We Talked to the May December Kid Who Jumps Up to Touch the Doorframe to Impress Natalie Portman

Photo: Francois Duhamel/Courtesy of Netflix/Francois Duhamel / courtesy of Netflix

Around the halfway point of Todd Haynes’s May December, Natalie Portman’s Elizabeth — a television actress with a Juilliard education, tasked with bringing to life a decades-old scandal for a movie — visits the local high school to talk acting with the theater class there. As she walks through the halls of the school, we experience the first evidence of Elizabeth’s fame: students turning to gawk at her. As she passes through a corridor, a particular student jumps up to touch the doorframe, and she catches herself smiling. It’s hilarious, unsettling, and bizarre — a perfect encapsulation of Haynes’s film. Vulture caught up with 17-year-old Jackson Wagner, the North Carolina high-schooler tasked with taking a leap of faith and rizzing up Portman, about his big moment in the film.

Jackson Wagner’s character jumping up to touch the doorframe to impress Natalie Portman in May December. Photo: Netflix

Tell me a little bit about how you got involved with May December. 
Honestly, this was just, like, the weirdest thing for me. My brother Jakob acts. We’re twins, but he’s been more interested in acting. May December came up and he got the role. I was just supposed to be a background actor that day. Then something popped up for him — I forget what it was — and he had to make a decision and he chose to go do something else. So, I was already in the area, and I was gonna be there regardless. I asked the day of; I was like, “Hey, my brother’s not here. But here I am. Can I do it?� I kid you not, they went and looked me up and down and said, “Yeah, you can do it.�

Have you done other TV or film acting before?
I was in Spider-Man: No Way Home, in one of the high-school scenes, and I was the lead in a student film.

Do you look for extra roles that shoot nearby? Or were you drawn to May December based on it being a Todd Haynes film?
Anything that I can do, I try to do. I don’t really like to turn things down. Whatever I can get my hands on, I’ll audition and see what can happen.

Can you talk a little bit about what shooting on that day was like?
I didn’t know what I had signed myself up for. We get on set and I’m sitting there, and all of a sudden Todd Haynes comes by and was like, “This is Natalie. She’ll be filming with you.� I was like, “Hi.� Like I said, I’ve never done anything like this. So the fact that, like, Natalie Portman just walked up and was two feet in front of me …

I remember Todd told me, we had a basketball, and he was like, “All right, you’re gonna pass this to your friend,� which — his name is also Jackson, which I think is just funny in and of itself — “and then she’s gonna come around the corner, and you’re going to jump up and you’re going to touch the thing, to kind of, like, impress her, and then you’re going to land and you’re going to, like, act like, Oh, that was the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.� At that moment, I was just a little like, huh, because, I mean, I go to high school, and that’s just not something that happens.

I was gonna ask if guys in high school still jump up to touch the doorframe. I feel like that was huge when I was in school.
This is like a middle-school thing.

Got it.
There was also a mental thing because I’m like, “Yes, I’m gonna do this.� But I’m also doing this in front of Natalie Portman. There’s impressing a random person at your school, and then there’s impressing Natalie Portman. But I was here to do what they told me to do. I had all these things running in my brain: I’ve never done this. This is a famous person that I’ve seen before. Now I’m interacting with this person. I don’t know what’s happening.

Do you have a favorite Natalie Portman film or role?
One of my favorites is Black Swan. I’m a big Marvel nerd too, so Jane Foster in the Marvel movies. And although I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan, no one can deny that her role as Amidala is one of the best.

Your character in your scene is having a little bit of a moment on X — people are loving this character beat. How did you feel leaving the set that day?
The experience stuck with me for a good couple of days. I just felt starstruck. I was meeting these people who are really in charge of the thing that I want to be a part of.

The scene turned out great. It’s such a funny moment, both for your character at the school and for Portman’s character. It made the trailer!
When my brother and I did Spider-Man, the scenes that I was in did not make the cut, which wasn’t upsetting, because I still got the experience or whatever. My brother, on the other hand — he made that trailer. I felt like this was my moment. Like, all right, I didn’t get my spotlight that time. But this time, you know?

So much of acting is just waiting for the moment to come to you. You mentioned you’ve seen May December now. What did you think of that? 
I enjoyed it. I thought it was a great movie. Obviously, the subject matter is very intense, especially because of the closeness of me being a high-school student.

Are there any other movies you’ve seen and enjoyed recently?
The latest one I saw was Five Nights at Freddy’s, and I really enjoyed it, just because I’ve been waiting so long for that movie to come out. Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume Three — I loved that. And then my girlfriend took me to see Barbie. I didn’t think I’d like that, but I thought that one was really good. You could tell it was crafted for a female audience, mainly, but it had such great character moments. So much of it could be applied to me or anyone in my life.