Jack Martin knew all about Murray Hill, the New York neighborhood that was the focus of his latest series.
“A lot of my friends and people I knew moved to Murray Hill and took jobs like the ones in the show. Then I didn’t,” says the 27-year-old actor. Hollywood Reporter In the last zoom. “I chose to pursue acting – which is weird, or at least that’s how it was perceived. It was a conscious choice not to continue with that lifestyle.”
But then Martin found himself on TikTok, drawing sketches that mock the corporate world and the young people who often find themselves working in it. Then he came Not suitable for workMindy Kaling’s latest show from Hulu.
The actor plays Josh Teitelbaum in friends– A comedy about a group of young people who live and work in New York. “There’s something funny about choosing not to do it and then ending up with a role where I’m pretending to do it,” he says.
Martin was preparing for the show the minute it was announced, and he had people in his life telling him he needed to be on the show. “I really wanted to be in it, and I got really lucky,” he says.
The actor’s audition process is probably a good indicator of how he will feel about the rest of the show – he can’t stop impressing the cast and crew of the series, emphasizing that it’s not a PR response, but rather his true feelings about working on the series. “I always call my team when I leave the testing room,” Martin says of his current boss, Kaling. “I call my parents, my team, and my girlfriend, and the first thing I say is, ‘This is the nicest person in the testing room I’ve ever interacted with.’”
“She came up to me and said she’d watched all my videos and that they were so funny and that she liked my audition. She was asking me about myself,” he continues. “She was very polite and her feedback was very thoughtful and generous. She wasn’t creepy. She wasn’t rude. She was just wonderful. And that’s how she was on set, too.”
Martin was very excited when he booked NSFW Because he had been friends with his eventual partner Will Angus for years. He was auditioning for the role, something he wasn’t trying to be excited about given the unpredictability of the audition process, when his team told him that Angus was the first choice for another role in the series.
“I was scared. I was so excited. They didn’t even know we were friends and did stuff,” he says. Martin called Angus, who was in Italy filming Luca Guadagnino’a Artificial, and immediately asked if the other actor wanted to live together. Of course Angus said yes.
Nicolas DuVernay assembles their 20-man trio for the show. “I met Nicholas shortly after that. We just clicked and became very fast friends,” he continues. If the show gets a second season, Martin says he and Angus would convince DuVernay to live with them. But they are not sure if they will live in Murray Hill.
men NSFW They’re all “open, emotionally open people,” as Martin puts it, which can sometimes seem rare on TV. But this is not unusual for the actor. “It doesn’t feel crazy to me, because that’s how I am and the friends in my life are,” he says.
“I cried when I watched Moulin Rouge“So it’s very familiar territory for me,” he continues. “It’s not that we’re the same with our personalities, because we’re definitely different. But I think that aspect of being open with your friends is something you’ve gotten used to.
Martin Josh’s character is the kind of character we can’t seem to escape in media these days – the Nebo Kid. The actor has always enjoyed comedies that poke fun at rich people — and has name-dropped some of his favorites including White lotus, succession, List and Triangle of sadness. Josh fits into this world of humor.
A big part of Josh’s story is his relationship with his father. “He wants so badly to be a good person,” he says of his character, “and I think his story is about figuring out what that actually means in real life. And not in a cliche way, about actually becoming independent and taking responsibility.” Martin doesn’t want to take credit for most of this character – he credits the “brilliantly written” material he gets.
“Mindy is a genius and Charlie Grande is incredible and so is the entire writer’s room — Beth Appel, Sarah Tapscott, Kate Lindenberg — everyone is there,” he continues, also shouting out co-stars Avantika Vandanapu and Ella Hunt. “They just wrote a great character, so it gives me everything I need to play her.”
Looking to the future, Martin is using his experience NSFW To grow but he doesn’t use it as a bridge in his career. “I don’t see anything as a starting point,” he says. “I always feel grateful when I can do anything in this business.”
Martin still sees the business as his dream job and hopes he can continue doing it. He’s not looking for the right character and instead looking for the right writing. He enjoys playing different types of characters, including his “totally crazy character” in Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney’s Hulu original film. Pizza moviewhich was released earlier this year.
He had never auditioned for a role like this before, and found real joy in the challenge it presented. “I think the industry can make those decisions for you a little bit, but I love the feeling of being pushed and challenged by a character, and feeling like I have to step beyond myself to play someone,” he says.
But Martin admits there’s one genre he’s eager to tackle, no pun intended. “I would really like to romanticize it,” he says. “I kind of like that, like Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and Brokeback Mountain“.
Horror was probably not a genre he would have thought much about even three years ago. He admits that he was previously afraid to watch horror films, but it was his friend, actress Lili Reinhart, who pushed him to do so. Now, he estimates he’s watched about 300 horror movies. The actor found himself inspired by the wave of Gen Z horror filmmakers, such as Carrie Parker and Ken Parsons, who were finding huge success.
“I love writing, and I’ve always wanted to direct,” Martin says. “And seeing Gen Z filmmakers doing it made it seem a little bit possible.”
“Full credit to Carrie and Ken for being incredibly talented and having great visions and the ability to execute them, but I feel like I’ve noticed a difference right away just in terms of meetings. Everyone seems so excited about the prospect of me writing and directing than they did six months ago,” he continues. “I’m in favor of young people having the opportunity, if I’m still counting it.”
He’s not going to lie and pretend that social media is full of sunshine and rainbows, but he notes that there’s a good side to it, too. The actor is passionate about the fact that anyone, regardless of their connections or experience, can create something, upload it and potentially see it for its own merit.
Acting often requires a balancing act of always doing projects that interest you and because you need to gain experience. Martin points out that you never know what will hit and what won’t. “This is a business where you get 24 hours notice for a life-changing opportunity. So I feel like it’s out of my hands,” the actor says.
“I also keep it as business-related as possible because that’s really why I’m in it. My goal is to have the kind of impact on people creatively that’s all my favorite things,” he continues. “No matter how much I can do it, it’s really the dream.”
