Joshing around with the Timaru Tongan
Prime time television and a feature film beckon for a comedian who has known tough times, writes Steve Kilgallon.
THERE’S an anecdote about being asked for a selfie while he was in The Warehouse, midway through bartering over the precise sale price of a toilet brush. Or checking his mail in his undies, and having someone scream one of his advertising slogans at him.
Josh Thomson’s stories, punctuated by cracks about his girth and scruffy appearance, don’t paint the picture of a feature film lead and a primetime television fixture – but within a month he will be both those things.
One conclusion reached by Thomson, who will front and provide the laughter for TV3’s nightly news digest The Project (launching tomorrow at 7pm) and head up the forthcoming Kiwi movie Gary of the Pacific, is this: ‘‘I guess I aman unglamorous guy.’’
Another is that being only the fourth Tongan in Timaru provided the mix to create someone entirely comfortable in their own skin. ‘‘I guess there was always that element of making fun of myself before anyone else could,’’ he says. ‘‘And I became quite good at it.’’
Thomson, 35, has done the hard yards, the shitty jobs, the breadline cooking. But the past few years have delivered parts in the movie Pork Pie; TV series Step Dave, Hounds, Coverband, 7 Days and Terry Teo; the clever web-series The Critic and the Pig; his own online show Subject: Dad, where he reenacts his father’s emails; and a forthcoming Netflix thing he’s not meant to tell me about.
It starts in Timaru, where his late mother Soana was the first Tongan on the census. She met and married his father, David, a civil engineer of fourthgeneration Scots farming stock, when he was doing volunteer service in Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, designing the international airport.
Thomson was never bullied at school. His father suspects his brothers Michael and Tevita paved the way and Thomson’s natural humour handed the rest. And it helped being the biggest kid in the playground and on the rugby field. Thomson went to Otago Universitywhere he got into stand-up comedy, he says, to meet girls and party. It was poorly paid and he would drink his fee at the bar anyway. But around this time, he first ran into acting coach Mike Saccente, who talked him into diverting from serious dramatic acting into comedic roles. When he headed to Auckland he worked in his brother’s fiancee’s father’s fish (and chip) shop in Mt Eden. Although there were some ads for Cash Converters, for several years he was living week to week. But he never asked his parents for a handout. Instead, he got into editing, which he loves, and directing and writing gigs when there wasn’t enough acting work.
The real career breakthrough was probably his continued employment by The Downlow Concept, a trio of producers who hired Thomson as an editor but also kept casting him as the lead in most of what they made. He’d met Jarrod Holt, Ryan Hutchings and Nigel McCulloch in about 2005, auditioning for a scripted radio comedy they used to do for George FM.
It began with Brown Peril, a clever short film about an aspiring Tongan badminton player (Thomson), which won the 2006 48 Hour film festival.
From that came Only Son, which won the 2010 contest. Then came some really good but quite obscure comedy shows like Hounds and Coverband. All the while, Thomson was working from their editing suite.
In Only Son, a lovelorn Thomson takes tips from his dead father on how to woo the character played by Dunedinborn actor Elizabeth McGlinn. They’re now married. Saccente tells how they met in an acting masterclass. ‘‘He was sitting behind me and she walked into a class and he literally said, ‘wife’,’’ says Saccente.
Thomson officially left the Downlow payroll to edit, write and shoot the first two seasons of Jono’s New Show but he never really left: his new movie, Gary of the Pacific, is a Downlow production. So far, there’s only a trailer to view of this story of a Kiwi real estate agent who discovers he’s inherited a chiefly title back in the Islands.
Where all this is headed is hard to say. He wanted the lead in a movie – but he’s done that now. He’d like to put more effort into writing his own scripts.
‘‘I think he’s one of the best comedic actors in New Zealand, one of the best comedic actors in the world, he just needs that opportunity to be discovered,’’ says McCulloch. ‘‘I think he could definitely be in that same camp as Jemaine Clement and Rhys Darby ... he’s got a comedic sensibility that would translate well anywhere.’’
For now, he has to turn up on live TV five nights a week at 7pm and be funny. ‘‘It’s dawning on me what I’ve signed up for,’’ he says, with an expression that says the exact opposite of the words coming out of his mouth. ‘‘It’s quite a big difference to anything I’ve ever done before.’’
I think he’s one of the best comedic actors in New Zealand.’ NIGEL MCCULLOCH OF THE DOWNLOW CONCEPT