Josh Thomas opens up about his return with two major projects
After a year of self-imposed silence Josh Thomas opens up about his new life in Hollywood, biggest regrets and why staying famous is so hard.
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There’s a small part of Josh Thomas that wishes he wasn’t making a new TV show. One that he pitched from his LA base and which he’s already had five offers on – virtually a “miracle” he says, and no doubt the perfect present for the comedian, who turned 35 on Thursday.
He doesn’t really wish that, of course. Who would. But his new project will mean staying in the US for another few years at least, delaying a longed-for return to his Melbourne home, which, next time, might just be for good.
“I actually don’t like to tell people because then it falls apart,” the no-filter comedian says from Los Angeles.
“I am making a new TV show and it does sound so good, and then I tell my parents and they’re like, ‘so, when’s the show coming out?’ and it’s like, no, that’s not actually how it works.
“You have to write a pilot script first, and then maybe make a pilot and then go to air, and it’s like one, or two years.
“So you don’t like to announce, to tell people these things, because they get excited, and actually, it’s shocking how much people remember. When you say you’ve got a project coming out and then they bring it up to you.
“It’s almost too early to tell people.
“It’s like the first trimester,” he laughs.
But before all that begins, Thomas is launching his other baby next week, a podcast called How to Be Gay. It’s unflinchingly honest. Funny and movingly raw at the same time, if that’s possible.
Part memoir, part documentary, it’s a bit of everything all rolled into a relatable, charming journal of a man who is very definite about what he wants and doesn’t want, but questions everything, constantly.
Because that’s who Thomas is. He’s shy, but outspoken. And as someone who came out as gay in his early 20s, he hopes people with questions about their sexuality will listen to his podcast and find comfort in hearing other people’s stories, knowing they aren’t alone.
“The point of the podcast is, there is no point,” he says.
“The point is getting to listen to different people, and see where different people are coming from.
“I mean, I don’t talk that much – I really don’t – and that’s because I really wanted to hear from people.
“It’s very reflective. I mean, my show, Please Like Me, was about my life, and I just was shocked that people connected to my character.
“I definitely thought that I was so weird, and probably a ‘bit much’ to put at the centre of a TV show and have people understand where I was coming from.
“And they did. I had messages from people in China that were bootlegging it – because there’s no Netflix in China – and all these other countries.
“It was very surprising to me that people connected with my parents, but also actually really comforting.
“I was like, ‘oh, maybe I’m not that weird’. It’s just that most people on TV are too normal.”
SUBURBAN BOY
Born in the rural Queensland town of Blackwater but raised in the Brisbane suburbs, Thomas first emerged on the comedy scene in 2005 when he won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s RAW Comedy Award.
He was a finalist in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe talent search So You Think You’re Funny?, and in 2007 took his solo show, Please Like Me, to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. That show was adapted as a comedy-drama series for TV by the ABC and became an instant hit, and later, a rare success in the American market for four seasons.
Largely written by Thomas, he also played the main character (also named Josh), who slowly comes to realise he is gay after being dumped by his girlfriend.
By his own admission, Thomas grew up in a very “normal” household. When he was younger, it was two parents, three kids and suburbia. Maybe that’s why he came late to the realisation he was gay, he ponders, but also it could have been that he just liked kissing girls too much to realise he was gay.
It’s a point that forms his biggest lifelong regret, actually.
“I’m like so full-on about the fact that I never had the big gay love affair when I was a teenager. All those intense emotions swirling like a dramatic roller coaster,” he says.
“All that horniness, and (I did not get) to hang out and have a romance with a boy is like the greatest regret of my life.
“I just feel so sad about that.
“But I had a different experience, and I’ve had a lot of romance, so it’s fine. But a full sweeping teen romance just sounds so fun.
“And I’m never gonna get to do it now.”
THE SINGLE LIFE
Today, dating at 35 is fun, he says, but his approach can be a bit too “Seinfeld” to make relationships last, picking on little things and making them big.
But friends with benefits, well, they’re a perk, he admits.
He’s single at the moment, which he used to hate as he’s not so good at being alone. But, like gardening, it might be growing on him.
“I am terrible when I’m alone. Like, if I’m alone, I just lay down,” he says. “That’s all I do.
“I’m like a marionette you put back in its box, you know?
“Every time I date and meet a new boy, I have a crush on them for like three days and then I’m like ‘oh, I don’t like your job’, or something.
“I think in romance you should really be more open and it should be exciting to meet people who can teach you things, and not be so rigid. That’s one of the things that I liked about falling in love. But some people are just single forever.”
His dogs, John and Bilby, may be the loves of his life. They don’t replace the children he never wants to have, because that would be weird, he concedes, but like most petlovers, they’re more than just companions.
John is 15, so Thomas got Bilby during the pandemic because he was worried John would die. He didn’t, so now two dogs play at his feet, one with more energy than the other.
“John didn’t die, so now he’s just living with his replacement and staring at her all day. It’s a pretty awkward situation,” he laughs.
When love does come, he knows marriage isn’t for him. Never has been. Neither are children. His mum says she’s known that since he was 12, an observation he can’t help but take offence to.
“I mean, I’ve never wanted to have a baby and my Mum told me she knew I wouldn’t be a dad and that’s actually quite insulting,” he says.
“Because if somebody says to you ‘you’d make a great dad’, that’s sweet, it’s a nice thing to do, so the opposite of that is a bit weird.
“Gay marriage was definitely something that we needed and absolutely should have access to, but it’s not something that anybody should do.
“Why? Because marriage is dumb.
“The last two episodes of my podcast are about having children, and I don’t.
“So I called my Mum and asked her about it and she was like, ‘well, you’ve got your dogs’, and I call my friend Courtney and asked her about it and she was like, ‘well, you’ve got your dogs’.
“And I found that so depressing.
“I was so happy not to have kids, but to have the dogs substituting the kids felt really sad.
“I don’t want that to be the way everyone sees me, but what choice do they have but to see me that way when all I do is post about my dogs and hang out with my dogs.”
AUTISM DIAGNOSIS
He may be outspoken now, but as a youngsterthere wasn’t much controversial about Thomas’s life, except maybe that he felt “weird” and had no filter and would often say the wrong thing. His mother also had bipolar, which they didn’t know at the time.
Today, things make more sense.
It was only three years ago, after writing a season-and-a-half of his second TV show Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, which featured a lead character with autism, that he got his own diagnosis.
Although probably long overdue, it would have been more surprising if he wasn’t autistic, Thomas says.
“I mean, by the time you get diagnosed, you know, right,” he says.
“By the time I did the appointment, I knew.
“I’d like done my research, so when you get the actual diagnosis, I don’t think it’s an epiphany moment.
“If I had gone into that meeting with the psychologist and they’d said I wasn’t autistic, that would have been much more shocking.
“I was diagnosed ADHD first, autism second, and both times the big advice people give you is understanding that there are things that I’m just not good at, that I’m never going to be good at, and accepting that’s how it’s going to be and working out how to make that work.
“And it’s actually figuring out what you’re good at and like doing, and doing that more.”
His life is disorganised, he says. His house has “shit everywhere” as he looks around.
“I mean, if you walked into my house right now you would just start weeping,” he says.
“But I did have a party on Sunday, so I guess that’s OK.”
The party was for his 35th birthday. Not something he’d normally celebrate, but after a hard few years through the pandemic, he, like most people he knew, just wanted to get drunk – on a bus.
“So I got drunk the weekend before and told my friends I was gonna rent this party bus, and I thought I rented a party bus, but I hadn’t rented the party bus, and it turns out, it’s prom season,” he says.
“So I had the most stressful week trying to figure out how to get a f —king party bus during prom season.
“All of a sudden, that’s my life. And it took me four days, and it was more of a shuttle than a party bus, but we did it.”
LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD
A lot of crazy things have happened to Thomas since moving to LA.
At first, it was “all showbusiness stuff”, all the time.
“Like I’d end up at like Seth MacFarlane’s holiday party,” he says, smiling.
“And then one night Marilyn Manson ripped my boyfriend’s tuxedo pants off at this party as a joke, and once I accidentally went to Kristin Wiig’s 40th birthday party.
“I was doing a lot of that kind of stuff when I first moved here. But then I realised that I don’t really like it that much.
“So I built myself a smaller world with just, like, a smaller group of friends.”
Embraced by his inner-LA circle, which he loves, the US is where he will live for the next few years at least, but Melbourne will always be home.
And there’s a lot he misses about Australia, not least of which is a good, strong coffee (that isn’t a giant size), and the food. Oh, the food. And of course, his family.
“My Mum is very proud, my Dad is still so worried,” he says.
“Showbusiness makes him nervous.
“Like freelancing – you just never know what will happen next year, and even though I’ve been working really consistently for 18 years, he still can’t lose that fear.”
Thomas has an underlying fear, too, because if he wasn’t doing this, what would he be doing? He’s never worked a 9-5 job, and he could never work for someone else.
“I literally couldn’t think about it and that’s very motivating, because I don’t actually have any other skills and that’s kind of a bit terrifying,” he says.
“I saw this Joan Rivers documentary that she did and she’s, like, old, right, and it’s all about her looking for the next gig, and she’s living this very luxurious life but she has to earn so much money still to pay for this life she’s gotten used to.
“And she’s traipsing around with a f —king suitcase, going to this place in the middle of the snow to do this show, and then books a cruise ship and is wondering what’s next.
“And that documentary scared the shit out of me.
“And it’s one of the reasons why I quit stand-up, actually, because a TV show is like a year’s work, but stand-up is like 20 minutes’ work, and I didn’t want to keep doing that for the rest of my life.
“And that scares me.
“I do think ‘well, then what?’. What else is there?”
THE QUIET LIFE
Thomas does not crave fame. A quieter life hastaken over and his garden is thanking him for it.
“I love gardening, I’m like obsessed,” he quips.
“But I also have a gardener who comes every week to make sure that it’s working, and that feels very posh and like a real dream come true.
“What else do I do? I watch a lot of the Real Housewives and I kiss boys and I go to parties.”
So for now at least, his stand-up days are over.
“I am pulling back from performing altogether. It’s just enough,” he says.
“You can feel this pressure to talk all the time, and sometimes I don’t have anything to say.
“I want to talk when I have good things to say.”
There’s the chance people will forget about him after a few years’ break from the stage, but it’s a chance he’s willing to take because “staying famous”, he says, is hard work. In fact, in the last two years he’s done just four press days.
“I don’t do it,” he says. “I don’t feel like I need that attention anymore.
“It’s so much work to get the attention and line it up and do it consistently. It’s a lot of bother and I don’t really feel like I need it anymore.”
Reflecting on his life, he’d never say he is proud – “that sounds a bit gay, you would just never say that” – but he is quietly content.
“I’m really glad I haven’t, like, completely f —ked it up,” he says.
“I mean I started in stand-up when I was 17, that’s 18 years I’ve had in showbusiness.
“There’s definitely been times when I have f —ked it up a bit, but then recovered.
“But yeah, I would say at the moment I do feel content.
“Actually, when I was drunk on my party bus, I thought ‘yeah, this is nice’.” ■
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