The Half Of It Star Daniel Diemer Will Try Anything Once

By Crystal Bell


Daniel Diemer spruces up a little area of his Studio City apartment for a full day of Zoom interviews in promotion of the new Netflix film The Half of It, yet he only keeps things professional from the waist up. A sartorial mullet, of sorts. "I'm wearing sweatpants," the 23-year-old actor says matter-of-factly over the phone. He's sitting in front of the television in his living room, where his roommates are currently prohibited from snacking also loudly, telling me about his days as a teenage gig worker in his Canadian hometown, British Columbia’s Brentwood Bay.


In no specific sort, he coached ping pong, picked blueberries, published a children's book about a penguin detective, did some low-level accounting work, coached tennis at the same summer camp for seven years, nearly became a professional soccer player, and he probably would have pursued professional tennis had a back injury not derailed his collegiate plans. Diemer, who claimed a 4.0 GPA in high school, had a backup plan — or a few. He was accepted to nursing school, along with a "honors biotech merged with engineering" program, although he ultimately determined opted for the pre-med track immediately after completing the prerequisite courses. At 17, it was like Diemer's future pointed to medical school, up until an interim side hustle turned into a passion he couldn't shake.


He had eight months before the begin of his pre-med program, just enough time to begin a new part-time gig. Having modeled for his high school's art class throughout his senior year ("just to get out of English language class," he adds), his English teacher landed him his first-ever acting job: a tiny part in a Sidney York music video directed by her son. "I was fully out of the loop," he tells MTV News. "They were all very patient with me." Despite his lack of experience, Diemer was hooked. Within six months, he moved to Vancouver, where he slept on a couch and began taking classes under the tutelage of acting coach Andrew McIlroy (whose pupils include Arrow's Emily Bett Rickards and the late Cory Monteith) — dreams of Oscar gold in his sight.


"Looking back on it, it's probably the craziest dream ever," he says with a laugh. However I fell in love with it, and I love it more than pretty much anything else I've ever done."


It's not that hard to be able to see why someone like Diemer would fall so hard. Acting fulfills his constant need to go from project to project, to step into unfamiliar situations and chase the high of new experiences. It has its challenges, also. Learning to survive with rejection is a significant piece of the job, and it's not habitually easy. Diemer has walked into hundreds of audition rooms; he's only booked a handful of roles, the majority for small television parts and short films. Nevertheless some days all you've got to jumpstart a career in Hollywood is the best shot to come at the correct time. For Diemer, landing his first major role in Netflix's The Half of It felt like kismet.


Paul Munsky is dopey and sweet, the ideal foil to Ellie Chu's (Leah Lewis) cynicism. He is a romantic; she's far also practical for love — although way also smart to pass up a lucrative possibility to play Romeo for quick money. This dynamic, conveniently forged between Diemer and Lewis over a chemistry read in Los Angeles, sets up the teen rom-com's main plot: Paul has a crush on Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire), however he can't be in her presence without fumbling his words, so he hires Ellie to woo his dream girl with love letters and texts. The fact that Ellie has also been crushing on Aster goes unnoticed by Paul, who eventually catches feelings for Ellie. Meanwhile, Ellie is questioning her own burgeoning emotions.


Director and writer Alice Wu permits her teenage characters to feel everything, and that resonated with Diemer. "I think as an actor it's very easy to try and either own it or vanish from who you are fully to portray something that you're not," he says. "And what [Wu] did was to guide me to existing as close to Paul as I possibly could while also being very much me. That was the key, just simplifying the entire process and attempting to not be anything else to tell the story from this heartfelt place that I connected with."


In Hollywood, where you're often typecast as one or the other, this or that, The Half of It blurs those lines. Paul is a jock, yet he's also insecure and sensitive. He is a good listener, and once he struggles to find the correct words, he never helps in avoiding trying. Not to say he's an innovator in the kitchen with big dreams of franchising his coveted taco sausage recipe. In other words, he is a real person.


"There's seldom a gray area for [teen] characters that are both confident in certain areas of their life and not so confident in others, especially as guys," Diemer says. "There's rarely space for them to be emotionally susceptible. I've routinely been quite a sensitive person, and I didn't habitually feel understood in a lot of ways … I think Paul has much more confidence than I do some days. He's ready to ask a girl to write a love letter for him, which I thought was very brave."


This sincerity is exactly what makes Diemer, a self-proclaimed ambivert in all of his 6-foot-4 glory, so relatable. Wu looked at nearly 600 actors for the role of Paul, however Diemer was the only one who brought the everyman quality she was searching for. He's like a uncut stone that doesn't know it's a diamond.


He describes the method of filming The Half of It as a lesson in confidence, "both in my abilities and in the people around me," he adds. And if joining the ranks of fellow Netflix heartthrobs like Noah Centineo, Jordan Fisher, and Jacob Elordi sounds daunting, Diemer assures he isn't looking at it that way. He's still got a lot to learn — about acting, about himself, about being son friend and also a co-star, and around his new house, Los Angeles. ("I never expected to be in L.A. Pursuing such a crazy career, not in my wildest dreams," he says.) Yet he's working on it.


"For me, there's this constant willingness to try things," he says. "That's how I grow and find more confidence and develop more as a human being. I don't think I'll ever mention, 'Hey, I've made it. This is Daniel and this is it.' I constantly wish to be a higher end person. I'm habitually asking, 'How do I do life in the ideal way possible?' I really do think I'm still growing in each direction."