The SPY Q+A: Josh Duhamel on the Big Business of Goofing Off
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Josh Duhamel doesn’t care what you think of him, but he also doesn’t not care what you think of him.
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The 50-year-old actor — who broke out as a soap star on All My Children in 1999 and memorably served as the toned, tanned, and gamely goofy love interest opposite Kate Bosworth (Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!) and Katherine Heigl (Life as We Know It) in the 2000s — has evolved past his Hollywood hunk phase, while remaining, well… still very hunky.
But with his film directorial debut Buddy Games (2019), and the new sequel he also helmed, Buddy Games: Spring Awakening (available on digital platforms June 2), he aims for something more personal. Based on his own real-life summer competitions with Midwestern friends who knew him before he was pasted on billboards, the adult, hard R comedy movies take a cue from The Hangover and up the ante. Duhamel as “Bobfather” leads friends through absurd, grotesque dares (one man loses his testicles). As Duhamel explains, Spring Awakening intentionally tweaks so-called “woke” culture (there’s a deranged cult attempting to reprogram alpha males) alongside other psychedelic, gross-out gags. It’s not for everyone, but it’s for Duhamel, and for other dudes who don’t take themselves “quite so seriously,” in his words.
Dressed casually in a faded pink T-shirt and baseball cap not quite covering his salt-and-pepper hair, Duhamel talked to SPY over Zoom about rom-com typecasting, critical blowback, and his favorite T-shirt of all time (hint: it involves Bruce Springsteen).
SPY: What’s something you’ve bought recently that makes you happy?
JD: Well, I just bought a Tomos electric motorbike. An e-bike. Those things are incredible. I bought one of those recently. And that’s been a lot of fun.
I don’t buy a lot of toys for myself. Usually the stuff that I buy is meant to build something or make my space a little bit better. I tend to spend more money out at my cabin [in Minnesota] than I do in LA. It drives my wife crazy because she’s like, “You know that our cabin is nicer than our actual house.” I don’t even own a lawnmower here in LA, and I own a tractor and a skid steer out there.
SPY: What’s your favorite T-shirt you’ve ever owned?
JD: I have this Bruce Springsteen T-shirt from a concert back in the ‘80s. It’s light blue and it’s got a pink Cadillac on it.
Vintage Bruce Springsteen T-Shirt
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Let’s get into the new Buddy Games movie. It seems like you’re embracing your Spring Breakers, give-no-fucks era. What did you want from the tone?
Josh Duhamel: I always loved the idea of: what would it be like to go back as a middle-aged man at 50? These guys lost one of their brothers, tragically, and at the funeral, they end up stealing this urn, and decide that they’re going to spread his ashes where he was happiest. And they realize they’re right in the middle of this spring break that they were banned from years ago.
And then we get into some stuff that is a little bit controversial — a lot of hot topics that people will either think are funny, or maybe they’ll take some offense. The idea was never to do anything mean-spirited. It was always meant to be good-natured — poking fun at all of it, including ourselves. But I think in general, people have been taking themselves a little bit too seriously and that the idea is that we can all laugh a little bit.
SPY: You’ve been working basically nonstop since the late ‘90s. Was this also a chance to recapture some youthful recklessness you missed out on?
JD: No. Believe me, we had plenty of fun back in the day back in college. And I have no desire to go back to that. It’s about the camaraderie and the brotherhood that we all have. I think those relationships are that much more valuable to us as we get older, because it’s hard to make old friends. It’s really about friendship at the end of the day. And [these guys] might learn a little something from the culture, and the culture might learn a little something from them, if we just stop digging our heels in the sand. Maybe listen to the other side. Part of the fun is, yeah, it is three white dudes who probably could learn a thing or two.
SPY: Who are the friends in your real-life Buddy Games?
JD: They’re just my boys from back home. We all grew up in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin. We’re just kind of spread out. They’re just regular guys, the guys that I’ve stayed closest to over the years. They’ve become family.
SPY: What made you want to get behind the camera for the first time with these movies?
JD: I’d had a lot of experiences working with these young directors, and oftentimes, I would find that I knew as much or more than they did just by proxy — just by being on set for so long. I always wanted to direct. I always felt I had an eye for it because I loved to work with directors to block out scenes, and I always had an idea of what a scene should look and feel like. I realized that I knew enough to know that I didn’t have to know everything. I just had to surround myself with good creative people who I could let do their jobs.
SPY: But after all that creative work, it must sting to see the negative reviews of the Buddy Games movies.
JD: Everybody wants to make a great movie. You never set out to do the opposite. There have been a couple of haters out there, which I expected because of the nature of some of the themes here. That’s what it is. It is meant to make people think a little bit differently about some of the extremes in our culture.
SPY: People get outraged over whoever is cast as Batman. But by wading into those social issues, were you worried about sparking a backlash?
JD: Yes, and no. It’s inevitable. These kinds of movies are meant to be purely for entertainment purposes. This is a really fun movie. And the first movie got bashed, but the people ultimately decided, and the movie crushed. I don’t take any of that stuff too much to heart. In fact, with this one, I meant to poke a little bit. You can’t do this stuff to please everybody. You have to make the purest form of whatever your idea is. And that is all we tried to do.
SPY: Have you ever felt like you were pigeonholed earlier in your career as a romantic comedy heartthrob?
JD: They’re always gonna put you in some kind of a box, whether you’re an action star, or a rom-com star, or a comedian, or a drama actor. You know, I started out in soaps, and when I left the soap [All My Children], I got Las Vegas, a primetime NBC show that went five years, and then I was a TV Guide guy until I got Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! [2004]. Then when I got Transformers, I wasn’t so much seen as a rom-com guy until I did Life as We Know It [2010]. Whatever you’re doing at the time, that is the box they want to put you in. For me, it’s always been about trying to break out of that box.
SPY: You were shirtless a lot in those earlier movies. Do you feel like you can relax more now when it comes to your training regimen or body?
JD: Yeah, I mean, I don’t try to stay in shape to be buff-looking when I take my shirt off, that’s for sure. I do it more for wellness now. But again, I care less about what people think these days than I ever have.
SPY: What kind of gear do you buy to get a Buddy Games competition going?
JD: Coolers come in handy. I’m a big fan of good cooler brands. I like Yeti a lot. Yeti cups, Yeti coolers — they do it right over there. They’re not cheap, by the way, but for Christmas, I always asked for them.
Yeti Tundra 35 Cooler
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SPY: If you could get any celebrity friend to join your Buddy Games competition, who would it be?
JD: Jerry O’Connell. I haven’t been able to hang out with him much lately. I think he’d be a great addition.
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