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Mr ‘Very’ Popular: the USA likes Josh Thomas

“I float around,” says Josh Thomas, “and I’ve just been very lucky.”

The 27-year-old Australian comedian is trying to account for his success in what he’d argue is the absence of ambition or strategy.

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Still, look at him: the leading man, writer and executive producer of his own half-hour comedy-drama, Please Like Me, which begins a 10-episode second season in the US on the Pivot network on Friday ahead of its Australian premiere on August 12.

A study in budding adulthood and its pitfalls, the series might be described as Seinfeld blended with a guy-centric Girls.

Interviewed recently in New York, Thomas is in a sweater featuring a large ladybug. He’s gangly and fidgety, yet charming and armed with an infectious cackly laugh.

Last season it followed Josh, a young Melbournian, as he loved and lost a girlfriend, then, acknowledging he’s gay, loved and lost a boyfriend.

Keegan Joyce as Arnold with Josh Thomas as Josh in season two of Please Like Me. Photo: ABC

Keegan Joyce as Arnold with Josh Thomas as Josh in season two of Please Like Me. Photo: ABC

He came out to his divorced parents while coping with his father’s overbearing new wife and with his bipolar mother’s wild mood swings.

But through it all, Josh kept his head above water. He’s a bloke who floats around.

Thomas has ample material from his own life to fuel his series, just as, a decade ago, it powered his entry into stand-up when he began showing up at Melbourne clubs for open-mic sessions.

“My first routine was about my mum deciding to buy me condoms: She asked me what size I wanted.” A chuckle. “NOW I realise she’s bipolar.”

And Thomas’s response to suggestions he was brave to give stand-up a try? “I was 17! I wasn’t making a lot of great choices. You should have seen what I was wearing then.

“And I had a GIRLfriend! I didn’t have a lot of stuff sorted out.”

Interviewed recently in New York, Thomas is in a sweater featuring a large ladybug. He’s gangly and fidgety, yet charming and armed with an infectious cackly laugh.

He says his stand-up dates and TV appearances in Australia won him a surprisingly varied audience: “Sixty-year-olds, young couples, gays, a few lesbians. And a lot of teenage girl fans who didn’t have enough self-esteem to have a crush on Justin Bieber – they wanted someone more accessible.

“I really loved stand-up. But I thought I’d be OK at writing a sitcom, ’cause narrative is what my stand-up was anyway.”

It’s just me saying what I would say if the stuff I write was really happening.

Thomas says he’s not so different from the character he crafted for the show: “It’s just me saying what I would say if the stuff I write was really happening.

“And I try to say it the way I would say it in real life.”

It’s all a work in progress. Like him.

Please Like Me season two airs on ABC2 from August 12. 2014. Photo: ABC

Please Like Me season two airs on ABC2 from August 12. 2014. Photo: ABC

“When we were pitching the show,” he says. “Josh was straight. I came out after that. So I had a meeting with the network and said, ‘There’s been some script changes’.”

Please Like Me, originally aired in Australia, was acquired by Pivot, which thought of refilming it with Thomas as an Aussie living in the US.

“But then they decided to keep it the way it is,” Thomas says.

As production began on the second season, Thomas “tried to keep it truthful, honest-seeming. But it’s not a life guide.”

Indeed, a viewer would be hard-pressed to find any obvious guidelines. At one moment, TV-Josh is self-centred and lackadaisical. The next, compassionate and responsible. Then, in the blink of an eye, he’s back in slacker mode.

“Josh is inconsistent,” Thomas says. “But it annoys me when a TV character always acts the same way.

“You don’t know if Josh is going to walk away from a problem or sit down and solve it.

“But he’s just me, and on any given day, I don’t know what I’d do either.”

Nor does he know what he might like to do next, he says as he speaks of Hollywood agents advising him on how to take his career to the next level.

What would really make him happy? A third Please Like Me season (which was recently ordered), he replies, and a fourth after that.

“I don’t know why I need the next thing,” says Thomas, who seems consistent in his mission to dodge any master plan. “I seem to have enough things: I have a dog, a very demanding boyfriend and my own TV show. Plus, I’m just 27. I’m meant to be out at the clubs.”

* The second season of Please Like Me will premiere on ABC2 on Tuesday Aug 12 at 9.30pm (AEST)

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