Cara Delevingne and Jordan Firstman Share a Kiss at the ‘Club Kid’ NYC Premiere

Some red carpet moments are planned down to the last sequin. This one didn’t look planned at all — which is probably why everyone loved it.

Cara Delevingne and Jordan Firstman, co-stars in the new A24 film Club Kid, shared a kiss while posing for photographers at the movie’s New York premiere on Thursday night, October 29. The two were at Regal Union Square, surrounded by flashing cameras and their castmates, when they leaned in for a quick, affectionate smooch that instantly became the photo of the night.

It wasn’t a stunt, or at least it didn’t play like one. It read like two old friends who were genuinely thrilled to be there — thrilled that the movie they’d made together was finally, actually, hitting a big screen in front of a real audience. And honestly? After the week this film has had, who could blame them for celebrating a little early.

The Kiss That Stole the Carpet

Let’s get the scene straight, because the details are half the fun. Delevingne and Firstman walked the carpet together, posing arm in arm, laughing, clearly in that giddy premiere-night mood where everything feels slightly unreal. Then came the kiss — brief, playful, and very much on-brand for two people whose friendship has always been louder and funnier than your average Hollywood co-star relationship.

They weren’t alone up there, either. The premiere brought out much of the film’s ensemble, including Reggie Absolom, Colleen Camp, Saturn Risin9, Miss Benny, Alaska Riley, and Jack Cameron Kay. It was a proper turnout for a movie that, until recently, plenty of people hadn’t even heard of. Firstman, for his part, dressed the part of a first-time director having the night of his life, stepping out in Tom Ford.

Now, before anyone starts writing a different kind of headline: no, this isn’t a romance story. Delevingne and Firstman are friends and collaborators, and the kiss landed exactly the way it was meant to — as a celebration between two people who made something together and watched it land. Hollywood red carpets run on that kind of energy, the unscripted stuff you can’t manufacture with a stylist and a seating chart.

What Club Kid Is Actually About

So what is Club Kid, anyway? Here’s the setup, and it’s a good one: a hard-partying New York City club promoter has his whole whirlwind lifestyle turned upside down when a 10-year-old son he never knew he had shows up in his life.

That’s it. That’s the movie. A guy whose entire identity is built on late nights, loud rooms, and never slowing down suddenly has to figure out school runs and bedtime. It’s a fish-out-of-water story, sure, but it’s also the kind of premise that can go painfully sentimental or surprisingly sharp depending on who’s telling it. And in this case, the person telling it is the same person living it on screen.

Firstman stars as the promoter, and he also wrote the screenplay. The film marks his directorial debut, which is a hell of a swing for a first feature — writing, directing, and starring in a movie about a world you clearly know from the inside. New York nightlife isn’t a backdrop here; it’s the whole ecosystem the story grows out of, and Firstman has spent years building a comedy career out of observing exactly that kind of scene.

Delevingne’s role keeps her in familiar but interesting territory. She’s spent the last decade proving, sometimes against the odds, that she’s more than the modelling career that made her famous. From her breakout in Paper Towns to scene-stealing turns in Suicide Squad, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and the second season of Only Murders in the Building, she’s built a filmography that’s genuinely eclectic. A scrappy A24 indie about New York club culture fits right into that pattern — it’s the kind of project she picks because she wants to, not because she has to.

Jordan Firstman’s Big Swing Behind the Camera

Here’s the part that makes this story bigger than one red carpet kiss. Firstman didn’t come up through film school and short films. He came up through the internet — specifically, through the kind of viral comedy that made him one of the most recognizable funny voices on Instagram, where his impressions and sketches built him a loyal following long before Hollywood knew what to do with him.

That path matters, because it explains the tone people keep noticing in Club Kid. The movie isn’t a polished studio comedy, and it isn’t trying to be. It’s got the slightly chaotic, lived-in feel of someone who actually knows these rooms, these people, these 3 a.m. conversations. Firstman spent years turning that world into jokes online; now he’s turned it into a story with real stakes, and the critics, so far, are buying it.

Directing yourself in your own debut is no joke, by the way. Plenty of experienced actors have tried it and produced something stiff and self-conscious. The early word on Firstman is that he avoided that trap — that the film feels loose and confident rather than careful, which is a rarer compliment than it sounds.

The Reviews Are… Suspiciously Perfect

Let’s talk numbers, because these ones are genuinely eye-catching. Club Kid currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 65 reviews counted. That’s not a handful of friendly festival write-ups, either. Sixty-five critics, zero rotten. In an era when even beloved movies usually pick up a few dissenters, that’s a startling run.

The praise itself is warm in a way that feels specific rather than generic. TheWrap called the film an earnest, heartwarming look at parenting and a celebration of the warmth in unconventional lifestyles. The Hollywood Reporter praised it as a confident, exciting debut, stylish without showing off and agreeably paced. IndieWire went further, handing it an A- and arguing that the film has real breakout potential beyond its seemingly niche scope — and that Firstman has finally dropped the ironic pose of his online years to emerge as a sincere storyteller with heart as much as humor.

That last point is the one that keeps coming up, and it’s worth sitting with for a second. The arc here — internet ironist grows up and makes something sincere — is basically the movie’s own plot, just played out in real life. A guy known for not taking anything seriously made a film about a guy who has to start taking something seriously. You can’t write that kind of symmetry. Well, actually, Firstman did. That’s the joke.

Why This Movie Might Actually Matter at Awards Season

Here’s where the premiere-night buzz turns into something more serious: Club Kid is already showing up in awards-season conversations. Early predictions have the film in contention for Best Original Screenplay for Firstman, with the writer-director also ranked in the running for Best Actor and Best Director. The movie itself is in the mix for Best Picture.

Now, let’s be honest — early awards predictions in October are about as reliable as weather forecasts for next month. Plenty of films that look like contenders in the fall fade by January, and plenty of eventual nominees aren’t even on anyone’s list yet. But the fact that a small, scrappy A24 comedy-drama about a club promoter and his surprise kid is even in these conversations tells you something about how the film has landed. A24 has a long track record of turning exactly this kind of movie — small, specific, a little weird — into an awards-season story. Think about how many of their films started as festival curiosities and ended up on Oscar night.

The theatrical release date matters here, too. Club Kid opens in theaters on November 6, which puts it squarely in the heart of awards season, when voters are actually paying attention and when a movie with this kind of critical momentum can build an audience week by week. A November release isn’t an accident; it’s a statement of intent.

And then there’s the Delevingne factor. She’s one of those rare stars whose presence on a project signals something to audiences — that it’s going to be interesting, at minimum, and possibly a lot more than that. Her filmography has always leaned toward the unconventional, and her willingness to throw herself into a first-time director’s passion project is exactly the kind of vote of confidence that gets a small film noticed.

A Premiere Night That Felt Like a Beginning

Back to that kiss for a second, because it’s worth remembering what it actually represented. Premiere nights are strange things. They’re part celebration, part job interview, part high-school reunion. Everyone’s dressed up, everyone’s a little nervous, and everyone’s pretending they’re not checking their phone for the first reviews.

For Delevingne and Firstman, though, the night seemed to land as something simpler: two friends, on a carpet, in front of a crowd, thrilled that the thing they made was finally out in the world. The kiss was the exclamation point, but the real story is the sentence underneath it — a first-time director, a former model turned serious actress, and a little movie about growing up that might just be growing into something much bigger than anyone expected.

Club Kid hits theaters on November 6. If the reviews hold and the buzz keeps building, that premiere-night kiss might end up being the first frame of a much longer awards-season story. And if it doesn’t — if the movie just finds its audience quietly and becomes one of those films people recommend to each other for years — well, that’s a pretty good ending too. Either way, Thursday night in Union Square felt like the start of something, and everyone on that carpet seemed to know it.

Source: Just Jared