I
was not very familiar with Josh Duhamel before this, aside from
seeing him shirtless often when doing research and of course knowing
a little of his work on the television series LAS VEGAS as well as
his well publicized relationship with Black Eyed Pea, Fergie.
Aside from that, he gained attention for his role in WIN A
DATE WITH TAD HAMILTON and will be hitting the big screen next
summer with TRANSFORMERS. But
horror fans will get a glimpse of Josh this Friday in TURISTAS,
the latest travel friendly thriller from Fox Atomic.
I
got a chance to meet up with Mr. Duhamel at the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel in
Beverly Hills
recently. Even when I first
arrived and saw him in the hallway I realized what a nice guy he
was. Hailing from
North Dakota
, he has this true small town decency in the way he talks to you and
how he seems to realize that he is blessed, to have gone from the
soap, ALL MY CHILDREN to working with
Michael
Bay
and a bunch of transforming robots.
He spoke about said robots and also about his time in
Brazil
with his fellow TURISTAS.
Josh
Duhamel
John
[Stockwell] was saying that you liked the lack of luxury and the big
trailer and all that stuff that you didn’t have making this
movie…
I
liked the lack of it?
Yeah.
I
did like it to be honest. I
knew going into this that it was going to be a challenge, like a
physical challenge. Just
reading it, you know that it’s going to be pretty rugged the whole
way through and it was and I think that he liked that, he secretly
liked watching us suffer that son of a bitch.
But it’s true; we were… partially because a lot of the
places we were shooting you couldn’t get a trailer into anyway.
But, the most we had, for the most part were little tents out
in a… they had little areas where they had tents and stuff like
little fold up chairs and stuff but that was about the extent of
base camp. Which is kind
of fun, you know, I’ve been working on [LAS] VEGAS for four years
now, it’s nice to have that luxury but it’s also nice to get
your hands dirty and really get into something.
Would
you ever take a trip like that?
Or have you ever?
To
Brazil?
Yeah,
something like that?
Oh
yeah. Yeah, yeah I
would, I mean obviously I ‘m hoping this movie isn’t too much of
a diversion to people traveling abroad because it is a great country
and if you’re smart, you’ll be fine.
But I would definitely go; I’m actually going back for New
Years. I hope they
don’t lynch me. [Laughing]
I’m
sure you’ve seen your fair share of horror films, what is it like
to be in one?
Ah,
well, when I first read it I didn’t really consider it a horror
film. I mean, it was
scary and there were definitely aspects of that but it felt more of
like an intense sort of thriller that… it’s one of those scripts
that I read that I started it and I never stopped reading it the
whole way through. And
whenever I read something like that it feels like it’s going to
be, at least an interesting movie.
Whether it’s a movie like this or a romantic comedy or
whatever kind of movie, if you can read it from beginning to end
without stopping, in my case because I have a short attention span,
you know, I was attracted to it.
It
wasn’t because it was a horror film, it turns out that what I
liked about it was in the beginning it’s not so much like…
it’s these people on this trip and things are going kind of wrong,
it’s okay but we sort of capture the essence of Brazil with the
music and the dancing and the sexiness of it; the whole vibe of
Brazil. But then it
takes that turn, and what I liked that he did, that he really
didn’t hold back, he really pushed the envelope…
It is horror in a way, but I saw it as an intense kind of
thriller.
How
was it filming the underwater sequence?
Ah…
[Long pause] It was okay. [Laughing]
It was fun at first but three weeks into it, it was like, “Okay,
I’ve gotta get back into the water.”
Like I remember like after a Sunday, after a day off, just
chillin’, doing nothing, first thing Monday morning I forgot to
get mentally prepared to swim under this rock shell and find air and
suck the air up and come back out.
And I just sort of did it and I realized, I was like, “Oh
my God!” [Coming up for air] and I panicked and I got out and I
was freaking out because I wasn’t ready for it.
Are
you a good swimmer?
Yeah,
but this was after I had done it a bunch of times too.
You really had to get yourself mentally prepared to go under,
because it’s basically a ceiling of… you swim under the surface
of this rock thing. There’s
air bubbles underneath there you have to find [Breathing] and
there’s a camera guy underneath the water, so you have to find
these air bubbles, suck up the air and then come back out.
Or else go to the next one.
How
many hours do you think you stayed in the water?
A
lot. [Laughing]
Usually you spend a day doing it, but you’d be in then
you’d be out. They
took good care of us, there was always someone with a towels and
stuff, it wasn’t so bad.
How
do you deal with the “heartthrob” image that you have?
I
don’t know… I mean…
Are
you comfortable with that? You
don’t seem to be. I
mean, how does that sit with you?
Well…
I don’t know, I mean, I don’t see myself as that, I really
don’t. I feel like
I’m… I understand that it helps in a way because if that’s
gonna help me get to what I wanna do, you know, there’s a lot of
things that I wanna do, a lot of things that I feel I’m capable of
doing. I haven’t
necessarily had the chance to do it yet but eventually I will.
Has
it ever worked against you?
I’m
sure it has but…
Does
it include many frustrating stereotypes?
If
it has, I’m sure I don’t even know about it.
My agent’s not going to tell me that.
What’s
your role in the TRANSFORMERS?
I
play this male hunk. [Laughter]
I seduce the robots into going back into outer space with my
hunkiness. I’m
kidding. [Laughter] No,
I’m not. [Laughter continues]
With
John [Stockwell], who kind of went through what you did, did he have
any advice or was it good to work with someone who’s kind of been
in your shoes?
You
know what; we didn’t even approach the subject.
I think he knew I was game to do whatever.
I was very happy to be, I feel very appreciative of my
situation. Whatever the reason it is that I’m here, I feel
appreciative of it. And
I feel like I’ve busted my butt when I was there and I think that
that’s all he cares about. If
I’m out there acting like a prima-donna he would have let me have
it, you know. I think
that he had some respect for me because I was there to work and I
was there to really try and do the best that I could do.
So we didn’t really talk about it.
He’d make fun of me once in awhile for certain things but
that’s fine.
You’ve
been getting quite a number of roles now; did you ever see that
happening? Because not a
lot of actors get that transition from daytime [soaps] to prime time
to film and be that successful and you seem to have made that
transition work for you and still keep your day job.
Yeah,
it’s been good. That’s
why I feel very lucky. I
feel very lucky to be in the situation I’m in.
I don’t know why, but it’s been… I have very good
representation. Other
than just being fortunate and working hard I don’t know what the
reason… I don’t know how to explain.
I just hope that it keeps going that way. [Laughter]
How
did you work out the schedule between this, TRANSFORMERS and LAS
VEGAS?
TURISTAS
was easy because it was in between the hiatus, like I had to ask for
an extra week from coming back from Brazil.
But I came back on a Friday and I had to come back to work on
Monday and I was sick after coming back from Brazil, I had this lung
something, it took months to go away.
I think it was from all the underwater swimming and stuff but
this time was tough. Transformers
went four months into production on Vegas and it got hairy, it got
ugly between some of them, but its fine.
With
TRANSFORMERS, there is such a huge fan base…
Yeah,
I didn’t realize it. I
was a fan of it as a kid too but I didn’t realize it was that big
still. When [Michael
Bay] told me he was going to do it, I was actually in a meeting in
Michael Bay’s office for the movie THE HITCHER that they just
shot, meeting his two partners and Michael Bay pops his head in and
says hey, how you doin? And
I’m like, hey… it’s Michael Bay.
I shook his hand.
I’d
never met him before and he sits down and we’re all talking and he
tells me about this movie TRANSFORMERS and I couldn’t believe that
they were making that movie because all I remembered was the
cartoon. And two months
pass and I get a call from his office saying he wants to see me for
this movie, for this part of Lennox and I’m like, “Okay!”
So I go in and he starts showing me all the artwork and stuff
that they have and it’s so cool some of the stuff that there…
it’s so much more advanced then I can even imagine, it’s like,
now I get why they are making this movie.
Because it’s so much more modern than it was before.
Captain
Lennox?
Yeah,
I play Captain Lennox. I’m
the captain of this special opps team over in Iraq and we’re
coming back from this mission, we’re getting ready to go home and
when Vortex comes in as a US Helicopter and basically transforms and
incinerates this base. So,
and then we run for the desert and end up somehow finding our way
back and get communication with the US and they come and get us and
go back.
Is
this your first time working with a “blue screen”?
We
didn’t do much blue screen. It
was mostly, a lot of big stick with tennis balls on them, but not a
lot of blue or green screen.
Did
you have to read for Michael Bay?
Oh,
yeah.
Did
that make you nervous?
Yeah…
I had to do it the other day for George Clooney which was even more
nerve-wracking.
Really,
can you talk about it?
I’d
rather not.
Bad
luck…
Yeah.
You
know TURISTAS
kind of deals with a lot of real life frightening situations, what
is it in real life that frightens you?
Oh
yeah, I’m a big… plenty of stuff.
Just moving here from North Dakota was terrifying.
How
old were you when you moved out?
Twenty-five…
No, twenty-two when I moved here I went to… I was in Northern
California for five years and then moved to Southern California when
I was twenty-six.
What
was the scariest part?
Just
moving away, well, I moved to a little town that wasn’t dissimilar
to where I’m from so, you know, I did it gradually so I didn’t
just go to L.A., which would have been too much.
Do
you enjoy the “red carpet” experience?
You know the sort of bullshit part of the job…
Yeah…
that’s why I don’t do it that much.
I’ll go to the stuff I have to go to but it’s just too…
I don’t deal with it well, the red carpet stuff well because I
just feel like I don’t belong there.
And that’s just something I just have to go to, I just feel
like I’m there too… I don’t know; I just don’t deal with it
well. Listen to this, I
was supposed to go to… my manager got me invited to the BABEL
premiere and my mother in town, she was gonna go with me and she was
taking a reflexology class so she was going to be there late, so I
was going to go by myself. I
got dressed up and I was getting ready and I drove up in my car and
I, there was all these camera’s and stuff there, and I was like…
I just kept driving.
So
you think you’re more of an introvert than an extravert?
Yeah.
Little bit. It’s
fine, it’s not like I’m afraid of it, you know, I just don’t.
Is
that opposite of your girlfriend [Fergie] who seems to be such an
extravert?
Oh
she loves it, she loves it. But
she doesn’t do a lot of it either unless she has to.
And we stay out of it as much as we can.
Just because, you see so much of that stuff get blown out of
proportion, you become a target and they build you up and they just
bust you down. I’d
rather not do that.
Have
you ever thought about going back and getting your degree, because
you are one semester away…
I
got it! I got my degree
in biology man. Actually
I think they gave me the degree in general studies because I’ve
been there like ten years so I took some bullshit classes and they
gave me the degree. Cuz
I was one credit away when I left.
Let
me know what you think. Send
questions and comments to jimmyo@joblo.com.