When Josh was 18 he was working as a bartender and waiter when he was approached by a man who told him he had what it took to be a model. Originally thinking the guy was joking, Josh soon began posting more seriously to Instagram.
Now a content creator across Instagram and Youtube, the 24-year-old has worked in commercial campaigns for major brands and is now gearing up for his on-screen debut with the launch of Dive Club.
Josh stars alongside Miah Madden, Georgia-May Davis, Sana'a Shaik, Mercy Cornwall, Aubri Ibrag and Alexander Grant in the dramatic thriller set to premiere on Saturday, May 29.
Set in the fictional town of Cape Mercy, an idyllic seaside haven, the series follows a group of 16-year-olds who are each skilled divers. One day, the Cape is struck by a cyclone and the club's fearless trailblazer, Lauren, goes missing.
But not everything is as it seems and as Lauren's friends launch their own investigation, more questions rise to the surface.
Josh stars as Henry, who he describes as the town's resident sad boy with a heart of gold, who's always there when you need him. Henry's complicated relationship with Lauren puts him in the mix, desperate to find where she is and what happened to her. But matters of the heart are never clear-cut.
Having always had a curiosity for performing, Josh said he was betrayed by his own shyness and never pursued drama while at school. Featuring in a music video in 2017, Josh was bitten by the acting bug, started classes and became obsessed with it.
Building his career through social media, so much of what Josh does is speaking directly to his massive audience, but Dive Club allowed him to become someone else.
"I kind of prefer it," Josh told 10 play. "I guess I'm not the most open person, I like to keep my private life private so I much prefer having the boundary of the script in front of me. It's nice to step into someone else, if that makes sense."
While the girls are all skilled divers, Henry is an adept dockhand and though Josh grew up around the water, his experience with boats was somewhat lacking in comparison to Henry.
One of his first scenes with boats saw Josh on a bigger boat pulling in a smaller one, having to feign comfort while juggling multiple vessels. "I had to just wing it," he said with a laugh.
Shooting the series in chronological order, Josh also became an amateur sleuth, attempting to solve the mystery of Lauren's disappearance before the next script would arrive.
When the scripts would arrive, the cast would race to find out the next piece of the puzzle, jumping straight into a group chat to compare notes and theories.
"It was nice but also frustrating," he joked, "I just wanted to know what happened! But it felt more real for our characters."
The series is set to air on 10 Shake and globally on Netflix, with Josh about to be catapulted into homes worldwide he's still grappling with how surreal it is to see himself onscreen.
Dive Club held a premiere at a cinema in Sydney this week where Josh got to see himself on the silver screen.
"It was pretty surreal. I never thought I'd be seeing my face up there," he said in awe. "I literally went and watched a movie the week before. It was weird going back and seeing my head on the big screen."
Now that acting has become Josh's only focus, it's something he'll be getting used to, absorbing as much as he could throughout shooting Dive Club.
"It was just a really good experience in terms of my first actual time on set," he added. "We had a really supportive cast and crew. It was a very enriching thing to be a part of. I just really loved it."
