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Hangin' With Archives
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Josh PeckOn “Ice”by Lynn B
Josh is very articulate and quite funny in person. He started as a stand-up comedian in very competitive New York clubs at only age eight and is quick with a one-liner and fast comeback. In this in-depth interview, we found him to be very intelligent and totally charming during our chat in Beverly Hills recently. Picture Josh lookin’ Johnny Cash, “man in black” cute in black tee and jeans as we talk about playing “possum”, working with wacky Seann William Scott (as his brother possum), his TV series, fave musical interests, what he likes to do on dates, living on his own for the first time, his dream car and his plans for the future. AGW: Had you seen the first Ice Age? Josh: I had seen it way before I had heard about the sequel which is one of the most advantageous things about being a part of this. I was a fan first. I had such an appreciation for the movie. Then, when I heard there was a sequel and they wanted me to be a part of it. I ran. I was honored and excited. AGW: Did you audition for this or how does it work when you get an animated movie? Josh: It was sort of my easiest gig that I ever got. I was contacted by them because they had heard my voice on my show and I got brought into the project I was just immediately daunted and petrified by it, knowing that the original movie had set a precedent and that it was something that I really wanted to be a part of. A cast of this stature is unbelievably daunting and terrifying but I just sort of learned to run with that kind of fear. AGW: Did you ever get a chance to be in a studio with other actors or just record by yourself? Josh: Mostly I was doing it by myself. That was where you had to rediscover parts of your imagination that had gone dormant over the years because of [thinking about] girls or homework or all these excuses we give, then to create a world around yourself like I did when I was seven and made forts in my room. Once I got to record with Seann that’s like putting a hurricane and a tornado in the same room and locking the door. We were bouncing off the walls and going nuts. AGW: Did you guys ad-lib a lot of stuff? Josh: Sometimes. Carlos, the director was so nurturing. We would do the set lines, sometimes 50 or 60 pages of dialogue and then he would just give us ten minutes and say ‘go with it’ and it was pretty much as Eddie and Crash [Seann’s possum] as we could get. AGW: Did you and Seann come up with anything too raunchy for Ice Age?
AGW: How did you get your start in the “biz”? Josh: I had an interesting start doing stand-up comedy when I was about eight years old in New York. It was something that I just always had an interest in. I was lucky enough to have this nurturing mother. She sort of threw me into it and I had instant material from having a neurotic mom and going to school and stuff like that fueled it. It’s instant gratification. There’s nothing like it on Earth. Then I got lucky enough to start going to Performing Arts High School and I got this show, ‘The Amanda Show’ which moved me out to California and it’s been heaven ever since. AGW: What did you talk about for your stand up comedy act? Josh: Crazy families and a neurotic mom. I used to always start my act with ‘I was born during the great depression….my mother’s’. Write it down. I don’t copyright anything. AGW: You’ve been to places like Yuk Yuk’s and The Laugh Factory. How common is it for people of your age to be doing stand up? Josh: It’s very uncommon. Throughout my comedy career between eight and fourteen, I had done one comedy show a month that was all kids. Otherwise, I was going in at eleven o’clock at night, midnight, one o’clock in the morning and performing with all adults and learning curse words that I would never even imagine existed. In Gotham and Catch a Rising Star when that was around and the Comedy Strip and then come clubs would never let you in when you were young because they had liquor licenses they couldn’t lose, like Dangerfield’s I always wanted to get into but they couldn’t let me in. AGW: Would you go back to stand up comedy? Josh: Absolutely. It’s what recharges my batteries and it refuels my soul and makes me realize that any accomplishments I have are overshadowed by the fact that if you’re funny, you’re funny and if you’re not, you’re not. AGW: On to “Drake and Josh”. Do they let you come up with storylines or write for the show? Josh: The writers, we work very hand-in-hand and they’re always supportive of us being able to come in and give our two cents and then, as things evolve, it almost happens organically and we rehearse so much that by the 3rd or 4th day, we’re just coming up with so many of our own things, that the writers are just throwing it in. Then, we’ve evolved as people and gone from fourteen to nineteen on the show and magically stayed sixteen to the viewers so they know that and they adapt the writing to how we’ve grown. This is our fourth season. AGW: Nick has a habit of turning their successful shows into movies. Have they spoken to you at all about a movie version of ‘Drake and Josh’? Josh: We just had a ‘Drake and Josh’ TV movie that premiered in January and wound up doing really well. People really seemed to gravitate to it. Drake and I will definitely be working together in the future hopefully doing our own thing. As we get older, we appreciate more the Martin and Lewis and Abbott and Costello and Gleason and Art Carney [comic combos] and I think that’s the direction we would like to go in. AGW: How tough is it being a young actor in Hollywood trying to find the perfect role? Josh: It’s so unbelievably volatile and there is nothing to anchor yourself onto. It’s hysterical blindness here. You’re subjecting yourself to one of the harshest rejections of your life. You can pursue and pursue and sometimes, never be rewarded. I think that young actors get the stereotype that it’s so hard to transcend from young actor to young adult because they sort of get by on cuteness and a natural talent and I guess I try to realize that it’s so much hard work as well. AGW: On to the good stuff. If you’re taking someone on a date, where would you like to go? Josh: I want to hermit. Chill out at my place and get take-out and watch DVDs. That’s pretty much it. I’m not much for clubs and what not. I became too disillusioned way too early in my life. AGW: What DVDs would you select for the evening? Josh: Pulp Fiction probably. AGW: Suppose she tells you her favorite movie is Sound of Music. Would you still show her Pulp Fiction? Josh: Oh, Julie Andrews, come on! Can you really get better than that? I might fall asleep when she becomes a nun but you can’t beat that. AGW: Are you dating anybody? Josh: I’ll say I’m dating and just sort of being nineteen. AGW: What’s your favorite music? Josh: I’m about as eclectic as you can get but I’ve got mad love for hip-hop. Guys like Mos Def, Kaleb Kwali, Common, people that actually talk about real things are the people that inspire me the most. AGW: Being a hip-hop fan, are you going to pick up the mic some day?
AGW: Do you live at home with your family still? Josh: Just recently my mom moved back to New York so I’ve been on my own for two weeks. AGW: How is that going for you? Josh: It’s an experience. I want her to feel like she’s graduating into getting her pink slip. I think we came to terms with the fact that we had a great relationship and it would only hinder it if we continued to live together so I went to Costco and stocked up on rice pilaf and an incredible amount of gator aide and I’m getting used to it. It’s lonely sometimes and I’ve made a couple of mistakes already. Oversleeping and stuff like that. I’ve definitely had a couple of reality checks since mom’s been gone. AGW: Have you put her on a schedule? She can only call you once a day? Josh: Oh, please. I might as well be speaking Japanese to her. She doesn’t hear that. I think I’m on her speed dial non-stop. I get seven or eight calls a day and those are just the ‘hey, how are ya’s’ and then we have to have the in-depths at night where I go into my whole day. It’s gonna be a process and I think it will get better as time goes on. AGW: Are you driving your dream car yet? Josh: I’m pretty lucky. I started out with an ’87 300 E Mercedes which was worth 30 grand. I called it my senior mobile but I loved it. It was such a great car to start out with because if I got a couple of dings, it wasn’t too much of a big deal. Now, I upgraded and got an ’06 Beamer so I don’t know. I feel like a phony in it to be honest. AGW: For our Canadian visitors, you did Snow Day as a kid. Did you freeze up in Edmonton? Josh: Oh, I froze like crazy. I was like 12 years old. It was my first movie part and I got whisked away to this part of Canada. We thought it was about as far away from New York as Toronto is and then you get off the plane in Toronto and then you’re on another five hour trip all the way close to Alaska. I loved the West Edmonton Mall. It’s the second biggest mall in the world with a water park. It was a total experience. But outside? Yeah, you better bundle up. Can’t go out in your bathing suit. AGW: What’s the weirdest fan encounter you have had so far? Josh: I’ve had a couple of interesting letters. My mom has gotten some calls on her cell phone; people hoping that I will marry them for some reason. I’ve gotten a lot of letters saying things like ‘hopefully yours soon… Stan’. I haven’t gotten back yet but it’s just ‘cause I’m waiting for my new stationery to come in [yeah, right]. AGW: Do you want to write and direct screenplays? Josh: I guess my greatest dream would be to be the Howard Hughes of Hollywood, without the obsessive compulsiveness but I’d love to be a renaissance man but, at the same time, I don’t want to be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing. I want to make sure that what I do do, I give it my everything. AGW: Do you miss a conventional education and do you have college aspirations? Josh: Of course there is a small part of me that misses the fact that most of my high school career was spent on a set and going to a charter school where I would go in twice a week for an hour and be doing work on the set and just in and take tests. I think just the idea of high school is so alluring. It’s not only an education, it helps you evolve socially as a person and you learn so many lessons from adolescence to adulthood but I sort of had my high school on set and my entire class was Drake. AGW: So you sort of went to the professional school of hard knocks? Josh: I find now that I’m getting older, my mom’s pearls of wisdom are slapping me in the face; the ones that I chose to run away from at 17 and 16. I sometimes feel a little bit ahead of the game because I was thrown into adult life at such a young age. I kept my friends that I’ve known since I was fourteen. It never changed. What movie or TV show I was doing didn’t change the fact that I was Josh Peck from New York, the chubby, funny best friend so I think that’s what kept me grounded most and my mom making me realize that it’s like quality breeds success and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the nicest people seem to be the most successful and Ray and John and Queen and Dennis [Ice Age co-stars] are perfect examples. AGW: Did you get a chance to meet them at all? Josh: Just getting to work with Seann in the booth and then I’d done a movie with John, the movie called Spun before that and we got to hang out and he was just unbelievably nice and Ray, I just met him in the hallway and he’s a lovely man. Queen, I had met previously as well. You’re in the midst of royalty when you are with the Queen. AGW: You never ran into Ray Romano on the stand up circuit? Josh: No. The only time I ran into him was 7:30 on channel 11 [on “Everybody Loves Raymond”]
Pictures courtesy of and copyright 20th Century Fox, 2006 |
 
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You
might have “grown up” with cute, dark-haired, green-eyed actor
Josh Peck while watching him on “The Amanda Show” and then
his own series “Drake and Josh”. The handsome young actor
has aged from fourteen to nineteen while working on his TV series and
is branching out a bit more into films since his part at age 12 in the
comedy film Snow Day and critically-acclaimed role as a bully
opposite Rory Culkin in the film Mean Creek in 2004. You can
catch Josh currently as the voice of Ernie, a hyper and very cute Possum
in the fun animated feature Ice Age: The Meltdown. 
Josh:
Well, we tried to curb it as much as possible. Sometimes there would be
here and there a curse word that might have slipped out or something where
the connotations were too lustful at times but other than that, we were
pretty careful but you can’t help but let a few things slip when
you’re going nuts. 
Josh:
I would love to. I would love to bust a flow. I would love to be able
to rhyme. I think if I had any future in music it would be behind the
scenes in beats and what not. But, I’d love to get on somebody’s
track and be like ‘new stuff, new stuff’, just screamin’
it out or like ‘Doctor J in the house’ something that. I beat
boxed in a movie once. I think that’s about as close as I got.