any other activity, anything."
In the first Shazam! movie, Billy and Freddy were only 14 years old. Three years have passed since in the sequel. The boys are at the "precipice of adulthood and at the edge of puberty," according to Jack.
"Freddy wants to be independent," he says about his character. "Freddy wants to be an adult. Freddy wants to be a big boy. He wants to figure it out. He wants to shoo everybody away so he can learn the ropes on his own."
"I can relate to that," he chuckles. "I've done things in my life where I felt like, I don't want anybody's help, I'm a big boy, a big guy now. I wanna do this on my own. That's kind of what Freddy is doing. He has to learn that lesson and make that mistake in order to realize the importance of family at the end of the day.
"Actually, the family in this movie is even more poignant than it was in the first one. Now it's amplified because, without the family sticking together, there wouldn't be family or anything like that at all. And that's a pretty powerful message. I'm really for that. I love that."
On his greatest hero and being a role model for young people
Grazer recognizes that as a young actor, he has some form of responsibility to be a role model to the youth. While he doesn't see it as a burden, he acknowledges that the pressure is quite daunting.Â
"I don't think that I have any authority to give life advice to people 'cause I'm still living and learning and working on myself," he says. "I'll probably have it by the time I'm like 60 or 70 or something. But now I'm just like everybody else. I don't have advantage over anybody else. I think we're all students of life—still learning. But I do embrace that obligation that I've signed up for, unknowingly.
"I think everybody's journey is different. I think everybody's experiences are different."Â
He says his greatest hero is his mom, Angela.
"My mom has been through—oh my goodness—so much. And she continues to be my champion, like having be robotic from her own emotions so that she could take care of me, and I put her through so much as a little guy, just really testing her. I wouldn't say I was a bad kid, but I was getting in trouble a lot. I was pushing buttons, I guess, and she was a trooper about it."
His other hero is Janet Adderley.
"She's given me so much wisdom throughout my life. And so much insight and enlightenment and I've used it. I've applied it to my work, to my day-to-day life."
DC vs. Marvel
Throughout the interview, Grazer mentioned being a fan of DC a few times. He says he never really into rival Marvel comics as a kid partly because his father and grandfather were mostly into DC. He read his first comic book at five or six years old and admits to loving his Batman and Superman action figures so much he spent time creating scenarios in his head while playing with them.
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It was Tim Burton's Batman—the first ever superhero movie Grazer watched—that inspired his love for superhero movies in general. Incidentally, Batman is his favorite superhero of all time and dreams of playing the Caped Crusader someday. Still, despite all the DC love, the actor says he loves Marvel films as well and is aware of the comparisons between the two IPs.
"I don't want to step on any toes," he begins. "There was so much content pouring out of the industry at one point that some things sort of went unnoticed and given less prevalence. Given now that Pierre Safran and James Gunn have teamed up and have this incredible blueprint of how they're going to approach the next few years of DCEU production, I would say that I am very, very hopeful and stoked for their ideas to come to fruition."
These days, Grazer says he is currently taking a break from demanding acting projects and enjoying his time in Nashville, Tennessee, where he recently moved from California.
"I'm loving every minute of it," he says. "I've been writing a lot and playing a lot of music and continuing to self-express. Also doing, you know, acting stuff here and there but for the most part, just kinda living and appreciating life while staying productive and creative in different ways. And I'm having a great time."
By 'writing a lot,' Grazer means "music, stories, screenplays, poems and stuff"—which tells us that there's more to this young man than being one of the most promising actors of his time; that he's a consummate artist. He's also a musician who plays guitar, bass, drums and flute, among others, and was reportedly part of a band cheekily referred to as The Sex Symbols.
"There are some big projects that I'm working on, personal projects that I'm very excited about but I don't want to spoil so I won't go into too much detail," he teases.Â
While Grazer hasn't been to the Philippines, he hopes to tour the country one day, having seen pictures of stunning scenery courtesy of Maree Martinez, his on-set teacher for Shazam! who is Filipino.
"I've been wanting to go forever," he says. "I don't know much. I just know that it's gorgeous, and the bugs are big, and the ocean is beautiful. I wanna go!"
Photographs and creative direction by Raen Badua Styled by Benjamin Holtrop of The Wallgroup Grooming by Colleen Dominique for Exclusive Artists using Lab Series and Oribe Haircare Shot on location at Le Studio LA Special thanks to Angela Mach of Platform Public Relations
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