The last time you saw Josh Helman, he was painted ghostly-white; he had rusty staples holding his face together; and he was strapped to the front of truck, tearing through the desert at a million miles an hour.
That was in Mad Max: Fury Road.
The next time you see Josh Helman … well, let’s just say he’s in something of a compromising position. On a bed. With his crazy girlfriend on the other end of the phone. You can probably guess the rest.
Josh is one of the stars of the new Stan series, Flesh & Bone. It’s a brutal study of what it takes to make it as a professional ballet dancer in New York City, and his first scene is what might be called confronting. So much so, Josh had to tell his Mum, back in Queensland, to brace herself.
“I guess it’s pretty intense,” says Josh, laughing.
“And look, my Mum is the most adorable person on the planet. I sent her a link (to the first episode) and for months, I said, ‘this is an intense show, Mum, and I do some things you’re probably not going to be comfortable with’, but I wanted her to see it. She and my Dad have always supported me, so of course I wanted her to see it.
“Then she was having some internet issues but my brother finally got it to work. I was waiting and waiting for her reaction, and finally she called me and said: ‘Josh, I love you, but do you really want me to watch more of this show?’”
The answer: yes, she should watch more of this show. Flesh & Blood is created by Breaking Bad writer Moira Walley-Beckett; Australian director David Michod (Animal Kingdom) directed the first episode.
Pretty much everyone in the show is made of nothing other than muscle and bone, which may come as a surprise to those who remember Josh, who is one of Hollywood’s genuine rising stars, as a school kid on the Sunshine Coast.
“I was a chubby kid,” he says, grinning, “and I really didn’t have a lot of self-confidence.”
Josh was born in Adelaide. His Dad was an Ansett pilot so the family moved around a bit before settling on the Sunshine Coast. He attended Matthew Flinders Anglican College in Buderim, saying: “Drama and English were the only subjects I was any good at.”
So good, in fact, that Josh was offered the opportunity to study studied creative writing at university while still in High School student, “and I loved it. I always wanted to write. I thought I was going to be a writer. But after I graduated high school, I thought, I’ll audition for acting school and if I get in, I’ll do that.”
Josh Helman and the cast of Flesh and Bone.
Josh applied to QUT; the school accepted just 18 of the hundreds of students who applied, and Josh was one of them.
Josh says his parents were supportive of his career choice from day one.
“Maybe one of them thought, what is your back-up plan? But I knew, and they knew, there was no back up plan,” he says.
His first professional role was on Home and Away.
“I auditioned for a role as a love interest but they made me the resident dickhead,” he says, “and I loved Home and Away. I was scared because it was my first professional role, and they were so nice to me.”
Josh was filming his last episode of Home and Away when he found out that he had landed a role in The Pacific. He moved to Hollywood with “two weeks’ worth of clothes; and I ended up staying two and a half years.”
In the years since then, he’s taking a big chunk out of Hollywood, landing the role of super-villain William Stryker in X-Men: Days of Future Past; and as the menacing Slit in Mad Max.
Of course, he’s also done the hard yards, including “being a very bad barman.”
With his new role in an eight-part series, he’s living the dream of thousands of other young Australians who want to make it in Hollywood.
His advice to those who want to follow in his footsteps is: “If you have a big dream, then you should definitely try. But it can be soul-destroying. There are thousands upon thousands of people trying to make it, and we all look so similar to each other, and we are all trying to stand out. So my advice is: follow your heart. But be the actor you want to be, not the kind of actor somebody else wants you to be. Live your dream. But be prepared for heartbreak.”
Flesh and Bone will debut on Stan on Monday, November 9.
