From small town North Dakota to the bright lights of Hollywood, actor Josh Duhamel first rose to fame on the daytime soap opera All My Children before making the jump to the big screen and starring in everything from romantic comedies to the Transformers franchise.
These days, Duhamel splits his time between the west coast and the midwest and it is that balance that helps remind him how uninterested the general public is seeing actors and entertainers do anything other than, well, act and entertain.
On Wednesday’s show, Duhamel joined Megyn to discuss his new wellness venture, Gatlan, and explain why he believes his fellow celebs should keep their opinions to themselves.
Staying in Your Lane
Duhamel grew up in Minot, North Dakota, and still spends time in the Roughrider State today. It is that upbringing and what he described as a “very tight knit group of friends [and] family” that “wasn’t afraid to put my ass in check if I needed to be” that helped keep him grounded and mostly avoid the “enticing and intoxicating” pitfalls of fame.
He also credits those closest to him with teaching him something that others in the entertainment industry could stand to learn. “I’ll never forget this. I was going to play golf with a buddy in Georgia about 10 years ago, and he meets me at the airport with a t-shirt that says, ‘Nobody Cares What Actors Think,'” Duhamel recalled. “That’s really funny… and that always stuck with me because it’s true. They don’t.”
In Duhamel’s view, there is no incentive to potentially alienate a portion of your audience by espousing your beliefs. “I have real strong opinions about things, but I don’t really talk about them because it’s like why,” he said. “Why would I alienate half my audience? I respect their points of view on things, but I am not going to preach to them. They can believe what they want to believe. I’m just here to, you know, make cool stuff.”
A Sea Change?
It is a lesson Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence admitted she learned the hard way in a New York Times interview last year. “I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions,” Lawrence told reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing, what I’m showing.”
Instead of explicitly weighing in on politics as she has in the past, Lawrence went on to say that she is going to let her work do the talking. “A lot of movies coming out from my production company [Excellent Cadaver] are expressions of the political landscape,” she noted, referencing recent documentaries on topics like the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and abortion access in Texas. “That’s how I feel like I can be helpful.”
While their politics don’t align, Megyn applauded Lawrence at the time for finally getting the message conservatives and independents have been trying to send Hollywood for years. She also praised Duhamel for respecting his audience enough to understand that.
“Speaking for people who are more on the right side of the aisle, I feel like that’s all we want,” she said. “You don’t need to share our points of view on the big issues of the day, but we definitely do not want to be lectured by Hollywood leftists… We don’t want to be lectured about how we’re worse than them because we don’t share their values.”
Megyn pointed to Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney standing strong in the wake of her controversial American Eagle ad campaign as recent examples of stars who seem to be getting the memo, and Duhamel said more should get on board.
“It makes perfect sense. I mean… if you really want to be successful in this business, why would you make half of your audience despise you by your political beliefs. Maybe they don’t care,” he said. “[But] I look at it as a business decision… I’m here just to make cool movies [and] cool TV. I’m here to make cool stuff.”
“If I want to preach to you about what I believe politically, I will go run for office,” he added, “which I’m not to do by the way.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Duhamel by tuning in to episode 1,281 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.