TV star and Tony-nominated playwright Jeremy O. Harris came away from his 23-day stint in a Japanese prison with surprisingly little trauma.
“If I had been actually trying to break the law, I think I would have felt some guilt or shame, but I felt like I was in some weird prank show,” Harris, 36, said on Obsessed: The Podcast.
In November, Harris was detained at Okinawa, Japan’s Naha International Airport, after customs officers allegedly found 780 milligrams of Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, in his carry-on bag. He faced up to seven years in prison if found guilty, but was eventually released without charges after 23 days in prison.
If there was any latent trauma, the Emily in Paris star joked that it “ended up being dulled by the sense of relief I had that I didn’t have to respond to emails for a couple of months,” scrolling on his phone to show the dozens of still unanswered messages from the days after his release.
Harris said he received an “overwhelming” number of messages asking about his well-being, which inspired him to write a Vanity Fair essay detailing his experience.
“It was like, ‘Here’s what happened. And actually, I’m really OK.’ My skin got better. I got skinnier. I read a lot more. I realized how addicted I am, personally, to my phone,” he said. “And I now know that I can step outside of the world that I’m living in and slow down in a way that I don’t think I knew before.”
The three-week stint in jail, Harris said, was actually his first major break since his career springboarded during his junior year of graduate school at NYU. In 2018, Slave Play, which he wrote while still a student, earned a Tony nomination for Best Play. The six years since have been a blur.
Harris appeared as an actor on Gossip Girl and Emily in Paris, co-produced Euphoria, and co-wrote two movies, including the newly released Erupcja. Harris also stars in the new film alongside pop star Charli XCX, whose album, Brat, won three Grammy awards from eight nominations, in addition to getting shoutouts from Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.
“Oftentimes when a pop star goes into the ring as an actor, they really say, ‘I’m throwing away my old version of myself and stuffing it in here,’“ Harris said, noting that Charli XCX was reproducing the album at the same time. ”And she said, ‘No, I think I can do both at the same time,’ which for me, the multi-hyphenate Gemini, was very impressive and very much the way in which I like to move."
Charli XCX, 33, whose real name is Charlotte Aitchison, told the film’s director that she “didn’t want to be anything like Charli,” nor did she want to be “the b---h in the glasses that people imagine.”
In the romance film, Charli XCX plays Bethany, an Englishwoman who brings her boyfriend to Poland, only to rekindle a relationship with her old flame. Each time Bethany and her ex, Nel, cross paths, a volcano inexplicably erupts—the film’s Polish title translates to “eruption”—leading them to believe their romance is destined.
“I think the person that she played is someone that’s actually closer to the Charli I know,” Harris, who is a neighbor of the British pop star, revealed. “She’s so gregarious and so warm and so generous, and I think that she wanted to show that side of herself. And I’m really happy she did.”
Erupcja is currently playing in theaters.
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