This is a true story.
This is Josh Thomas, the 27-year-old star of the Australian comedy series Please Like Me.
The series, which debuted its second season earlier this month on Pivot in the U.S. and ABC in Australia, centers on Thomas' character, also named Josh. The first season began with Josh's understated coming out and his mother's suicide attempt; the second season begins with twentysomething Josh's surprising new baby half-sister and his mother's manic episode.
When the actual plot is explained, it's clear that everything happening is fairly dramatic, but when you're watching the show, somehow the Big Things that are so often Dramatic are treated with comedic touch that manages to be light without making light of anything. They're going for realism, Thomas told BuzzFeed, but it's also narrative, and "stuff has to happen." When you reflect on the show, he said, you realize, though, "Wow, he's had a really rough fortnight."
Macey J. Foronda/BuzzFeed
The episodes of Please Like Me nearly always open with Josh cooking something, and so on a hot Monday in Los Angeles, he came to my apartment with no air conditioning to make chicken parma.
Just after 2:30 p.m. on a sweltering afternoon, the Australian comedian-writer-actor showed up in Little Armenia with a cool patterned bag and a publicist.
Macey J. Foronda/BuzzFeed
I apologized for the lack of air conditioning and showed him the ingredients.
The chicken breasts, as you can see in the photograph, were enormous, grotesquely enormous. Clearly, the bird that bore those breasts had not lived a very happy life.
"This poor chicken. The things we put it through," Thomas said ruefully, and then launched into a story about his own possibly dead chickens — Melinda, Genevieve, and Adele — hens he and his boyfriend, also named Josh, had to give up. Putting out food for your chickens, Thomas said, is just like putting out food for rats, and "you don't want rats in your house." He and his boyfriend put up an ad on what he described as the Craigslist of Australia that said: "Free to a good home." One day, while Thomas was out, but his boyfriend was home, a man who seemed to want to eat Melinda, Genevieve, and Adele picked them up.
"Somebody's colon? That's not a good home. That's a bad home," Thomas said.
Macey J. Foronda/BuzzFeed
We wrapped two grotesque chicken breasts in cling wrap and pounded them with a rolling pin.
"You're very firm," he said to me a few times.
Macey J. Foronda/BuzzFeed
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