PASADENA, Calif. _ Actor, writer and producer Josh Thomas was only 17 when he first tried doing stand-up comedy in his native Australia. He did it, he says, because he was a socially inept.
"You do crazy things when you're 17," he says. "You drive too fast, you do weird drugs or whatever. Instead I was doing stand-up ... I wanted the attention, I was so socially awkward.
"I think stand-up always attracts people who are so socially awkward that they get to plan out what they're going to say and they get to say it in a room, and then people laugh and applaud. And that's so comforting if you're not that good at interaction," he explains.
He may not have been good at interaction, but he won the stand-up competition out of 1,000 contestants. If he hadn't, he says, he would never have tried again.
"I started stand-up when I was 17 and I'm 32 now, and I don't think a 32-year-old would think that was a good idea."
Good idea or not, Thomas managed to parlay that little victory into two TV series in which he not only starred, but wrote and produced. His latest is "Everything's Gonna Be Okay," airing on Freeform.
Thomas plays the older half-brother who steps in to raise his two younger sisters when their father dies. It doesn't sound like a comedy, but it is, and it's told in Thomas' unique voice.
That voice, he says, comes from when he was a kid. "I was cripplingly shy but very loud. I was a weird, chubby, gay kid who was always covered in snot. I mean, I was weird," he leans back and shakes his head.
"My parents just wanted me to get a job. When I was 20, my dad suggested I join the army reserves. I mean, look at me _ join the army reserves? Also I had a job on television and was earning more money than he was," he says.
"Even now he still calls me in and says, 'You know the thing about your job, it's just year to year. You never know what next year's going to be like.' I've produced and show-run 42 episodes of television now. This is my job. You can relax, it's fine."
Thomas says the only part of the work that stresses him is the "blank page."
"Because I write the show and I produce it, I feel a bit more control. I know how to write things. I know how to produce things. And I know how to act. If I was just an actor and going out there and, like, hoping that somebody writes a role that suits you and trying to get lucky like that, it would be a bit scary to me, like if you're a model and you're about to age out."
His first self-produced Aussie series, "Please Like Me," aired in the U.S. When that ended, Thomas decided to try his luck here. "I had broken up with my boyfriend. I just thought I'd start over again in a new country. It was an overwhelmingly difficult thing to do. It was two years ago."
The opportunities were more promising in America than in Australia, he says.
"I was excited to restart, to go to a new country. And you think you get to be a whole new person, but actually you don't get to be a whole new person because you bring yourself with you _ which is such a shame. 'I'm going to be so smart, so elegant all of a sudden.' It didn't pan out," he shrugs.
He may be adept at writing and producing TV shows, but Thomas admits he's hopeless when it comes to managing everyday chores.
"I'm terrible at having the things I need to survive, a charged battery, a breakfast _ I had to eat that pastry this morning _ my laptop. Once when I was 19 I had to rebook my flight and turned up at the airport without shoes. I'd neither packed nor worn shoes. I'm terrible at having the things I need to survive," he says.
Still, Thomas is skilled at adapting events in his own life to the TV screen, no matter how difficult they may have been. "When I was 19 my mom attempted suicide, that's what the last show was about," he says.
His parents had divorced and he was staying at his dad's apartment. When he eventually arrived at his home he found eight voicemails on his phone. "They started at about 2 p.m. The last one was my mom was just fine, the first one was just before she went to the hospital ... In a weird way it affected me on a professional level because it became the show," he says.
"It changed my perspective on lots of things. For the first time in my life there was something that was quite real. I was 19. When you're a teenager you don't consider your parents' feelings that much. I don't think anybody does. That was a turning point for me."
JULIETTE LEWIS LANDS ON FACEBOOK WATCH
Versatile actress Juliette Lewis is starring in the new streaming series for Facebook Watch called "Sacred Lies: Singing Bones," premiering Thursday. She's new to the medium, but Lewis _ who's known for films like "Natural Born Killers" and "Cape Fear," (and who stole the show in "Camping") _ says she's up to the task. "You have all these new platforms where we're finding really great storytelling," she says.
"And for me, first and foremost, it was the power of the script ... . and then Facebook Watch, I had to learn about it. And so it was educational because I saw, 'Oh, they have a show with Catherine Zeta-Jones. They have a show with Jessica Biel, with Elizabeth Olsen _ peers of mine.' So I was like, 'Oh, OK, maybe it's cool, right?'
"But by and large, you're just looking for great storytelling these days," she continues. "And I fancy myself a character actress. So when I first read this script, this character jumped off the page. I knew I could see her behavior, I could feel her soul, she's people I've seen in the street, and she's an amalgamation of a few people I've known in my life. And her shut-in aspect of being a hermit and obsessive and single-minded about something, that drive, it really resonated for me."
Lewis, whose dad was an actor, tells me she was bitten by the acting bug early. "I got to meet Clint Eastwood on the set when I was 7. I didn't know him like you would KNOW him, nevertheless, I had a mad crush on him. I like him. I still like him."
PACINO STARS IN 'HUNTERS'
Al Pacino has buried teamster Jimmy Hoffa from "The Irishman" and hopped on over to Amazon Prime, where he stars in the new 10-part series "Hunters," premiering Friday.
The story takes place in 1977 when a band takes vengeance on a group of Nazis who are trying to wrest power in the U.S.
Pacino tells me he first became interested in acting when he was very young.
"My teacher in school was encouraging to my mother," he says. "And she actually came to my house. They were encouraging. And my mother was very encouraging. Then reality stepped in and everything stopped for a long time, and it was a question of just surviving _ living life and just trying to pay the rent. So that became life for a while.
"But I always felt the desire; feel maybe I had natural abilities as a youngster. I did a lot of clowning around. And at one point, I guess I just sort of got on the subway, came to a man and started studying acting at the School of Performing Arts as a teen. They had good drama classes.
"Then I got into the Actors Studio at a young age. I think my dear friend, Charlie Laughton, my mentor, had a lot to do with it. He and I became friends in my teens. I think what Charlie did for me as an actor was introduce me to the world of literature and the kind of education that I wouldn't normally have had, because I never read them in school."
'FORENSIC FILES' ADVANCES TO NEW SERIES
It's been nine years since HLN produced any new "Forensic Files," but that hasn't kept people from watching them. So the good news is "Forensic Files II" arrives on Sunday with a whole new phalanx of crime-solving experts armed with the latest scientific discoveries to quell the evil-doers.
Nancy Duffy, executive producer of the new show, explains: "We are telling the same kinds of stories in the same way. But in the time since they stopped production in 2011, forensics has come a long way. So we have stories about technology that just didn't exist at that time. So we're excited that we can feature these new investigators and the new forensic scientists and bring these new stories and the technology out."
The sonorous voice of Peter Thomas will no longer narrate the show, as he died four years ago. Actor Bill Camp ("Joker") serves as the new narrator.
Camp says he's a fan of the show.
"It's a series that I've been watching for some time. I started watching it maybe six, seven years ago. And it's a great privilege to be working on this newer version, 'Forensic Files II,'" he says. "I'm honored and thrilled to be a part of it and to be with it as the new decade starts. But it's great storytelling so, yeah, I'm engaged with it right away. It's really succinct and suspenseful. And as a viewer and a storyteller myself, I'm automatically engaged with it.
"I'm hooked in every aspect and quite moved at times as well. Because it deals with the families of the victims, it also _ we see a side of the investigators, too, where they're personally invested. And as an actor, just with my imagination, I'm in the position sometimes where I'm truly moved by it. Yeah, so it gets to me."
