Josh Duhamel took home a new commitment to raising his sons after playing a deadbeat dad in his new film, London Calling.
“It was fun to look at some of the things that I could even do better as a dad,” Duhamel, 52, exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the film’s Friday, September 19, theatrical release. “I work a lot, and I often have a lot of guilt about not being there as often as I could be. So I try to maybe overcompensate or do things to be there often.”
He continued, “But at the same time, you want your kid to look and see [that] this is what you have to do to provide for your family. So on the one hand, you can’t be there all the time, because you’ve got to be setting an example. But on the other hand, you might be missing out on life moments that you’d [be there for] if you were a 9 to 5 dad who went to work every day and came home. So it’s a constant struggle in this business. It’s not easy.”
Luckily for Duhamel, he has two incredible women on his team. The Ransom Canyon star credits his “amazing wife,” Audra Mari, and ex-wife Fergie — “an amazing mom” — in helping him be a more present dad despite his demanding work schedule. (Duhamel shares Shepherd, 20 months, with Mari, and Axel, 12, with Fergie.)
“We all have to work together to make sure that this thing works,” he told Us. Duhamel stressed that when he’s home, he’s “with” his kids — but shooting on location can be tricky. That’s particularly true for a project like London Calling, filmed halfway across the world in Cape Town, Australia.
“if you’re in Vancouver or New Mexico, it’s one thing. But when you’re in Cape Town, there’s no going back and forth on the weekends,” he explained. “You’re either there you’re not. So it’s a struggle.”
Learning how to balance career and personal life is certainly a running theme of London Calling. The actor stars as Tommy in the action-comedy, a washed-up killer for hire and disastrous dad who’s tasked with mentoring an 18-year-old (Jeremy Ray Taylor) he doesn’t even want around. For Duhamel, the role cut close in more ways than one.
“There’s a lot of things I’m good at and there’s a lot of things I need to work on. And I think that that’s one of the things I loved about this script and the story is that this guy inherently was a good dad, but had missed a lot and hadn’t stepped up as much as he realized as he should have,” Duhamel told Us at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday, September 15. “And I think that Jeremy [Ray Taylor’s] character in the movie makes him realize that.”
To be clear, Taylor’s character, Julian, is not Tommy’s kid — he’s simply a teen neglected by his own dad (Rick Hoffman) and is desperate for some paternal guidance. Despite Tommy’s initial dread over having to take on a mentee while already struggling to keep his own head above water, the unexpected “odd couple” pairing turns out to be a blessing in disguise for them both.
“It is sort of a coming of age for both of us, in a weird way. [Tommy is a] guy who’s probably had some Arrested Development, and never quite measured up,” Duhamel said of his character. “He definitely wasn’t stepping up as a dad like he should have. Jeremy’s character is a kid who always feels like he’s disappointing [people], and has to hide what makes him feel creatively liberated. …. But I think that in [their] experience [together], we find that maybe [Tommy’s] the dad that he never got to see, and [Julian’s] the kid that [Tommy] never properly fathered.”
He continued, “I think that that’s the beauty of this movie. It’s action packed. It’s [a] comedy. It’s beautifully shot, but at the end of the day it’s about fathers and sons and stepping up as a parent.”
While Duhamel joked that being a “terrible father” is one thing he has in common with Tommy — surely his kids would disagree — the actor saw plenty more similarities between fact and fiction. Tommy always chasing the next big job, for example, is something someone with a decades-long career in Hollywood could maybe find relatable.
“It’s like an athlete who’s at the end of his career, who knows that he’s who thinks that he’s still got it, still got the fastball, still got all the speed, but now you start to lose a step as you get older,” Duhamel said. “And I think that anybody at my age starts to feel that. You know, his eyesight is not quite what it used to be. He’s not as good of a shot as he used to be.”
One big difference between the two? Tommy is clearly at the end of his run, while in many ways, Duhamel is just getting started. London Calling latest big screen feat, but he’s also crushing it as the mourning and widowed heartthrob Stanton Kirkland on Netflix’s Ransom Canyon, which was recently greenlit for season 2.
For Duhamel, it’s the “flawed” characters that feel most interesting to take on.
“I don’t want to play a guy who’s perfect. There’s no fun in that,” he told Us. “I want to play who’s a guy who’s struggling to figure it out, a guy who doesn’t always do the right thing, a guy who makes mistakes and hopefully learns from or maybe doesn’t, and he has to keep sort of picking himself up, dusting himself off and getting back in the game, back in the saddle, because that’s what life is. We all are figuring it out as we go. It’s just not as much fun to play a guy who you know has it all figured out.”
London Calling hits theaters on Friday, September 19.
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