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\n Lukas Gage
\n Photo: Corey Nickols\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Lukas Gage pitched his memoir in the middle of the WGA and SAG strikes<\/a>. \u201cI think the birth of it was truly me being a little bit manic,\u201d he says. But decisions during mania were nothing new for the actor. Gage has made a lot of big decisions while feeling a little \u201ccuckoo.\u201d Originally, he says he wanted to write a book of essays, but publishers were much more interested in a personal memoir \u2014 especially from someone comfortable with online overexposure and naturally candid (even if he is, at times, \u201cunreliable\u201d). In I Wrote This for Attention, out October 14, Gage charts his rise from attention-seeking child to attention-seeking adult with screwball details, willful humility, and plenty of lies. \u201cIt\u2019s important to me to own up to it and admit that I\u2019m a huge liar,\u201d he says. \u201cI just now turned 30, and I\u2019m finally figuring out how to stop lying so much.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite this clarity of persona on the page, the book is less desperate for eyeballs than the title promises. Only the last few chapters are about Gage\u2019s time in Hollywood, including his Las Vegas wedding to hairstylist Chris Appleton, which was aired on season four of The Kardashians<\/a> \u2014 Kim Kardashian officiated \u2014 and a paragraph on his friend and Euphoria<\/a> co-star Sydney Sweeney, who can\u2019t seem to stop getting attention of her own. The rest of the book is Gage unraveling his relationship with his childhood traumas, his mental health, and his desire for the spotlight<\/a>. That\u2019s really why he wrote this.<\/p>\n Toward the end of the book, you say that you accepted the book offer as part of a manic episode. How did this book really come to be? Did you do the initial reaching out, or did the editors come to you? How did you begin the writing process? What do you mean by uneven?\u00a0 Do you feel like you learned about your life through writing this? You start the book by claiming \u201cI killed a kid,\u201d referring to an old version of yourself. Why start there?\u00a0 But by starting with that, you\u2019re teaching the audience not to trust you. How did you think of yourself as a narrator? Do you feel like the book helped you? What do you think the public perception of your personality is? In the book, you\u2019re more sarcastic and self-critical, with a lot of asides to the audience. Is that closer to you? Have people who read the memoir said that?\u00a0 How did you choose what you wanted to include in the book? It was much more focused on your adolescence versus your time in Hollywood.\u00a0 You get into your difficult relationship with your father in the book, including that he and your mother sent you to a troubled-teens camp. How do you think he\u2019ll perceive the book? He has the hardest time of it, though.\u00a0 Can you describe why you didn\u2019t want to initially come out to the public? How was it to write those Hollywood chapters you didn\u2019t want to write? How did you approach working on the Hollywood chapters?\u00a0 You don\u2019t spend much time in the book focusing on Kim Kardashian or other major celebrities. Why not? You\u2019ve played yourself on TV twice now, on Gossip Girl and The Other Two. What is that version of \u201cLukas Gage\u201d like, and how does he differ from the you that you want to come across here? How do you feel about the term attention whore? But you say you want attention, it\u2019s even in the title of the book, but then you don\u2019t talk about any of your famous friends. Even if it is clickbait, that feels like the thing that would actually garner you the most attention. How do you feel about that tension?\u00a0 Did they ask you for the paragraph about Sydney Sweeney, or did you write it on your own? I think they asked you for a paragraph about Sydney Sweeney. What is it like to write a paragraph about your friend that\u2019s been specifically requested? It\u2019s interesting that you picked up on that, because, as an actor, if someone gives me a bad critique on my performance, I\u2019m like, It was the director\u2019s fault or the script or whatever. With a book that you wrote, you\u2019re like, I can\u2019t really blame anyone. But \u2026 it was my first book and I had to listen to people who have been doing this for so long and know this world.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t talk about being queer very much in the book. You don\u2019t go deeply into describing when you realized you liked men.\u00a0 I also genuinely loved the girlfriend who I talk about in the book. I\u2019m still trying to figure it out. It\u2019s the same thing with the mental- health stuff. I had a hard time labeling. I don\u2019t want to define it, and I don\u2019t want to print this thing on me. \u201cBorderline personality disorder\u201d felt like an albatross around my neck. Now, I think I love that I am mostly gay. I\u2019ll say, I dunno, 10 percent fluid or whatever. And I embrace my borderline.<\/p>\n Do you think of your job as being an actor or being a celebrity? But writing a book is an act of celebrity. You play a gay robot in Companion and a hot mess in How to Blow Up a Pipeline. It seems like the celebrity might help you book those roles. Are you worried about the book affecting things, then? How do you think you\u2019ll be misunderstood? Are you going to read reactions?\u00a0 Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lukas Gage Photo: Corey Nickols\/Getty Images Lukas Gage pitched his memoir in the middle of the WGA and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[353,49,48,361,24028,75,13461,100269,92523,100270,44,1901,38554],"class_list":["post-204453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-books","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-chat-room","tag-entertainment","tag-euphoria","tag-i-wrote-this-for-attention","tag-lukas-gage","tag-memoirs","tag-news","tag-qa","tag-the-white-lotus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It was the year of the strike, so I had a lot of free time. I always wanted to write a book as a kid, but the strike-mania and a not great mix of medications led to a premature book happening.<\/p>\n
I wrote this proposal for a book of essays. It turns out it\u2019s much more lucrative for publishers if you write a memoir.<\/p>\n
There are a lot of variations of what this book was. The first draft was a little bit cuckoo, hence my headspace. It was a little uneven. It still is a little uneven.<\/p>\n
In some areas, it\u2019s not cohesive storytelling. We jump around. But that\u2019s how my life felt. I felt like if I wrote down the events that had happened that led me to where I was, it would be like, Wait, how the hell did you get from there to there? What do you mean you got married on \u201cThe Kardashians\u201d? When I got my shit together and I was in a levelheaded state of mind, the book actually became something important to me. I had to do a scavenger hunt of my own psyche for why I did certain things.<\/p>\n
I had a lot more empathy for myself. I love that crazy nightmare suburban teen. I love that annoying ratty child who was desperate for attention. There was an understanding of why I am the way that I am.<\/p>\n
Originally, that was in the middle of the book. I got bullied and had to leave different middle schools, and I started over as the tough kid who wasn\u2019t tough, dyed my hair, and did all that shit. That theme kept reoccurring. There are all these different versions of myself that I\u2019ve become and abandoned. I don\u2019t want to say \u201cfa\u00e7ade,\u201d because they all are parts of me, but I noticed how easily it was for me to have an identity crisis where I would just completely change who I was in order to survive.<\/p>\n
I am kind of an unreliable narrator. The first chapter is how much of a fucking liar I am, so you\u2019re like, Oh, he\u2019s admitting that I really can\u2019t trust him. But as we get through the book, you see where the fibs and the storytelling and the shape-shifting to tell a narrative\u00a0comes from. It\u2019s important to me to own up to it and admit that I\u2019m a huge liar. I just now turned 30, and I\u2019m finally figuring out how to stop lying so much.<\/p>\n
I do. It was really important to me to not play the victim and to be fully honest about my part in every relationship I\u2019ve had my downfalls in. I\u2019m not trying to be an inspiration, but I wrote this to be honest and helpful. Now I\u2019m not so defensive. When people call me out and say, \u201cYou lied\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re actually being an asshole right now,\u201d I can be like, \u201cYeah,\u201d instead of being so defensive and trying to cover up my shit.<\/p>\n
There is this version of myself that\u2019s this thirsty, excited kid who is like, Oh my God, I\u2019m with Jimmy Kimmel, I\u2019m with Kelly Clarkson. When you\u2019re doing that, you are performing for an audience. There\u2019s a version of myself on Instagram who is doing brand deals and on vacation, and it looks really great. But you don\u2019t see that other part of me that has a lonely existence when I go home and spiral.<\/p>\n
All of those personae are real aspects of me. I talk about the most fucked-up shit that\u2019s happened to me with a joke. Then I tell the most mundane stories with this overembellished, exaggerated tone. I wanted to entertain, too. I don\u2019t want it to be flowery or overly sentimental or precious or saccharine \u2014 even if some people are like, Oh, what you described is a little jarring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had people say that about certain parts, whether it be about some of the sexual-molestation stuff or the mental-health stuff. But that\u2019s authentic to myself. I have some ownership of it and how it affects me. It\u2019s a way for me to deal with shame. I don\u2019t want to feel small.<\/p>\n
To be fully transparent, the last three chapters of the book with the Hollywoodish stuff is what I sold the book proposal on. They\u2019re my least favorite part and the least interesting to me. I\u2019ve told those stories. People want that \u201cbehind the curtain\u201d and \u201cinside baseball\u201d view of it, but for me, the younger childhood stuff is so imprinted in my DNA.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know if he\u2019s going to read it. I wanted to be careful about how I portray everybody. I come for everyone a little bit, and then I show some good qualities.<\/p>\n
I tried to write what I felt at that age, and I hated my father. I think that there\u2019s some humanity in him, though. In the conclusion, I see myself in my father.\u00a0 I acknowledge that even though I can hate him as a person, I still love him as my dad.<\/p>\n
I truly felt like no one gave a shit. I was a nobody. Why do I have to give a press release about it? I also felt that rebellious side of me that\u2019s like, I\u2019m literally not going to do it even more now, because you guys are asking for it. Fuck you. But, I have to be honest, there is another part of me that \u2026 We have made progress in the industry with letting certain people play certain things, but I knew that I was going to lose out on things once that happened. I had to sit with it and have a moment where I\u2019m like, Do I live a lie and try to keep this up for as long as I can, or do I fucking be honest? If people don\u2019t want to work with me for that reason, then they\u2019re not the people I want to work with anyway.<\/p>\n
To me, it feels a bit surface level, because I felt very surface level at the time. I wanted to be authentic to what I was feeling at that time. I originally wanted to do essays, and I thought I would write about virality \u2014 less personal and more of a statement about the internet. But now that\u2019s scattered weirdly in the end. The publishers really wanted a personal-memoir narrative to it.<\/p>\n
Well, you have to just stop having resistance. Which I still have. Talking about the viral video or the marriage, it\u2019s like, Oh God, that question again; how many times have I answered it? I\u2019ve overshared already, and I\u2019m bored by it. And I\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to become clickbait when it comes out. I was honest about how out of control the internet can become, and how you can also shift from being the hero of the internet one day to being completely hated by everybody.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know them as intimately as a lot of these other people in my life. That was a five-month period where I was in that world and I wasn\u2019t fully there. I didn\u2019t feel like I had much to say about it. And also, I\u2019m not in contact with those people, and I\u2019m not going to probably get their approval of reading it, and that\u2019s important too.<\/p>\n
That is the most exaggerated, attention-seeking, and performative version of myself. That\u2019s a version that we see on Watch What Happens Live! but on steroids.<\/p>\n
I love it. People are wanting worse things than attention. Everyone does something for attention.<\/p>\n
Part of the title was also beating people to the punch. It\u2019s like, Why did this actor who is way too young and not successful enough write a memoir? I did it for attention. I\u2019m literally spelling it out for you guys. I started the proposal with that. If I\u2019m going to do it, it has to be that title.<\/p>\n
What do you think?<\/p>\n
Correct.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a part of me that pushes back, but then there\u2019s a part of me that\u2019s like, I have to hear why that will get people to read the book. She\u2019s this huge name, and I have to accept it. Then I have to be as honest as possible about what I felt at that time about her: How can this serve the story? I\u2019m in a bubble, and she\u2019s the only anchor I have to the outside world.<\/p>\n
Honestly, the truth is I didn\u2019t have that moment. It was so fucking confusing for me. I talk a little bit in the book about telling my mom, \u201cI don\u2019t know what I am. I think I\u2019m gay.\u201d I have a cousin who came out when he was 11 as gay and said he knew since he was 5, and I was like, I wish it was that clear. I don\u2019t know if it had to do with repressed feelings or it had to do with the molestation. Did I like it or didn\u2019t I?<\/p>\n
Actor.<\/p>\n
I think what sets this book apart, though, is that I don\u2019t view myself as a celebrity. I view myself as a working actor who has a weird parasocial relationship with the fame and virality. I\u2019m still auditioning. I\u2019m still not a leading character. But I\u2019ve dipped my toe into this weird world where anyone can be famous in five minutes, and that can be fleeting.<\/p>\n
People would be surprised that some things were a detriment and made me lose out on roles. The virality and the \u201cmarriage on The Kardashians\u201d was such a moment that, yes, you think of me, but then you also think, Is he a liability? and Can we lose him in the character because we know so much about his personal life? People are like, You did that to get famous and to get jobs. And I\u2019m like, \u201cThose are different. \u2018Get famous\u2019 and \u2018get jobs\u2019 are different.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m scared about being misunderstood.<\/p>\n
I lead with humor. I am blunt about certain things. But I don\u2019t need to know everyone\u2019s opinions. There\u2019s a fear of being misunderstood, but there\u2019s also a cathartic freedom. Ultimately, I know I\u2019m inviting criticism with this book, and I know I\u2019m inviting criticism with the title of the book. It feels wrong to say I don\u2019t give a shit anymore. I do care what people think.<\/p>\n
I would be lying if I said I\u2019m not. But I can tell you that there\u2019s not that self-obsession that was once there. Do I get stuff sent to me by the editors that I have to read? Yeah. Do I obsess over a line or two and go, \u201cOh shit, I didn\u2019t mean it like that?\u201d Of course. But there\u2019s not this active search for negativity anymore.<\/p>\n