Josh Heuston On Impending Global Stardom And Aussie Attitude

IT’S A BALMY day in May, and Josh Heuston has been banished to his car, presently parked in front of his family home in Sydney’s Baulkham Hills, for his chat with Esquire. No matter that the 28-year-old actor has a cover shoot tomorrow or that he’s an international heartthrob, his two younger sisters are very happy to put him in his place. Today, that happens to be curb side, as the sun winks over the horizon in Sydney’s north-west suburbia.

“Everyone just takes the piss out of me when I’m at home,” he laughs, as we chat over a video hook-up. “Here, I’m just a brother and a son, and it’s great. That’s kind of the way I like it.” He’s referring to his family and the tight circle of friends that he comes back to in Sydney whenever he can, between travelling and shooting; between being sequestered on a set for three, six, seven months at a time. That must get tiring? “It’s a bit of a circus lifestyle,” he nods.

Recently, he’s been trying to take a full, deep breath in, filling his lungs with old friends and local sessions at the gym and ocean swims. As we speak, he’s fresh off a boys’ trip to Bali with two long-time friends – swimming with dolphins, beers on the beach, a little roughhousing – before setting off on a “work bender”.

Heuston may not have spent much time ‘here’ recently, but that hasn’t shifted anything about what home feels like to him. “Australia is still my favourite place. It’s like a little time capsule, and I come back, and nothing’s changed. Everything just quietens.”

A LITTLE BIT of quiet must be welcome after the tornado of activity that’s marked Heuston’s recent years. Rewind to 2022, his breakout year as an actor, when he starred as smouldering bad boy Dusty in Netflix’s star-launching Heartbreak High. He had dabbled in acting before, getting a taste of the thespian life in a music video in 2017, and later appearing in a cameo in the Marvel film Thor: Love and Thunder, alongside Chris Hemsworth and Russell Crowe. But Heartbreak marked his first big role – and the beginning of a wild ride.

In 2024, Heuston starred as illegitimate prince Constantine Corrino in the TV series Dune: Prophecy, thrusting him into the global spotlight. The show traces the events that happened ten millennia before Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films, following the development of the Bene Gesserit sect, born into being by sisters Tula and Valya Harkonnen. Dune: Prophecy premiered to critical acclaim, and Heuston is set to start filming its second season in Budapest this northern hemisphere summer.

One of his most significant relationships on the set of Dune, Heuston tells me, was with the Hindi cinema superstar Tabu, who plays his mother, Sister Francesca. “She’s an icon, plus more,” he enthuses. “The second I got to set, it was big cuddles and kisses and, like, saying, ‘Let’s go get food. Let’s go do this. Let’s go do that.’ We just clicked instantly.” Heuston’s heritage is Australian and Sri Lankan, though he doesn’t feel as connected to his Sri Lankan side as he would like – it’s his father’s side of the family, and Heuston grew up with his mother and sisters. Would he ever consider a role in South Asian cinema? “Tabu keeps trying to get me to come over to India,” he smiles. “I would love to. Absolutely.”

For now, Heuston’s main connection to his Sri Lankan roots comes through the dads at his local gym, which he’s been going to since he was 16. “There’s a huge Sri Lankan community there,” he says. “A lot of the dads will come up and chat because they’ve seen Dune or their kids have watched Heartbreak High.” They’ve been seeing Heuston around since he was in his school uniform; they’ve watched him grow up. It’s a familiar, unpretentious place. Sometimes, they’ll ask him to message their children on Instagram, or to give them advice about acting. “I always do, because I don’t know . . . ” he trails off. “It would’ve been nice to have that kind of thing growing up.”

DESPITE NOT HAVING had role models around in that way, Heuston’s acting chops have already come a long way. He knows that. “I fucking sucked [at acting] when I started,” he says, shaking his head. “Sometimes I look at older tapes and I’m like . . . oh.” He covers his eyes with his hand.

He credits Dune with exposing him to top-tier actors – Travis Fimmel, Olivia Williams, Emily Watson and Mark Strong, among others – the kind of exposure “money can’t buy”. It’s been a humbling experience. “You develop your craft so quickly because you’re surrounded by so many different types of actors, and they all have different styles, and they all approach things differently. I just think, What do I know about acting when they’ve been doing it for longer than I’ve been alive?” Before acting, Heuston was firmly embedded in the modelling and influencing worlds, working with brands like Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Burberry. Was he met with scepticism when he decided to take the leap into acting? “Yes,” he admits. “But it was kind of fair enough. I didn’t have anything to show that I could do it.”

He didn’t attend NIDA or WAAPA, and he already had the twin burden and blessing of influencing fame to carry. He was well known in fashion and social media circles when he started acting, but there wasn’t much to indicate he could inhabit a character or convey emotional depth. “It’s probably more of an audience cynicism at the beginning,” he says. But he’s started to win them over. “They’re growing with me. They’re starting to turn around.”

Now, as his career takes off and meatier, more substantial roles begin to pile up, does he feel pressure to choose between fashion and acting? “Not really. There’s more fluidity now,” he says. “It used to be that if you did brand stuff, you weren’t taken seriously as an actor. That stigma is still there, a bit . . . but I think the industry’s shifting.”

While there’s still some degree of wariness between the two fields, there’s also a great deal of commercial synergy – any actor who can comfortably straddle the worlds of high fashion and art is one brands are going to want to have in their front rows. Heuston can see where his skill set (and his model-ready jawline) could be an asset.

“I love fashion, and I love acting. And to me, fashion is a huge part of storytelling, just like costume is when you’re building a character. So, it makes sense to blend them. A lot of actors now do endorsements. Entertainment and creation are kind of becoming this one little brick, if that makes sense.”

But purists need not worry. While Heuston can’t see himself ever going “full method”, in his short career to date he has brought a gritty kind of dedication to his roles. “The first show I ever did . . . [my character] was a deckhand,” he explains. “So, I taught myself all these little knots . . . and I still remember how to tie these knots, even though I did that job, like, five years ago.”

To reprise the role of Dune: Prophecy’s Constantine, it’ll be back to daily MMA training, sword-fighting and brushing up on his British accent (something he first learned on YouTube the day before shooting, he confesses). “I throw my all into learning the skill sets of the people I play,” he says. “It’s my way of understanding them. I would train every day, because I knew Constantine would train every day. It makes you just feel closer to them. It gives you more similarities . . . ” He smiles wryly. “I mean, I didn’t grow up a prince in the Imperium.” All the characters he’s played stay with him in some small way, joining him, if you like, for the ride that is his career.

THERE IS ONE skill Heuston didn’t learn that most actors – most people – would die for. “I have, like, a weird intuition when it comes to booking roles,” he says, watching for my reaction. “I just . . . know. Most of the roles that I’ve gotten, the second the audition came through or I read the script, I was like, I’m gonna get that. And it’s come true.” The Dune role was booked within two days. Heuston left the audition knowing it was in the bag. The same week, he was on a flight to Budapest to film the first season.

Another coup – at the start of May, Heuston was announced as one of the stars of Off-Campus, a small-screen adaptation of the romance series of books by Elle Kennedy, whose fandom grew in earnest after it found a firm foothold on BookTok (the bookish sphere of TikTok known for its ability to send sales into the stratosphere). Set at Briar University, the series follows a house of college hockey stars as they fall in love, with a new couple anchoring each season of the show (think of it as varsity Bridgerton, with fewer rules of propriety and more rules of play). Heuston, who will play season one’s love rival Justin, is set to add another string to his bow of character-led skills: he will learn to play guitar and to sing for the role, the prospect of which he describes as both “exciting and daunting”.

Recently, the Sydneysider was plunged into something a little closer to home: Dangerous Animals, a shark horror-thriller shot on location in Queensland, also starring Jai Courtney as a shark-mad murderer and Hassie Harrison as his would-be victim. “I was surfing every day while filming it,” Heuston says, laughing. “Which sounds kind of insane, right? Shooting a shark movie and then paddling out into the ocean in the afternoon.” It does, but in the context of the Heuston school of instinct, it also feels right.

“I throw my all into learning the skill sets of the people I play. It’s my way of understanding them”

So, he’s done sci-fi fantasy, horror, action and teen dramas. What’s next? Heuston grins at the idea of doing a rom-com. “It feels like a rite of passage,” he says. “I love rom-coms. We watch Notting Hill every single year at Christmas. My sisters love it.”

He also watched Anyone But You, the 2023 film starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell set in Sydney, in the cinema with his sisters. “I’m probably not the target market, but they were absolutely loving it, which made me love it even more than I would have otherwise,” he laughs.

For Heuston, it’s about finding that balance between artistic expression and creating something people just really enjoy. Still, he knows the dangers of stepping into full Hugh Grant territory: “In my friendship group? I’d never live it down.”

Despite being regularly branded a heartthrob online, Heuston insists the reality is far less glamorous, at least in his own circle. “I’m the biggest dork, or the butt of a joke a lot of the time. But that’s also what I want,” he laughs.

What’s it like being known for his good looks, something he can’t change, but also hasn’t earned? “It’s . . . confusing. That’s still how I view it,” he says.

Unlike his craft, which he continues to hone through hours of training, his appearance – and the public’s reaction to it – is largely intractable. “Like, I didn’t do anything at all,” he says, clearly a little embarrassed to be talking about this. “I guess that’s why it’s so weird. But that’s part of the reason why I work so hard in other ways. I want to make sure I deserve to be in the room and keep developing. I love this combination of making films and television shows for my artistic expression, but then I also want to make stuff that people just love.”

It’s a lot to balance: the travelling, the training, the set life, the scrutiny. So, when we talk about the future, his aspirations are surprisingly domestic. “At some point, I definitely just want the kids and the white picket fence and that sort of lifestyle,” he says, almost shyly. “That generic, easy, stable family thing.” He pauses. “But that feels quite far off right now. Who knows, though? In this life, I’ve found that things can change quickly.”

But if his future, like mostly everyone’s, is hard to predict, that’s how he sees love, too. “When you’re not in a relationship, and you’re out there trying to find one, it never happens. You never end up falling in love like that. It’s usually when you least expect it. You’re like, No, I’m just being single for a while, and then – bam – you’re in it. It’s always like that.”

He laughs, because it’s both true and ridiculous. “When you put too much pressure on things, it doesn’t let them grow properly. Falling in love, making a life with someone . . . it’s not supposed to be formulaic. It’s not supposed to be bland.”

There’s something very uncalculated about the way Heuston is navigating his career. He’s open, breathing in Sydney’s late autumn air, taking in the feeling of home as he stands on the precipice of the next big thing. He’s open to it all – rom-coms, more fantasy (BookTok has fan-cast him as Xaden in the much-loved Fourth Wing series, but he’s tight-lipped about whether the rumours are true), more TV, more films. More than anything, he just wants to keep learning.

“I guess I just try to follow the feeling,” he says. “If it feels good, I’m in. If it doesn’t . . . I’m out. That’s how I’ve made most of my choices.” Heuston smiles, like he can’t really believe his luck. “Honestly, it’s been working so far.”