Nowell in the Call Me Maybe video | Photo: YouTube/CarlyRaeMusic
Holden Nowell doesn’t appreciate being known as ‘the gay guy’ in Carly Rae Jepsen’s viral music video for her song Call Me Maybe.
Since it first debuted in 2012, however, it’s why people recognized him. The video has since been viewed over 1 billion times.
‘It was really difficult for me and really frustrating,’ Nowell, 29, said in an interview with iHeartRadio.ca.
‘I was always the ‘Call Me Maybe’ guy, everywhere I went, and after awhile I got really sick of hearing that.’
In the video, Jepsen has a crush on Nowell’s character. At the end, though, it’s revealed he’s gay and wouldn’t, in fact, be calling her.
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Nowell received $500 for the day-long shoot. He also alleged he was supposed to receive royalties for the video but never did.
As for Jepsen, he didn’t have many words for her.
‘I personally don’t have anything positive to say about Carly Rae,’ he said. ‘She won awards because of that video and she never reached out to me.’
Now, he calls it a ‘learning experience’ and says he’s not bitter.
‘I’m not going to kiss a guy, especially for $500’
Nowell especially doesn’t like being known as the gay guy in the video.
‘The fact that they had to make me gay at the end of the video,’ he said. ‘It was all very… I didn’t like being known as the gay guy in the Call Me Maybe video. It was just something I wasn’t used to.’
Originally, the video was supposed to end with him kissing the other guy. Instead, he gave him his number and that change came from Nowell.
‘I was like, “I’m going to be completely honest with you. I’m not going to kiss a guy, especially for $500.” I said, “I really don’t think I’m comfortable kissing a guy for a music video.”‘
So he came up with the alternate ending.
Now Nowell is a rapper under the name SixXx’Tre. On Wednesday (6 June), he released his debut album, Fade II Black.
During a brawl at a friend’s house in Surrey, British Columbia, he was stabbed repeatedly in the head, Nowell said. It was that experience that inspired the album.
‘If I died that night, most people would have remembered me as the Call Me Maybe guy and that literally ate my soul alive. The album is everything that I had to get out in case I died that night.’
