Some people skate through life, but Brandon Perea? He jam skates. The highly specialized sport is a cross between roller skating and breakdancing, which he picked up from his father, who breakdances as a hobby. “I just got obsessed, and ended up running with it,” Perea says.
As a kid in Chicago, he hit up the local roller rink to test out moves. “There were girls doing it, too, and I had a little crush on somebody. I was just like, ‘I’m going to get some roller skates and find some love,’” the now 29-year-old says. “I only ended up finding love for roller skating, but it all worked out.” Before pursuing a career as an actor, Perea spent some of his early teen years traveling across America for skate shows. “It was almost like being a pop star of roller skating,” he says. “Wherever I’d go, there would be a poster of me in a roller rink, and I’d sign it and take photos.” The experience “bred me to be ready for a place like Hollywood,” he adds. “I got a taste of craziness.”
Which is good, because the last few years have been wild. After getting his start as a series regular on The OA, he bested aliens as a lovable Fry’s Electronics worker in Nope—and now he’s clinched a role that was written in the stars, or at least in the sky: He appears alongside Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters, the highly anticipated follow-up to the 1996 storm-chasing thriller, Twister. “When I was a kid, I used to be obsessed with tornadoes,” Perea says. “The spectacle of actually seeing a tornado was always the wildest thing.”
The summer blockbuster, which has been described as a “current-day chapter” of the original, is far from a buddy comedy, but there was an offscreen bromance between Perea and Powell, who went from costars to bonding “as humans, rather than just actors, on a brotherhood level.” It also helped that Twisters was filmed on location in Oklahoma, where “no one knew anyone, so you really relied on each other to be social,” Perea says. “Those are the best experiences, because you craft memories that no one else will ever understand, except for the people that were there for it.”
Perea tried his luck at acting at age 16, when he moved to L.A., crashing with a fellow jam skater as he auditioned for small TV roles and commercials. But even as acting took center stage, his skating never took a back seat. At a skating convention in Las Vegas, Perea was pulled aside by a talent manager, who asked him to audition for a movie. Although he didn’t end up getting the gig, it did help him get his, well, skate in the door. Over four years later, Perea landed his breakout role on The OA, Netflix’s sci-fi drama that has more twists than a tornado. But one twist Perea says he couldn’t have predicted: “Before the show came out…I remember someone being like, ‘All right, are you ready to be the new hot boy?’ And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
As the thirst traps tumbled in, casting directors began to take notice. Perea was tapped for his role in Jordan Peele’s extraterrestrial horror thriller Nope. “I was wigging out, because I got to do a movie directed by Jordan Peele, and work with my favorite actor alive right now, Daniel Kaluuya.” A few years prior to Nope, Perea attended a screening for Widows, followed by a Q&A with Kaluuya, who had a key role in the film. “I remember seeing him glowing onstage, and I was starstruck,” Perea says. “Then being across from him in a scene, I was like, ‘Game time.’”
After the box office success of Nope, it took a year for Perea to start work on his next movie. “It’s so hard to navigate the right next thing,” he says. “Like, it’s got to be pretty sick.” But Twisters was better than Perea could have ever forecast. “In my mind, I was like, ‘There’s no way,’” Perea says. “But Lee Isaac Chung [the director] believed in me enough to give me the part, just based off of watching Nope and one sit-down meeting.”
Filming Twisters, with its A-list cast and state-of-the-art special effects—not to mention the added pressure of continuing an Oscar-nominated film (for best visual effects and best sound mixing)—was no small feat. But Perea came into the project prepared. “There are always new walls to approach and new obstacles to get over,” he says. “Even after getting a life-changing job, you have to continue to prove yourself.”
In many ways, acting is a lot like jam skating: It requires constant practice to hone your craft. “I always used to think, ‘Oh, well, once one thing comes along, that’s going to change everything…it’s just going to be smooth coasting,’” he says. “But it’s never smooth coasting, ever.” But for Perea, the challenge is the best part: “That keeps things fun.”
They say you never forget your first love. “I’ll always skate,” Perea says. Off set, you’ll still find him at his local L.A. rink or on the Venice Beach boardwalk. “Someone brings a speaker, and you’re skating right on the beach. The sun is out, and it gets the endorphins up,” he says. “Experience is the best teacher—I’m glad that I have other art forms to tap into.”
Hair by Anton Alexander for Kérastase; makeup by Grace Ahn at Day One; manicure by Merrick Fisher and Naoko Saita at Opus Beauty; produced by Production Partners; photographed on location at The Hollywood Roosevelt.
A version of this article appears in the June/July 2024 issue of ELLE.
