Diego Calva talks bonding with Jacob Elordi over Pokémon whilst filming On Swift Horses (EXCLUSIVE)

Star of the upcoming gay romance film On Swift Horses Diego Calva has revealed how he established a bond with his co-star, Euphoria actor Jacob Elordi, ahead of filming.

“He plays Pokémon. He was playing it on Nintendo Switch. I’d just finished the new game three weeks before,” Calva told us in an exclusive interview to accompany his recent Attitude cover shoot.

“That was the icebreaker: ‘How do you catch this Pokémon?’ We just started playing!”

Another thing the actors had in common was a mutual colleague in the form of none other than Barbie star Margot Robbie. Calva had worked extensively with Robbie during the filming of 2022’s Babylon, whilst Elordi was due to work with the fellow Aussie on the upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation directed by Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell.

“It’s funny. Doing Horses, Jacob asked me a lot about Margot,” Calva revealed to us. “Margot’s the queen of Australia, and now we have a new king. … I feel pretty lucky — I’ve kissed both!” the actor regaled.

“Hollywood likes me in a period movie, kissing Australian people!”

We can see why it was important for Calva to form a bond with Elordi on set, given the actors had a number of extremely intimate sex scenes to film later in the shoot. The Babylon star told us the film’s director was keen to ensure the sex scenes felt more loving and tender than just simply erotic.

“Dan [Minahan], the director, is such a gentleman. He told us: ‘I don’t want to provoke the audience. This is about actual love,” the 33-year-old actor said.

“‘I don’t want a classic story of tragedy around these queer characters and then they have kinky sex — no, no, no.”

Issue 364 of Attitude magazine is available to order here, and alongside 15 years of back issues on the free Attitude app.