Roy Joseph: “I remember being so embarrassed at the time to be Indian”

When he read the character breakdown for Harry in Five Bedrooms actor Roy Joseph knew this was the role for him.

After graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Joseph went straight into a season of ABC’s Back in Very Small Business, but while he hoped it would ignite his career, the reverse turned out to be true. He was struggling for work and went for 8 months without even an audition.

But casting director Nathan Lloyd had spotted a role he wanted to push for: a gay Indian Australian neurosurgeon sharing house with four friends and dealing with his conservative mother, Manju (Kumud Merani). But while he was 25 years old the character was originally scripted as mid to late 30s.

“I read the scenes and breakdown and I thought, ‘I have to play this role,’” he tells TV Tonight.

“Going into the first audition, and I remember thinking, ‘I better make myself look as much like the image they have of this role in their minds, as possible.’ So I grew my beard because I thought it wouldn’t make me look older, and I wore in a button-up shirt, tucked in chinos and some boots, so I looked like a doctor.

“I figured if they saw me physically as more like the character than I look in my real life, then hopefully, they’ll then just focus on the work that I’m doing and see that I’m the right person for it.

“I guess they agreed I was the right person for the role because they changed Harry’s age to 31.”

“Indian is just a part of my ethnicity.”

Joseph moved from Israel with family when he was six years old.

“My parents are both from India, my mum is Iraqi / Indian, my dad is Indian, and they’re both Jewish.

“I grew up Jewish with little bits of connection to being Indian here and there, really just in some of the food we ate. Culturally, I’m not Indian. Religiously, I grew up Jewish. So Indian is just a part of my ethnicity.”

Nevertheless he appreciates the storylines of Indian heritage embedded into the story by co-creators Michael Lucas and Christine Bartlett.

“When we did Diwali, that was great because I got to learn about it. I knew that it existed, but I didn’t know anything about it,” he continues.

“Kumud Merani who plays my mother, Manju, and is famous in the Indian community here, is amazing. She’s such an interesting woman. She just has such a wealth of knowledge about the history of India and all of the different cultures in India.”

He also recognises the value of having diverse characters on screen. Growing up, he struggled to see actors or characters that reflected his world on Australian television.

“I just would turn things on and go, ‘Well, that’s not me.'”

“I never turned to Australian television, because I just would turn things on and go, ‘Well, that’s not me.’ But even in Hollywood, I remember as a teenager, my brother and I loved the film Van Wilder with Ryan Reynolds, …there’s this character called Taj, an Indian exchange student who becomes obsessed with Van Wilder, and wants to be a ladies man like him.

“But it was such a reductive representation of an Indian person, that I remember being so embarrassed at the time to be Indian.

“I never owned the fact that I was ethnically Indian, because it was embarrassing. If you turned to the media, especially at that time, we were always the sidekick, always like the head-bubbly nerd. Never the cool guy. Never the love interest. Never, never the villain.

“It was embarrassing for me and I’m really glad we’re moving away from that. Representation is so important. I think people that have had good representation their whole lives, really take it for granted.”

“I was never the star. No way. I was not even close to the star.”

Thankfully, family were accepting of his desire to work in the arts, with Joseph acquiring a taste for performing in school productions -even if he was never the lead.

“I was never the star. No way. I was not even close to the star. But I just knew that it was what I wanted to do, and I couldn’t shake it.

“The first time, I think I really started to think about being a performer was when I realised that Hank Azaria did about 40 of the voices on The Simpsons, which I grew up watching. I just thought that was so cool. My best friend and I, at the time, would just spend hours doing different accents and voices to each other.

“I was like, ‘I want to do the voices on The Simpsons!’”

Storytelling had always been a place where Joseph would joyously lose himself in worlds of fantasy.

“I always loved movies. Every weekend my parents would take me and my siblings to the video shop. We were allowed to get one new release because they were more expensive and two weeklies because they were a little bit cheaper!” he recalls.

“I just remember being so obsessed with films that transported me to another world. Basically, throughout my whole childhood every five minutes, I would say I wanted a different job. I wanted to be a doctor then a lawyer, a painter -and I did not paint!

“I wasn’t an artist. I didn’t do any art. I wanted to be a psychologist.

“It wasn’t until I was a teenager and I started doing drama I realised, ‘This is what I want to do.’”

“I had to craft a different version of myself.”

Performing also helped him overcome a lack of confidence.

“Harry, in terms of his demeanour could have been who I am now, if, as a teenager, I didn’t decide that I had to craft a different version of myself.

“I was a really shy kid, but in high school I started to come out of my shell. I came to a point where I thought ‘I can’t be like this. I need to learn how to stand up for myself.’ So I just pretended to be competent and I faked it so well until I made it.”

Harry’s other qualities, as the deep-thinking voice of reason will again be pivotal in new episodes, which pick up just weeks after we last left Liz (Kat Stewart), Ben (Stephen Peacocke), Heather (Doris Younane), Ainsley (Katie Robertson), and Simmo (Johnny Carr).

In Season Four simultaneous bombshells are set to disrupt the share house, with a surprise financial windfall, two graduations, two milestone birthdays, a catastrophic loss, and an abrupt funeral.

“Harry’s really loyal, he is a really good listener, he is incredibly caring, he puts other people first. And those are really commendable qualities,” Joseph agrees.

“Harry often is the one that brings everything back down, maybe until this season, which is a really incredible arc for a character. Because all of a sudden, everything in his life gets spun out and the rug gets ripped up from underneath him. Then he has to really face who he is and how he wants to live his life, properly.

“What’s happened with Harry’s arc over the four seasons, has come to such an incredible point where his biggest changes are going to happen now. The most exciting parts of his life are going to happen after this season.”

“It’s amazing to see a character like Harry represented”

For a young man who never saw himself reflected on screen, Harry is certainly resonating for others, according to the positive audience feedback he has received.

“It’s amazing to see a character like Harry represented. I’ve had a few people who are Indian / Australian, and queer, who have reached out who have said that it was really amazing for them to see their story represented,” he explains.

“Every experience is different, depending on what your cultural background is, and it’s important that all of these experiences have a voice at some point. We’re entering a pretty exciting time in terms of representation, and in particular, our representation of people of colour.

“I hear it all the time when people think that diversity is going too far, because now we’re just doing things to tick boxes. And I’m sitting here going, ‘Yeah, let them tick some boxes!’ And if you feel like you’re missing out on opportunities because of it, then you don’t see the full picture.

“Because none of their opportunities are going away. They’re just adding more for the rest of us.”

Five Bedrooms three episodes then weekly from Sunday May 14 on Paramount+.