A man who posted a fake death video on TikTok every day for 321 days got his wish when he was cast as a dead body on CSI: Vegas.
@living_dead_josh Tune in September 29th for the season 2 premiere of CSI:VEGAS #foryoupage #fyp #csivegas #thankyou ♬ original sound – Josh Nalley
It turns out that you can get on a big TV show and have your chance at fame by working hard, being dedicated, and making hundreds of videos of yourself claiming to be dead.
Josh Nalley, a man from Kentucky, at least managed it by posting videos of himself claiming to be dead on his TikTok account @living dead josh every day in the hopes that a show will use him as a corpse in one of their episodes.
After 321 torturous days of acting as if he were dead, he finally got his wish granted when CSI: Vegas got in touch with him after discovering the viral star and gave him the opportunity to portray a dead body in one of their episodes.
@living_dead_josh Tune in to the Season 2 premiere September 29th @csicbs #csivegas #cbs #dreamcometrue #goals #fyp #foryoupage ♬ Who Are You – The Who
During an interview with the Courier Journal, he said that he did not have any prior experience in the acting industry, but that through a lot of practice, he had developed the ability to more convincingly depict a dead body.
@living_dead_josh #foryoupage #fyp ♬ Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
He shared: “I don’t like speaking on camera, but I can lie there and act like I am dead pretty easily.”
“Having done more than 300 of these posts, I have progressed and gotten better. At first, you could see me breathing, or the fake blood looked really bad.”
Josh discovered that the secret to a believable corpse shot required action in the film so it didn’t just appear like the photograph; as a result, while he was motionless in the grave, his surrounds were lively and mobile.
According to him, the inspiration for the concept came from seeing a woman post about spicy sauce on TikTok and receive a ton of offers from merchants. This made him wonder whether he could accomplish the same thing by portraying a dead body on television.
Josh has gotten a lot of other invitations to portray a dead body for other movies, so maybe his chance at fame is only getting started. Despite this, he has no plans to leave his day job as a restaurant manager.