Actor Lukas Gage's memoir captures the tragicomic spirit of San Diego in the 2000s

Lukas Gage is speaking to me on a video conference call from a room that looks like the set of Spy Kids — aquamarine shelves line the walls with translucent bottles, glasses and maps. The room looks out of time, and yet Gage, with his floppy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, transports me immediately to a time and place I know very well: San Diego in the mid-aughts, the place and time I also was a preteen and teen.

Lukas Gage's memoir, titled "I Wrote This for Attention," is out now.

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Simon & Schuster

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While Gage is most known for his acting work in HBO’s The White Lotus and Euphoria, as well as the science-fiction thriller Companion, most of his memoir, which came out this week, titled I Wrote this for Attention, is about his youth in the sun-drenched and eighth-largest city in the U.S.

I spoke to Gage about the unique aspects of mid-aughts San Diego, the dawn of reality TV culture and how he thinks about fame and attention now.

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Growing up in San Diego

“ San Diego is the most beautiful, idyllic, crazy place to grow up. It literally looks like a postcard,” Gage said. "It feels unreal. Like my high school — we didn't have a football team — it was surf. We had surf P.E. and everyone would walk down to the beach and go surf and then come to school and do yoga.”

But underneath this idyllic postcard image, Gage saw and experienced a lot of dark times.

“There is a huge opiate problem in San Diego. I mean, we would walk down to the border at lunch and go to Tijuana and go to a bar and go to a pharmacy and walk back and go to P.E. … A lot of people that are very wealthy live in San Diego. People with privilege and money have a lot of free time to get high on drugs.”

The perfect amount of famous

Gage’s form of escape as a young person was watching movies and reality TV with his mom. When I asked him why he pursued scripted acting work and didn’t go more the reality TV route, he grinned.

“ Of course, I dabbled in it for a second,” Gage said, referring to his brief appearance on Hulu’s The Kardashians, during which he married Chris Appleton — Kim Kardashian’s longtime hairdresser — in Las Vegas, with Kardashian officiating and a live serenade from Shania Twain, who was wearing jeans and a sparkly tunic. The couple has since divorced.

“ But ultimately I just was more of a fan of it as an outsider," he said. "It's probably a good thing I wasn't on a reality show. I don’t know if that’d be great for me.”

A lot of Gage’s memoir traverses his path to improve his mental health and ultimate diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. He questions why and how to live with his strong desire for attention. I ask him if there’s a level of fame he thinks is the perfect amount, now that he’s had more time in the spotlight.

“ Paul Giamatti is what comes to mind. He is an incredible character actor and a leading man,” Gage said. “I'm sure he gets like three people coming up to him [at dinner], and that feels like the perfect amount to me.”