Publish date: 2024-01-08

Taylor Zakhar Perez, 28, is opening up about those romance rumors with his gorgeous The Kissing Booth 2 co-star Joey King, 21! The actor revealed that he and Joey “went away” for a weekend trip, after also dishing that the pair “live” near each other in Los Angeles. “I know, we went away this weekend for some friends’ birthdays and her birthday, everyone kinda freaked about it,” he spilled to Access Hollywood host Kit Hoover on Wednesday, Aug. 5, referencing Joey’s recent 21st birthday on July 30. “I will say that we are not dating,” he also confirmed.

“We just became really close during filming, but we became even closer after filming because we literally live close to each other. We’re like a three or four minute drive from each other,” the Chicago native added, after revealing he and Joey — who play characters Elle Evans and Marco Peña in the film — are just friends. “We were kind of each other’s accountability partners during quarantine, so we got to hang out — make sure we weren’t seeing anybody outside of the circle of people we trusted,” he also said.

“So we just became a lot closer. Especially this lead-up for the movie — we got to do dress together, go back to all of our dance tape. It was just so rewarding to see how it all paid off,” Taylor went on, also revealing his favorite thing about working with The Act alum! “She can make me cry laugh. She is hysterical. Like, anything she said is not intended to be funny but she has this really funny laugh that just makes me laugh even more,” Taylor dished.

It turns out that Joey is also a wizard in the kitchen outside of her on-screen talents, which Taylor greatly enjoys. “[I love] her dedication to food. She loves food, I love food. She loves cooking food. It’s a great relationship!” he sweetly gushed. “She made this bomb pasta a couple weeks ago…She looks at recipes all day, and she’ll text me and be like, ‘I want to make this, what do you think?’ She made this buffalo mozzarella thing the other day. She needs her own cooking show — I’d be on it with her and it would be a blast,” he said.

Of course, fans couldn’t get enough of the pairs’ chemistry on-screen — and it turns out Joey and Taylor had an instant connection. “I would say it was [instant]. I was auditioning for this for two full months before I got a chemistry read with her…she had jean overalls on, really short hair and a flower in her hair. She’s so sweet, and gave me all of herself in that moment,” Taylor remembered. “Some actors don’t do that…Joey was just so down. We went and had rehearsals and were on set non-stop with each other…it was so effortless,” he also added.

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