72 newyork| february17–march1, 2020TheCULTUREPAGESJosh ThomasIs n’tAfraidof AmericaAfterPl easeLikeMe,theAussiecomicnow
has his own(uncomfortably,hilariouslyhonest)
te ensitcom.byjacksonmchenryeverything’sgonnabeokayairs Thursdays
at8 p.m.onFreeform.PhotographbyRyanPflugerJ
osh thomas sneaked into America with Please Like
Me, a somewhat autobiographical cult comedy about
floundering Australian 20-somethings, but now he’s
staking his claim in the U.S. with Everything’s Gonna Be
Okay. The new show is on Freeform, Disney’s network
geared to teens, and the essential elements are the same: Both are
filled with gay characters whose neuroses, obsessions with well-plated
meals, and sex lives stem from Thomas’s own life and observations of
those around him. Everything weds his fondness for sweetly cringe-
inducing comedy to the structure of a more traditional family sitcom
centered on an older sibling abruptly saddled with more responsibility
than he expects he can handle. (The show premiered in mid-January,
butolderepisodesarestreamingonHulu.)The first episode of Please Like Me kicks
off with his character’s girlfriend dumping
him because she’s pretty sure he’s gay, and
it follows that up with his mom’s
attempted suicide. Things do not neces-
sarily improve from there, even if every-
one involved keeps a sense of humor.
“Sorry about your life,” Josh tells his friend
Tom in the series’ final exchange. “I’m
sorry about your life,” Tom answers.
Both shows star Thomas as a less com-
petent version of himself, focusing the
comedy on experiences that other series
might handle with Very Special Episodes:
Several Please Like Me characters live
with mental illness, and Everything’s
Gonna Be Okay opens with a father’s
death, leaving Thomas’s character to take
care of his teenage half-sisters, one of
whom is autistic.
Thomas started writing the new series
out of an interest in revisiting high
school, having already mined his 20s for
Please Like Me. He sees versions of his
teenage self represented in Everything’s
Gonna Be Okay’s younger roles. His
character’s sister Matilda is autistic, gets
drunk, fights with her friends, and acts
on her sexual desires. She’s played by
Kayla Cromer, an actress who is on the
spectrum. Thomas decided to write an
autistic character primarily because he
hadn’t seen the experience represented
well onscreen before. “It’s a community
that’s had such little representation, and
you get very nervous that you’re going to
fuck their representation up, because it
means so much to them,” he says. “But
my experience with the community is
that they’re very understanding.”
Thomas compares the pressure he
feels in representing autism on television
to the way he often got asked about depict-
ing gay characters on Please Like Me. “It
always annoyed me a bit when I would
get praised for not making the guys too
camp,” he says. “I don’t think people would
say that anymore.”
He has a way of being self-deprecating
when he talks about representation, even
though it’s clear how important it is to
him. His characters try to act with good
intentions but fumble through important
situations, he says, because that’s the way
he tends to react. If his shows are honest
and specific about “topics,” as Thomas
air-quotes, it’s because the writing comes
from an honest, specific understanding
of how easy it is to get those topics wrong.
“The show is always about just being
lost,” he says. “When somebody thinks
I’m gonna know how to solve their prob-
lem, I’m like, ‘No, that’s the whole point!
I don’t know.’ ” ■The voice he established on Please Like
Me gave Thomas enough attention to
pitch a new show to Freeform. Such an
opportunity wasn’t without its own pit-
falls, however. “I’m not, like, an easy guy
to have on a call if you want to reduce the
amount of anal sex in a thing,” he says,
recalling the one (and so far only) time an
American TV executive has asked if he
needed to include a shot of a character
with his legs up. “I didn’t even let her fin-
ish the sentence. I was like, ‘Yes, you need
that shot because that shot signifies that
they are doing anal sex. And gay sex is anal
sex. And if you’re telling me that I can’t
show anal sex, you’re telling meI can’t
show gay sex.’ ” Thomas is impassioned in
this retelling; it’s a change of pace from his
typically casual demeanor. He laughs and
says, “They never brought it up again.”
Nevertheless, there was “a process of
going through the standards-and- practices
rules,” he recalls, “and working out what
I can do that lets us get away with stuff.”
On the show, he can be explicit about the
positioning of bodies—one man on top of
another, legs splayed, after they banter
about whether one of them can get hard
and who can grab the lube and a condom.
He can also show the face of the person
who is being penetrated.
Thomas is telling me all this as we hud-
dle on the upper level of an NYC sightsee-
ing bus, both of us shivering but pretend-
ing not to be. Thomas had suggested a
sightseeing tour, but thanks to my own
incompetence, we ended up on a bus ser-
vice without an in-person guide. Luckily,
the 32-year-old, who’s wearing vintage
sunglasses and a blue- purple-dyed coat he
describes as “a whole sheep,” likes scenar-
ios that veer from shambolic into sweet.