Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Obra
Hi Joshua, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I never grew up wanting to be an actor. That’s not my story, it just happened. How it happened feels lost in time, but what I do remember was my friends telling me that I’m funny and that I should be a comedian. Teachers always commented on how my face is very expressive. In Grade 8 it was time to do our career test where we answer a bunch of questions and based on that we would receive career recommendations. I don’t remember all five, but I remember seeing comedian, athlete, psychiatrist, and actor in no particular order. I didn’t pay any attention to it because for whatever reason none of those options felt attainable at the time. In high school time was running out to pick our career paths in order to be what you wanted. We needed prerequisites . I knew I loved helping people so I decided I would study to become a nurse. Failing all my classes, I recall my teacher having a sit down with me asking if this is something I really wanted to do and I told him yes and he gave me 50s just to pass me. I went home that day and really thought about whether or not this was the path for me, if not this then what… I graduated high school, even stayed back an extra year to think about it. I searched through my things to find my login for the website we used for career recommendations, and I was surprised to see that the careers were the exact same. I ignored it and I didn’t pursue any of them, but looking back I didn’t know a seed was planted. It wasn’t until one of my peers ( Devante Goulbourne ) who was in the acting field, invited me to sign up to be a background performer in a music video for Toronto Native, Jazz Cartier “Tempted”. I fell in love with the process of collaboration and felt the urge to learn more about acting, where to find jobs and how to get into the field. He recommended that I use mandy.com for short films, student films, etc . EBoss Canada and numerous Facebook groups.
With all my peers heading to post secondary and pressures from my mom to do the same, I decided to go to film school, which didn’t last very long, I didn’t feel I was getting/learning what I needed so I eventually dropped out after two months and figured why not jump directly into the field.
From there, I started my journey applying for jobs and learning to build up the resilience required to face so much rejection. Doing background work, seeing what it was like to be on a real set, learning what I could from other actors who were on their own journeys, trying to find the answers to the same questions.
Sometime passed and I started to explore music videos as another form of acting, being the love interest for the artist more and more I started to id as an actor and so did my audience.
By no means was I gaining any real money from background or any short films/music videos I was doing, so eventually I had to find work elsewhere and fell out of acting completely.
In 2019, I had a knee injury in basketball that caused me to undergo surgery and I was bedridden for three months. Being out of commission for so long leaves more than enough time for conversation amongst yourself and before my injury I had a lot of women telling me I should pursue modelling. That was never a label I associated myself with because I was never the most good looking person nor was I the tallest. After sitting down for so long, I created a list of agencies I would apply to with all my information and recent photos.
To my expectation, I didn’t hear much back and the ones that did respond just told me I didn’t meet the height requirements. When I got better, I decided to freelance, partnering with peers that owned clothing brands. Still doing the occasional music video and searching for opportunities in Canada, I decided to apply for a Hanes commercial where I would be using maracas. I got the confirmation email saying they wanted to see me in a casting room, I remember having just under $30, going to Walmart and asking one of the employees if they sold maracas and they brought me towards the toddler section where I bought a package with a xylophone and other little instruments. Going on YouTube, and watching videos of people performing with them the night before my audition. I don’t remember much from the actual audition other than me saying hi and nobody really responding, nobody really paying attention to me while I was performing and going home uncertain of whether or not I made the right decision to even come here. Demoralized, I remember coming home and taking a nap to sleep off the stress. I woke up to an email saying that I booked the role and I would be doing my first ever commercial.
(2020) Time had passed, the commercial would release, and I would share it on Instagram with my peers further cementing the idea of me being known as an actor I got recommended to audition for a role on a feature film based on a book called “Scarborough” written by “Catherine Hernandez” by two filmmakers “Shasha Nakhai” & “Rich Williamson”. I would then send in my audition that was good enough to book me a meeting with the directors where we talked about my story, my goals, as well as the story, they waited to tell me after the meeting that they gave me the role of “Victor” and just like that, I booked my first feature film that would end up going to TIFF in 2021. It was the first time getting my pictures taken with the Getty images watermark, which was a big deal for people to see.
Shortly after filming, I decided to continue my pursuit for modeling, and I applied to Miracle Management, which I thought was a modelling agency, but ended up being a talent agency and indirectly led me back into acting. There I would continue to book commercials and have guest appearances on Web series and I haven’t turned my back on the craft since. I was with Miracle management for a few years and felt the need to switch it up and find new representation later ending up with “Play Management” where I still am.
Within that time of not having representation I auditioned for a short film called “Express” written and directed by a good friend of mine “Ivan D Ossa” which later ended up having its world premiere at TIFF.
I learned that there’s so much value in who you know. I’ve spent time in between Toronto, Vancouver and LA where I continue my journey as an actor.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I feel like I wouldn’t be telling an authentic experience of what it’s like to be an actor from my point of view if I describe this path as a smooth one. Although I feel I’ve been more privileged to work, a lot of the struggles, to me, were self-inflicted. A big thing that can trouble a lot of actors is the constant rejection, not really knowing when your next job is going to be, especially if acting is your only source of income, which is the case for me. But that can all be avoided or brought ease by being open to the idea of finding work that is consistent, but also allows you the freedom and flexibility to switch your shift at a moment’s notice because as actors we all know that a lot of these things come last minute with additions and shoots and callbacks. A lot of actors’ big thing that can be a learning curve is the lack of financial literacy and how to manage money. I don’t come from money so my relationship with it has been forever growing. You can’t move with the assumption that you book consistently so you need to be able to be smart with handling your finances, we all have streaks and we all have cold streaks, but preparing those moments that aren’t as pleasant really is the difference maker and is something I’m still getting the hang of.
Another thing I would say is, if you don’t respect the craft you’ve chosen to be a part of, it can also be a difference maker. Again, that is something I’m learning to do now and that applies with every single discipline whether it’s trading stocks, sports or even painting. You need to respect the craft you need to do your research, you need to be a student of the game and learn as much as you can because it’s easy to think you can excel with the tools that you have now and that very well might be true, but you only go so far. You need to study, you need to practice, you need to go to classes, read books, take a lot of the work that has come before you, in doing that you are forging brand new tools to add to your arsenal. Denzel still takes classes, right?
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What I do really does depend on the day because shooting for me and my experience hasn’t been a long process with commercials or some films. Until I book a job that requires more than a month of my time I have a lot of free time. I learned early on that you need to have other things in your life that inspire /fulfill you that way when you’re not onset, you don’t feel worthless or you’re not moving towards your goal in some capacity. I love to throw events. My friends and I have a collective called “HUTB Events” where we make our ideas come to life. Ranging anywhere from parties to monopoly deal tournaments. Our next event is going to be a 100 person musical chair tournament just because we think it would be funny. The most fulfilling part of all of these things is the promotion aspect of it. I love to be front of the camera, but it’s really fulfilling coming up with the idea that we feel is engaging and being behind the camera to make that come alive, it’s almost like I can use these as proof of concepts or stepping stones to eventually putting on my own short film, web series or eventually feature film. The same thing goes with content, creation, working with brands like “good food” the challenge of creating content that is compelling with the overall goal of getting engagement is all laying down bricks to build the same house that is my “dream” whatever that means to me at this point of time.
If that doesn’t fully answer the question one of the things I’m the most proud of in my whole acting career is being a part of the film Scarborough because I grew up in Scarborough, my whole life and when we were shooting, I was only 5 to 10 minutes maximum from any of our shooting locations and now, years later driving past all of these locations I see remnants of when we were shooting. It’s beautiful and it’s cemented forever.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
A lesson that I learned from COVID-19 was to not put all your eggs into one basket. Multiple sources of income is a necessity for anyone. It’s not limited to billionaires or millionaires. I was at a family barbeque the other day and speaking to someone who had five different incomes all within the film industry. That dissipated in a matter of moments because everything shut down. The negatives aside, with people losing their lives… one thing I loved about the pandemic was it forced you to be creative and push yourself to come up with ideas that you never thought you could conceive. So many people benefitted from that time to themselves that may never happen again.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @loveobra
- Other: TikTok: @loveobra
