Taylor Zakhar Perez is a Star for the Streaming Age

When The Kissing Booth 2 was released on Netflix in July of 2020, Taylor Zakhar Perez had roughly 70,000 followers on Instagram. A couple of weeks later, he had more than four million. But unlike a lot of other actors who have dominated the young adult genre in recent years, Perez, 29, did not experience his dramatic rise in popularity all at once. “I feel like the release during a pandemic saved me a bit from ego or getting show-ponied around town like Prince Ali [in Aladdin]. It