Josh Duhamel says upcoming movie is his ‘cautionary tale’ as a new girl dad: ‘Cannot be this guy’
Josh Duhamel says upcoming movie is his ‘cautionary tale’ as a new girl dad: ‘Cannot be this guy’
Shelby StivaleThu, July 23, 2026 at 5:56 PM UTC
0
Josh Duhamel in 2022Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagicKey Takeaways -
Josh Duhamel offers insight into how his upcoming movie Runaway changed his perspective as a girl dad.
The Ransom Canyon star welcomed a daughter with wife Audra Mari in May.
The actor admits he needs to be with his family “more often.”
Josh Duhamel’s upcoming movie Runaway accidentally became his “cautionary tale” as a first-time girl dad.
“It was about this guy who was a detective who ended up —who lost his daughter,” Duhamel said of James C. Clayton’s action-thriller during a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up. “After the loss of his wife, him and his daughter sort of went their own ways. She came to him. He worked too much, and she ended up dying of an overdose and this whole movie is about the regret that he had.”
Duhamel said he kept thinking, “Oh my god, I cannot be this guy. This cannot be my story,” while shooting the movie. (The Ransom Canyonstar is set to appear alongside James Franco and Paula Patton in the upcoming film.)
“Not that I’m learning my life lessons on set, but it was like a real sort of moment where, ‘Oh my god, dude, you need to make sure that you’re there more,’ and I’m not,” he continued. “The truth is, I’m not there enough, and I need to be there more often.”
Duhamel and his wife, Audra Mari, expanded their family with the birth of daughter Rocca de Leon in May. The couple are already parents to 2-year-old son Shepherd. The actor and ex-wife Fergie also share 12-year-old son Axl.
Josh Duhamel and wife Audra Mari in MarchCredit: Jesse Grant/Getty
“She’s just sort of coming out of that fog that these babies do, and she just smiled at me for the first time, and she’s got this funny little smile,” Duhamel said about his daughter. “She looks up, she recognizes me now, and so it’s starting to happen, you know, and I just already have such a love for her.”
The actor wed Mari, who is 21 years his junior, in September 2022. Duhamel also discussed their age gap during the same SiriusXM interview, revealing that he was initially worried about being too old for her.
Advertisement
“[We’re] both from North Dakota. This is something that we had in common, and was I trying to hit on her through that? Maybe, but I don’t think so at the time,” Duhamel said, explaining that he reached out via DM. “I think it was mostly because, yes, she’s beautiful and she’d done some cool things and I just wanted to say, ‘Good for you. Go North Dakota.’ That was kind of the original reason for it.”
Duhamel “was not even considering” a romantic relationship with Mari at first.
“I felt like she was too young for me to be honest,” he added. “She probably is.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
However, he’s since “reconciled with the fact” that “maybe” their age difference didn’t matter.
“That’s when I started taking it more seriously. So, I don’t know,” the actor added “Maybe, I don’t know. I might have been fooling myself.”
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
