Taron Egerton has revealed that he deliberately avoided reading reviews of Apex, marking the first time in his career that he managed to completely stay away from critics’ reactions to one of his movies. The actor discussed his decision during an appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, where the conversation turned toward the mixed critical response to the Netflix survival thriller.
Egerton stars opposite Charlize Theron in Apex, playing Ben, a hunter who targets Theron’s character, Sasha, after she ventures into the Australian wilderness. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur, the film was released on Netflix on April 24, 2026. Despite the divided critical response, Apex quickly attracted significant streaming attention and topped Samba TV’s weekly streaming chart shortly after its release.
Why Taron Egerton chose to ignore Apex reviews
During the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard appearance, Shepard defended the filmmaking and performances in Apex while questioning some of the criticism directed at the movie. Egerton agreed that modern film criticism can be complicated by the way reviews are consumed and promoted online.
Egerton explained that he considers it unusual for actors to openly acknowledge how much attention they pay to reviews. He said actors are often expected to behave as though critical reactions do not matter, even though avoiding that temptation can be difficult.
For Apex, however, Egerton managed to do exactly that.
“I didn’t read one,”
he said, describing the experience as the
“first time in my entire career”
that he had avoided reading reviews altogether.
The decision appears to have been connected to Egerton’s broader concern about allowing outside opinions to influence his own relationship with his work. Rather than judging the movie through critics’ reactions, he wanted to determine how he personally felt about the finished film.
Egerton questions the way movie reviews are consumed
Egerton also argued that the modern review environment can reward provocative opinions over balanced criticism. He suggested that a thoughtful assessment may not attract the same attention online as a more extreme reaction designed to generate clicks.
He acknowledged that reviewers, like everyone else, bring their own perspectives and motivations to their work.
“Everybody’s coming from their own subjective experience. Everybody has an agenda,”
Egerton said during the podcast.
That perspective has influenced how he approaches reviews more generally. Instead of looking for external validation, the actor said he is increasingly interested in asking himself how he actually feels about a project.
While Apex received mixed reviews, critics did recognize elements of the production, including Theron’s demanding physical performance and the film’s striking wilderness cinematography. Egerton’s comments therefore highlight a distinction between a movie’s critical reception and an actor’s personal assessment of the work after production is complete.
