Television star Josh Thomas on why he’s leaving LA
Television star Josh Thomas has had the kind of US success most local comics could only dream of. So why has he had enough of LA?
You scored an international hit with the television series, Please Like Me and launched a show Everything’s Gonna Be Okay off the back of it. What’s it like to be a big international success? I don’t really feel like that’s true. But it’s true enough, I guess – I’m more successful than some people. I definitely don’t really think that showbusiness is my job. I’m not in that world, I’m not going to those parties anymore. I don’t like other people in showbusiness very much, to be honest. And I don’t own a pool. I think if that was true, I’d have a pool, wouldn’t I?
For the past seven years Los Angeles has been home. What’s your relationship like with LA? I’m leaving, I’m moving back to Australia. My relationship with LA is that I’m leaving. My relationship is that I want to go. We’re not a culture match. We don’t value the same things. Sometimes I sit down and I look at really Botoxed faces that don’t move, and I can’t tell what they’re thinking. And I think that’s a weird priority. It feels like that’s the most obvious, superficial thing to say about LA but it actually is the city. They’re doing the thing that you think they’re doing.
How are you feeling about performing live at home again? I’ve just toured America, and Americans say supportive compliments while I’m doing the show. Like they’ll say, “Oh, yeah”, or, like in a nice way, they’ll say, “That was silly” or once someone literally yelled out “Affirmation”. In Australia, when you do comedy and someone yells out, that means you’re at war. I’m really excited about that, actually.
Is there anything you won’t talk about in public? I really don’t think there’s anything that I’m scared of talking about in public, to the point where it’s actually sort of psychotic. But comedy at the expense of other people is not something anybody wants to hear these days. I don’t think I was ever particularly doing comedy at the expense of other people by the standards of the day – but I think by the standards of today, I probably was.
Why have you chosen to build a live show around the concept of “tidying up”? For me, trying to keep things tidy is just like a constant battle. And I keep getting these diagnoses – first ADHD and then autism. And in the process of getting diagnosed, this psychiatrist accidentally said it was uncurable (sic), which she wasn’t meant to say. You’re not meant to describe someone’s personality as uncurable. That’s what the show is about. Trying to work out whether I am, and we are, uncurable.
Has your autism diagnosis helped you make sense of the world and yourself? It’s really nice to have someone sit you down, like having an expert sit you down, and say, “Yes, Josh, the world actually is a little bit more challenging for you than it is for everybody else.” Once you find that out, you can relax a little. So it doesn’t make me see myself or the world differently, it makes you be a bit less hard on yourself, which you sort of wish everybody would do.
What’s next for you? Why does every interview always end with, “What’s next for you?” It’s like talking to my mum or my dad. That’s six months of work. It’s actually going to go until July. I’m performing at the Sydney Opera House – that’s impressive enough for a while.
Josh Thomas’s Let’s Tidy Up is on tour nationally.
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