Whether as Disney’s Farkle Minkus or a crush-worthy Walter brother – the Californian actor’s been gracing screens with tales of youth since he hit his teens. Now, in I Wish You All The Best, he’s communicating his most powerful yet.
It’s election day in New York. “I feel like the city is very electrified,” Corey Fogelmanis says. His wordplay is unintended but apt, given the currents of change surging through The Big Apple on this fateful Tuesday. Hours after Corey’s morning call with Wonderland, Zohran Mamdani will be named the city’s youngest and first Muslim mayor. However, California-hailing Corey can’t actually vote in his adopted home. “I feel a little bit left out,” the Brooklyn resident smiles. “But it’s still very cool to see people really going out of their way to make a difference.”
Democracy isn’t the only way to ink your mark on the world, however, and as the 26-year-old rounds out 2025, his imprint comes via his craft instead. His lead turn in brooding young adult drama I Wish You All the Best hits cinemas days after our chat. The directorial debut from Tommy Dorfman follows Ben Debacker (Corey), a North Carolina high school student whose decision to come out as non-binary to their conservative parents upends their life as they know it. What follows is their quest for freedom, love, self-discovery and safety – a coming-of-age odyssey with a place in future genre “Best of…” roundups written all over it.
Any such list would likely feature Corey in a few places. “I’m really drawn to coming-of-age stories in general,” he reflects. “It’s such a tumultuous time to be figuring out what you care about and who you are in the world and who you are behind closed doors.” His childhood days as Farkle Minkus alongside Sabrina Carpenter in Disney Channel delight Girl Meets World and ongoing stint on the ranch of My Life with the Walter Boys more than proves his affinity for characters on the cusp of coming into their own.
Corey wears jacket & trousers LOUIS VUITTON; necklace PANDORA; watch OMEGA; ring JUDE BENHALIM.
He’s charmed by stories of works-in-progress, you could say. Off the clock, his new apartment carries a similar allure. Corey moved in earlier this year. However, between heading back to shoot with the Walter clan, promoting I Wish You All the Best, appearing in multiple Conan Gray music videos and filming his big-league Hollywood induction – Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth (releasing Summer 2026) – Corey’s barely been in residence. As a result, curating his interiors has been a bit-by-bit endeavour. “Do you know what I’m tackling now? Rugs,” he highlights. As the East Coast’s temperatures continue their winter decline, the exposed flooring of the converted textile factory has become a harsh match for the soles of his feet when he steps out of bed in the morning. “I don’t need that. The world is cold enough,” he laughs. The other key apartment-related learning curve: “The walls in this building are very thin.” An elderly neighbour recently did a welfare check on Corey after she heard him filming a particularly charged self-tape audition.
He can at least take her concern as testament to his knack for conveying emotion with the required intensity. And his role as Ben gave him, perhaps, his biggest opportunity yet to mine that ability. The adaptation of author Mason Deaver’s 2019 novel drew Corey in for a few reasons when first presented to him, before the project filmed in 2022. It was the first script he’d come across that centred a non-binary protagonist, for one. And then there was the director – best known as an alum of cult teen-hit, 13 Reasons Why, picking up the clapperboard for the first time. “With Tommy on board to lead the ship, I was like, ‘This would be so, so special and historic in a way.’ I think being a trans woman and identifying as non-binary when she was writing the script, this was her story. I felt so much trust in her.”
However, the responsibility the role had to young viewers in Ben’s shoes still weighed heavily. Front of mind during the film’s production was “the kids in rural towns,” he says. “Like where Ben grows up, who are going to see this and hopefully feel affirmed or inspired that there’s a version of this story that ends with a sense of freedom.” Did he hope it would broaden the understanding of parents watching on, too? “I don’t know how you could walk away from it and not have more empathy for a kid in this situation who needs room to expand and room to try things,” he says. “I guess I just hope that people are open-minded enough to consider alternative viewpoints. I think this movie does a really good job of showing people on all different points of the spectrum of understanding who maybe don’t quite know all the answers right away but are willing to learn.”
A case in point is Ben’s previously estranged older sister Hannah (Alexandra Daddario). She and her husband, Thomas (Cole Sprouse), become Ben’s de facto guardians overnight when Ben is chucked out after sharing their non-binary identity with their mum and dad. Getting to grips with parenting a newborn and her teenage sibling at once means – despite her best intentions – Hannah’s acquaintance with Ben’s gender proves clunky. However, “An aspect of this movie that I think is really beautiful is the grace that you see the characters giving each other,” Corey reflects. “She’s trying so hard to connect with Ben, and she’s making mistakes, but what’s so important is that she is willing and wants to make it work.”
That same tenderness is present in Miss Lyons, Ben’s art teacher, played by Girls and Too Much mastermind Lena Dunham. Miss Lyons cocoons Ben with the acceptance, affirmation and safe space many a bewildered queer teenager has sought in a creative classroom. They also impart plenty of pearls of wisdom, like Corey’s favourite line in the film – ”Isolation is not a safe neighbourhood for people like us.” And between takes, “I feel like Lena provided me, Corey, with something that she provides Ben with in the movie: just this chance to laugh.” Tommy would often leave the cameras rolling after they delivered their dialogue. “Lena would just be saying the randomest shit. It was so funny.”
Corey had just one teacher throughout most of his teenage years, due to his filming commitments with Disney. Thankfully, he was comparable to Miss Lyons, he tells me. “He would bring me books and tailor specific authors to me. I’m still in touch with him now. I’m just very grateful for his continued involvement and investment in my brain and well-being.”
Having one continued presence also offered much-needed stability amidst the well-documented choppy tides of growing up onscreen. Now an adult in the public eye – with over five million Instagram followers and column inches speculating on his private life – Corey’s teenage entrance to the industry could, plausibly, have given him a headstart in adjusting to the visibility he continues to experience. “Maybe. But maybe it didn’t allow me to fully develop my sense of self separate from all of that outside opinion,” he ponders. “So it’s hard to say. I don’t think I would have wanted to do it any differently because I learned so much from working professionally from a younger age. But I do wonder what it would have been like to go to high school and college and not have so much energy coming in from people that I didn’t know. There have been times in the past when I’ve been really wrapped up in how people perceive me. That has been really disorienting.”
That anxiety around others’ view of him would seemingly rule him out of Showtime reality show, Couples Therapy. It’s Corey’s recent TV obsession, in which contributors allow cameras into their real-life sessions with psychoanalyst Dr Orna Guralnik. “It’s fascinating to me that people are willing to be that vulnerable. I think as an actor, I’m also living out real life in a way, but it’s under the guise of someone else.” However, he’s learning more and more that that level of unbridled vulnerability – a full-scale emotional submersion – is what his craft now demands, given he’s advancing at such pace.
An emotional climax of I Wish You All the Best sees Ben and Hannah practising a coping mechanism Ben’s recently picked up – scream therapy. Self-explanatory, it involves an attempt to release deep-seated emotions by simply screaming them out. However, when it came to recording said scene, it was 2 am, after a full day of filming, prior to a compact week of shoots ahead. “I didn’t want to hurt my vocal cords. But at the same time, I was like, ‘Ben in this moment is not thinking about their vocal chords.’” So Corey let out a scream that – if the final cut is anything to go by – would surely rival any previous attempts to set a threshold for decibels recorded. “I was fully ready to hurt myself a little bit. And I think that’s kind of how I am approaching my work for now, because these things live forever and I want to do justice to these moments that these characters are experiencing.”
It was a well-timed craft realisation given Corey is now under the direction of industry legend David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl, Seven) in The Adventures of Cliff Booth. “It’s really cool to work with someone who has such a clear vision for what he wants to be going on in his frame,” Corey enthuses. “I like knowing what exactly I’m existing within and then being able to play around within that.”
Corey would like to, himself, transition to the director’s chair one day. But, “I’m not sure I want to be in the driver’s seat just yet. There’s such a responsibility.” For now, he’s wrapping up Cliff Booth before returning to Canada to film Season 3 of My Life with the Walter Boys. Not to mention honing his apartment, his new hobby of rock climbing, and a recently attempted chocolate chip muffin recipe. “I really want to perfect that.” He recently embellished it with a brown sugar frosting. “That was a game changer.”
In literary terms, I Wish You All the Best does come with a sequel, of sorts: 2020 novella, I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Corey hasn’t read it. “Maybe some part of me is holding out because I’m like, ‘I would love to revisit these characters and work with Tommy again and Miles and just see where we’re at in some years time,’” he admits. “What’s really interesting is that there are so many ways that the story can go,” he concludes. “Identity is ever-evolving.” So, too, is Corey Fogelmanis.
I Wish You All the Best is available to stream online from November 25th
Photography by Daniel Prakopcyk
Styling by Wojciech Christopher Nowak
Words by Andrew Wright
Grooming by Clay Nielsen at Tracey Mattingly Agency
Producer Dakota Griffin of 199X New York
Photography Assistant Cody Cutter
Fashion Assistant Brittney King
Fashion Film Director/ DP Mylo Butler