[SPEAKER_00]: We really gave podcasts that we called that's a gay podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Had the gay on name for a gay podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Josh Drake is on that's a gay ass podcast with a lot of sexy baggage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Josh, are you cool if I go in on how you became such a hot successful man?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the invitation is open.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just want to say that your photos, first of all, are really incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's giving high fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is giving like beyond head shots.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure you're taking all kinds of photos, but you have a career as a performer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You did Aladdin on Broadway, Bats and Derella, you toured with Finding Neverland, you did Dirty Dancing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me, are you living the multi-high-finite life now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you leaning more photographer, videographer, and less performance?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's just like the breakdown for your current status?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're soon catching me in the midst of that big transition, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I turned thirty, I'm thirty three now, but when I turned thirty, everything sort of shifted like they say, you know, wait a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything sort of shifted or flipped upside down, I like to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my passions and my mental health sort of pulled me away from the business of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But after I did boop in Chicago, the out of town run, I got this job with Broadway Cares and I couldn't say no.
[SPEAKER_00]: So once Broadway
[SPEAKER_00]: for when Boop came to Broadway and the offer came out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really had to like think about the next two years of my life and I ultimately turned it down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Josh, what an amazing power play though and I mean like power playing the sense of a powerful moment for yourself of saying yes to what you really want to do and it's sometimes you got to say no to like big opportunities.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean like I like you said I was in a lot of
[SPEAKER_00]: The chunk of time that I did that show was five and a half years in total.
[SPEAKER_00]: Through the pandemic and a couple of vacations, of course, but five and a half years in one building in one show can ruin you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I killed my body and it just made me look at the business from a different angle.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, love working for the mouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love the mouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is such a corporation and it's a corporation first, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think doing that and then going into bad Cinderella, which was my first original Broadway company, you know, we all know how that story ended.
[SPEAKER_01]: For any listeners who don't bad Cinderella was running for how long?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say four months almost to the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so, you know, she had legs for, you know, sometime.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it was April, May, June, maybe three for getting now.
[SPEAKER_01]: We sometimes block out our trauma.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I will say that I'm going to ask you obviously questions about Broadway bears about some of your horny stuff, but just because I am someone who also works in trying to be a multi-hifin and also as a performer, I didn't use graffiti for a spell and similarly for like a mental health and also just like
[SPEAKER_01]: I just didn't see a world where I was gonna be paid well, ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless I knew I had to do something first in order to like, then make money doing theater, which was like become like a gay sitcom character who knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: But can you just tell me out of my own curiosity what is like, what do you miss the least about doing musical theater?
[SPEAKER_00]: The least, wow, that's, I've never been asked that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what basically in trying to ask like what really fucked you up about the industry?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to say the schedule, the schedule, mostly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're trained and we're raised to give everything to the graft.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, really put yourself at stake for the graft.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show must go on, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But you don't realize what that means for your lifestyle, for your families, your mental health, your health and your sanitizing a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot, you know, so for me was the schedule I moved uptown to inward during the pandemic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So coming back to Aladdin post pandemic and, you know, getting out of work at eleven, eleven o'clock, ten thirty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Taking a train that shuts down four stops before mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jumping on a shuttle, not getting into eleven, forty five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, waking up to go to a one o'clock matinee.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's enough to really drive you crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now you have your nights back to yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have my nights back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have your life in in would.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you now going to go personal?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you currently single or taken?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the what's the status currently single?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hell yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if any of our listeners want to send you a flirty DM, how do you feel about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love DMs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you'll get them and you'll get them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might end up in the requests folder, but
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes they do, you know, it doesn't hurt and shoot your shot everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it lands and requests, it's, you know, at least you're landing amongst.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no shame, no shame.
[SPEAKER_01]: The stars of requests.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you also have this really great feature on you about doing
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe it was Aladdin and you were talking about taking ballet as a young person and getting bullied because you were growing up doing ballet as a young gay kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a target on your back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say that you embraced your gayness later in life?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was there a moment earlier during your school days?
[SPEAKER_01]: When would you say you're like, I'm gay as hell and embracing it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was lucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: My family
[SPEAKER_00]: Accepted me full stop and yeah, school was tough, but once I was I moved to North Carolina where I was nine and I found this triple threat training studio.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shout out to Robert Clayton at least.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, shout out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they really they
[SPEAKER_00]: lived in New York for many years and went back to North Carolina at the sort of teach.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kids coming up what was happening in the big city, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And obviously I was accepted there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I loved how I joined that studio when I was fifteen, fifteen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at least the OK who was one of the owners literally sat me down one day and was like anything you want to tell me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I remember when she opened the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: She swung that door open and I decided to either step through or what you, oh, you don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't because I trusted her.
[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite thing at least here ever said was, you guys are all making bad decisions and you're supposed to be dumb kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, get it out now at this point in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could literally start crying because she really, you know, it kind of formed me and
[SPEAKER_00]: just showed me that what I was feeling was okay, all while dancing and acting and doing what we loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she literally sat down and said, is there anything you want to talk about?
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know what she did, is she set you up for a life of not hating who you are deep down.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that's what we're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: So many of us deal with is like being shamed by people, whether it was consciously or subconsciously.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, becoming adults and being like, why am I saying such horrible things to myself?
[SPEAKER_01]: And listen, I am not immune to that experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have, you know, great parents, a great family, but I grew up in fucking Missouri where there was a lot of things told to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like subconsciously that really made me, you know, feel like bad that I was given this lot in life of being a big old gay guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I still deal with those really mean thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the person that you tell me the name again of that amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lisa, we shot out Lisa because you know, it's you really she gave such a positive path for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a gay journalist, I'm going to have to ask, did you have your first gay kiss with one of the boys from this program?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it after when did we have the first moment?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was before, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was eighteen years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I'm going to say, not that I'm Judge Judy, but I'm going to say whatever your old teenager is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That passes, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to bring it down, but sadly, he's recently passed away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that, you know, he sort of took that whole time of my life with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he showed me the ropes with all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: His name was Zach.
[SPEAKER_01]: That we're going to shout Zach out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe in the other side.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to say Zach.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for giving Josh the first kiss and we hope you are doing a five six seven eight on the other side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he really showed me the ropes and yeah, that was beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: First boyfriend Zack fall wait and how you said you were fourteen?
[SPEAKER_01]: I was fourteen and where were you geographically?
[SPEAKER_01]: North Carolina and he was eighteen and how long did you do date?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know I felt like seven years of course it probably was two months You know what short but he was also the one that I was with when I came out my mom found out about us
[SPEAKER_00]: against my will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we were together.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he really carried, he carries that whole moment of my life with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your service.
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach, we send you all that love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's really amazing to talk to somebody who has embraced themselves for so long, but especially creatively too.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we talk about Broadway Bears, I need to go into the horniness of that entire
[SPEAKER_01]: celebration you have performed in Broadway Bears there's a video on your Instagram if anybody here has not yet followed Josh go follow Josh and there is a video of you tearing up that stage in a tiny ass thong and now you are what like the in-house videographer what's that deal
[SPEAKER_00]: to really a crazy story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more I talk about it and think about it, I'm like, this is truly a full circle moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I, my first time doing Bears was twenty-fourteen and I was dancing in the shadows, couldn't see me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a child and I actually made some of my two of my best friends ever from doing Bears.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second year my best friend, Kellon Stanzel, who is now the director of the show, Cassney has his lead for his number.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was leading the second year and then I think I'd led two more times after that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you know, once you're in with Broadway cares, it's just like, what else can I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What more can I do when you start to see the numbers that you're a part of that are being raised?
[SPEAKER_00]: The hunger is just like, oh my god, like it's that easy to just raise money to help people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so I dove in and yeah, the passion for my videography and photography.
[SPEAKER_00]: they sort of mesh together during the pandemic and then getting offered, you know, I was working with people throughout the years during various who worked here regularly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they started to realize my talents outside of performing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as if I was ready to sort of forfeit that schedule for a bit forfeit, Broadway and join the team.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now I'm sort of, you know, I've been there the last two years shooting the show and still getting to be a part of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A small sliver of me misses it wants to be back up there, but hey,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's plenty of time for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also plenty of opportunities for you to be dancing naked somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see that in your future.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so true.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so true.
[SPEAKER_01]: So true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you ever meet anybody from rehearsing abroad with bears number and go home and have just furious sex?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just imagine the rehearsal room or the backstage is fraught.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say,
[SPEAKER_00]: It sort of becomes the new norm, like the normal very quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you start taking your clothes off and rehearsal and you're like, oh, that's how that person looks great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they become a coworker and you're trying to stay professional.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what it sounds like?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm doing the fourth person I've interviewed about Barras and I'm always like, I got fucking it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's, I'm like, I just come across as like a letter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to find them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, trust me, they're fucking.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know who it is, but it's happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the night of the show is so heartfelt and supportive and it's also hot as hell usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: So people who actually don't even feel that sexy normally because they're exhausted, they're hungry and they're sweating their asses off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're like, get away from me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, listen, I always have to try to get erratica from Broadway bears and I appreciate you allowing me to... Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's so nice just brushing shoulders with naked people, you know, men women in between.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just so hot, so nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, speaking of sexiness, as we get into the next part of our interview, which does turn horny, we're going to be going into the paywall.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people who would like to hear the rest of this horny chat, which Josh, we're going to be going into some slut tails.
[SPEAKER_01]: I use the word slut as a compliment, as something we use as a positive identifier.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is the word slut a word you have ever identified with, currently identify with, what's your history with that word?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, it always referred to, it was used with women, you know, in really sort of applying it to men and more specifically gay men in my community.
[SPEAKER_00]: is newer for me, I would say.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I welcome it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very sex positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think slut even has to be sexual.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you know, like it can be like, I'd probably a bear is, you know, I feel so slutty on that stage and I'm dancing for thousands of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I welcome it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm open to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of very kind, whole, hearted, beautiful sluts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you kind yourself amongst them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hell yeah, so let's get into that are you as a single slot are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you had any you don't have to go specific yet, but are there and have you recently been dick down in a way that's been great are you hurting for a squirting?
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to write down all these little, these little settings are beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I, for the rest of this interview, I had to sub-stack linked in the description.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can also watch bonus episodes with Mikey Grassefa from Death Becomes her Isaiah Rutledge, Sunset Boulevard's Demon Moon.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Derek Cage, Patrick, Nick, Thanos, Mark, they're all hot.
[SPEAKER_01]: The stories are amazing and you should go check it out at subsac.com slash at Eric Will's linked in the description.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you, bye!