Josh Thomas did a crazy thing at 17: try stand-up comedy
Actor, writer and producer Josh Thomas was only 17 when he first tried doing stand-up comedy in his native Australia. He did it, he says, because he was a socially inept.
“You do crazy things when you’re 17,” he says. “You drive too fast, you do weird drugs or whatever. Instead I was doing stand-up … I wanted the attention, I was so socially awkward.
“I think stand-up always attracts people who are so socially awkward that they get to plan out what they’re going to say and they get to say it in a room, and then people laugh and applaud. And that’s so comforting if you’re not that good at interaction,” he explains.
He may not have been good at interaction, but he won the stand-up competition out of 1,000 contestants. If he hadn’t, he says, he would never have tried again.
“I started stand-up when I was 17 and I’m 32 now, and I don’t think a 32-year-old would think that was a good idea.”
Good idea or not, Thomas managed to parlay that little victory into two TV series in which he not only starred, but wrote and produced. His latest is “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” airing on
Freeform.
Thomas plays the older half-brother who steps in to raise his two younger sisters when their father dies. It doesn’t sound like a comedy, but it is, and it’s told in Thomas’ unique voice.
That voice, he says, comes from when he was a kid. “I was cripplingly shy but very loud. I was a weird, chubby, gay kid who was always covered in snot. I mean, I was weird,” he leans back and shakes his head.
“My parents just wanted me to get a job. When I was 20, my dad suggested I join the army reserves. I mean, look at me — join the army reserves? Also I had a job on television and was earning more money than he was,” he says.
“Even now he still calls me in and says, ‘You know the thing about your job, it’s just year to year. You never know what next year’s going to be like.’ I’ve produced and show-run 42 episodes of television now. This is my job. You can relax, it’s fine.”
Thomas says the only part of the work that stresses him is the “blank page.”
“Because I write the show and I produce it, I feel a bit more control. I know how to write things. I know how to produce things. And I know how to act. If I was just an actor and going out there and, like, hoping that somebody writes a role that suits you and trying to get lucky like that, it would be a bit scary to me, like if you’re a model and you’re about to age out.”
His first self-produced Aussie series, “Please Like Me,” aired in the U.S. When that ended, Thomas decided to try his luck here. “I had broken up with my boyfriend. I just thought I’d start over again in a new country. It was an overwhelmingly difficult thing to do. It was two years ago.”
The opportunities were more promising in America than in Australia, he says.
“I was excited to restart, to go to a new country. And you think you get to be a whole new person, but actually you don’t get to be a whole new person because you bring yourself with you — which is such a shame. ‘I’m going to be so smart, so elegant all of a sudden.’ It didn’t pan out,” he shrugs.
He may be adept at writing and producing TV shows, but Thomas admits he’s hopeless when it comes to managing everyday chores.
“I’m terrible at having the things I need to survive, a charged battery, a breakfast — I had to eat that pastry this morning — my laptop. Once when I was 19, I had to rebook my flight and turned up at the airport without shoes. I’d neither packed nor worn shoes. I’m terrible at having the things I need to survive,” he says.
Still, Thomas is skilled at adapting events in his own life to the TV screen, no matter how difficult they may have been. “When I was 19, my mom attempted suicide, that’s what the last show was about,” he says.
His parents had divorced and he was staying at his dad’s apartment. When he eventually arrived at his home he found eight voicemails on his phone. “They started at about 2 p.m. The last one was my mom was just fine, the first one was just before she went to the hospital … In a weird way, it affected me on a professional level because it became the show,” he says.
“It changed my perspective on lots of things. For the first time in my life, there was something that was quite real. I was 19. When you’re a teenager, you don’t consider your parents’ feelings that much. I don’t think anybody does. That was a turning point for me.”