Even though Josh Duhamel has been starring on NBC’s Las Vegas, he’s been pretty busy with other things. Not only is he one of the leads in the new film Turistas, but he’s in a small independent movie called Transformers. Oh yeah, and he’s dating one of the members of the Black Eyed Peas, Fergie.

Life for Mr. Duhamel is really tough.

That’s why I was happy with this interview. Even though he is really busy, I got the sense that he was really happy to be there promoting Turistas. And even spoke on what a Fergie Christmas is going to be like.

And for all you fans of that small Michael Bay movie, yes he also spoke a bit on Transformers. While he didn’t give any of the story details away, he did describe pretty clearly what it’s like to work for Michael Bay.

Rather than bore you with a summary, here is the full roundtable interview. It was done about a week ago and with about six or seven people in the room. If you want to listen to the interview you can click here to download the audio, otherwise the full transcript is below.

And if you missed my interview with John Stockwell, the director of Turistas, then click here. And here is the link to the interview with Beau Garrett and Olivia Wilde, the two female leads in the film. Turistas opens up tomorrow.

Question: Did you just want a free trip to Brazil? Or did you just want to have some fun in the mud?
 
Josh Duhamel: Well, originally, when I first read the script, it was Guatemala. And I was like, "Okay, Guatemala, let's go do it." And then they said Brazil, and I said, "That's even better!" So yeah, it's everything that you see. I'm sure you guys have probably been there, but I had never been there, and you have this preconceived sort of impression of Brazil, and the music and the booties and the food and Carnivale and the beaches and everything, and it's all of that. And what I was most pleased with, with the movie when I saw it was the...Especially in the beginning, I thought we did a good job of sort of capturing the essence of Brazil and all of those things. And I think that that contrasts with what happens later in the movie, with some of the graphic stuff that happens after they get sort of get taken up to the house and everything, makes it even, I don't know...Makes more of an impression because of the stuff that happens before. You know, you don't really expect it to go as hardcore as it does in the middle, or after all that stuff happens. 
 
So when you know you're going to spend the whole movie in a bathing suit, do you work out extra hard? 
 
I didn't spend the whole movie in a bathing suit. That was the girls. 
 
But there's a lot of it. 
 
There's a lot of it. But remember, the girls were the ones in the bikinis. I had my jeans on. I asked to wear my speedo, but they wouldn't let me (laughter). I forgot to get my ass waxed before I went, so they were like, "No, you gotta wear your jeans." But yeah, it was...The working out was more or less because I knew what I was getting into as far as the physical demands that this movie was going to have, because just reading it was like, "Okay, now we're running through the jungle, we're swimming, we're climbing, we're jumping off a waterfall." All these different things. I wanted to be able to last the whole movie and not be completely exhausted by the time we were done, which sort of worked. But by the time we were done, I was so beat and ready to go home that I don't know how much preparation I could have done. But yeah, there was definitely some training, especially a lot of underwater swimming and stuff before we left. 
 
Do you have to work out on a regular basis to maintain or do you just have good genes? 
 
Well, the jeans were good before...No, I was going to make a bad joke, but never mind. I don't know. To me, it wasn't...You know, I didn't do the movie for that reason, because honestly, I read it and I didn't see any of it. None of it was scripted to be like that. But then John was like, "No, no, we're on the beach. You gotta take your shirt off." I was like, "Okay, whatever." (laughs) Okay, fine, it makes sense, we're here, we're at the beach, we're going to go swimming. Fine. And then there was another instance where I got shot through the hand, so I had to take my shirt off again and put it on there. So there was these cases where I kept...It was like my sole purpose was not to take my shirt off, and I end up half the movie I have my shirt off. As long as there's a reason for it, I don't mind doing it, but I don't really want to be that guy who's always shirtless. 
 
Your character is "the careful guy" in the group. Are you like that? 
 
I definitely have some of the typical kind of paranoid issues that a lot of, I think American tourists, especially, have going abroad. But you know, growing up in North Dakota, you don't get a chance to see all these things, and you hear all these stories, and I don't think this movie is going to help that any. You know, people are going to be like, "No, no, no..." You'd be extra careful. But yeah, I guess part of me would probably be, maybe not as severe as he is in the beginning. He is kind of the most cautious of the group. But I guess I wanted to kind of play him like that in the beginning because in the end, I wanted him to kind of be the reluctant kind of hero--somebody who when you're faced against something like this, that I think that...You know, if you're faced with the worst possible scenario on a trip that goes so wrong, how would you react to it? Would you curl up in a fetal position, or would you fight back and try to save your sister or whoever? And he had it in him, and I don't know if he knew he had it in him until it all sort of happened. So that was...It's not exactly a character piece, but that's sort of what my character went through, I guess. 
 
How long did it take for the bug bites to heal? 
 
Ooo...Mine weren't as bad as Desmond. Did you hear about Desmond's? 
 
Yes. 
 
I don't know if he has some sweet skin or what the deal was, but he got bit worse than anybody. He actually had to leave in an ambulance at one point because he had so many bites on his leg. He has pictures of them, and I swear to God, it looks like he has leprosy. Because these little gnats...You don't even really see them, they're like these tiny little gnats. You don't...They're like, oh, no big deal. They bite, and then like a day later, you get like these little red welts with these little black things on top. And they don't go away. They don't go away for weeks. And his just kept building up and building up. He actually sat and counted them one day. It was something like 68 or 77 of these things up and down. It looked like he had leprosy. And I got them, too. Not nearly as bad as him. But he actually had to get a shot of cortisone and be taken away in an ambulance at one point because so many of these bugs had bitten him. Ultimately, they did heal. 
 
Were there a lot of injuries during filming? In the film you ran around a lot with no shoes, did you get a lot of cuts on your feet?
 
Yeah, there were. I remember getting pissed off at one point because every time I turned around, I'd gash my hand doing something or I'd cut my hand or cut my feet. It was always something. And it's like, at least if you know we're going to be diving in the mud, like when the guy's shooting at us, we're like diving...It's like a regular yard, and there's sticks and stuff everywhere. It's like, at least prep it a little bit! We know we're going to be diving in it! I don't want to be landing and like jabbing my hand with sticks anymore. I was so sick of it. Or the dog cage, when we were all sitting in the dog cage, they put like that steel wire stuff up, but they didn't prep it. Because they knew I was going to be like trying to stab the guy through the thing, yet there's these little barbs sticking out everywhere and I'm getting cuts all over. But it's part of it. And in the end, it all made it feel more real. I was pretty gung ho throughout the movie, and by the end, I was ready to go home, but I think it was all worth it.