14 DAY TRIAL // Taylor Lautner first took on the role of Jacob Black in 2008’s “Twilight” and he was such a hit with audiences that fans actually petitioned Summit Entertainment to have him reprise his role in “New Moon,” one year later. Since then, Lautner’s well-defined pecs and abs have become the stuff that legends are made of, as the saying goes, but that doesn’t mean that the young actor is oblivious of how he’s being exploited.
As the world must know by know, “Twilight” fans are divided into two sides: Team Edward and Team Jacob. For those belonging to the latter category, Summit bases a huge part of the promotion for the film on Lautner’s abs, whether that means including more scenes of the shirtless wolf in the movie or having him appear in photospreads. Still, that doesn’t mean that Taylor is completely comfortable with being the piece of hunk meat in the film.
Moreover, he’s not afraid of saying out loud that he’s being exploited, as Ted Casablanca of E!’s The Awful Truth says in a piece called “Five Things You Need to Know About the Eclipse Press Junket.” Being the only one who doesn’t wear a shirt when everybody else is pretty much covered up and still shivering from the cold is a hard job – but someone’s gotta do it, as they say. At the end of the day, though, Lautner does whatever it takes to make his character believable and, in Jacob Black’s case, a shirt is a major no-no, as all those who’ve read Stephenie Meyer’s original novels should know by now.
“Tay doesn’t love always taking his shirt off. He told us at the Eclipse press conferences that it’s ‘awkward’ being the only one half-naked on the set, posing and flexing his muscles in almost every scene. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to demand to be covered up in other movies he does. ‘If I love the character, I love the story, and the character requires me to be shirtless, or if it requires me to lose thirty pounds, I’m ready to do it,’ Taylor said,” Casablanca writes after the LA Twilight Convention.
Indeed, not only did Taylor get in excellent shape to be able to reprise his part, but he also turned out to be one of the most valuable assets Summit got its hands on in terms of promoting the film since, of the three leads (Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and himself), he is the most approachable.