Joseph Zada has found himself playing the tortured boy a lot recently. With his frequent easy smiles, cherubic head of golden curls, and disarming Australian accent, it’s hard to think of Zada as a tormented soul, but it’s a role he delivers time and time again. Earlier this year, Zada appeared in his first major role as Charlie, a gay teenager struggling with his small hometown’s scorn after being outed, in the Australian series Invisible Boys. He just wrapped filming for Netflix’s limited series East of Eden, in which he wrestles with universal questions of good and evil as the tormented Cal Trask alongside Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, and Mike Faist. 

He is now Johnny Sinclair Dennis in We Were Liars, the Amazon Prime drama based on E. Lockhart’s eponymous novel about the Sinclair’s, an extremely wealthy but incredibly warped family chasing after their patriarch’s near-unattainable favor. At first, easy to write off as a too-rich teen wrapped up in the blissful ignorance and arrogance of privilege, Zada masterfully peels back Johnny’s layers to reveal a complex, frustrated, and empathetic boy buckling under the pressure of a family that is forever striving for utter perfection. 

Zada doesn’t consider himself a “self-proclaimed rich asshole” himself—and if his boyish authenticity and propensity to throw up peace signs are anything to go by, he’s not—but he felt that he knew who Johnny was from the first time he read his scenes. 

“It’s a hard one to explain, except I just felt like I knew how everyone else was seeing him on paper, but I knew how he would be feeling. I was trying to not think of him as an asshole and just somebody who’s grown up in that environment, and just doesn’t understand what’s going on around him,” says Zada. “Being able to find that throughout the series was joyful.”

Despite a budding acting legacy as a suffering soul, that’s not who Zada is—he says he’s “really happy, actually” —and it’s certainly not their misery that attracts him to these characters. 

“I just see them as interesting characters. I’m interested in playing something else. But apparently I’m just good at the tortured boy thing, and that’s just what people want to see,” quips Zada.

Good-natured and unfailingly earnest, Zada isn’t at all like the tormented boy popping up on the screen in project after project. Before turning to acting at the age of 15, he wanted to be a footballer—“soccer player,” he generously clarifies for his American audience—and routinely got up at two in the morning to watch the Arsenal Football Club’s games. Although both of his parents are in the industry—his father is an actor and director and his mother is a producer—he didn’t always dream of the silver screen. It was only after helping his older brother Hal, who is also an actor, with self-tapes that a love of acting was sparked in him.

His other interests are relatively simple: watching movies, reading books, swimming and surfing, and spending time with his family, including his four siblings.  “And that’s kind of about it,” he shrugs, as if he were just anyone else. And maybe he does still feel like any other teenager, but there’s no denying that Joseph Zada is on the brink of something exciting. It’s a reality that has become inescapable for him to confront, especially when, on the day of We Were Liars’ release, Zada caught sight of himself in an ad for the show plastered on a London bus. 

“I was just walking down the street with my brother, and I had no idea. No one had prepped me, and my face just comes by, a big version of my face,” he says. “It’s so surreal.” 

Circumstances are rapidly changing for the young actor, but Zada’s still maintaining some semblance of balance between putting in the work and not taking himself too seriously, even as the rest of the world begins to. When Johnny Sinclair coolly hops off a police boat at the dock of his family’s estate and saunters onto screen in We Were Liars, his cousin Cadence Sinclair, played by Emily Alyn Lind, describes him as “salt, swagger, and reckless abandon.” With a sly grin, Zada delivers his own set of descriptors: “extremely talented, extremely chill, and extremely humble.”

It’s all said in jest, but it’s not untrue. Extremely talented? With several solid roles already under his belt and more on the horizon, that one can be safely checked off the list. Extremely chill? If his attitude towards the pressures of the industry—“You’ve just got to roll with it,” he says—is anything to go by, then check again! Extremely humble? While that last one was chock full of wry self-deprecation—courtesy of his ever present charm—it’s another check. Even at his young age, Zada has an uncommonly zen mentality akin to that of a seasoned industry professional.

“I’ve said this a lot, but I do just feel like I’m still learning. I think it’s a lot of pressure, but I’m just constantly reminding myself that I’m still learning and not to be afraid of whether it’s good or not,” Zada says. “Unfortunately, I’m just learning on a pretty big stage where there is a lot of noise, but I try to block it all out and stay in my own lane.”

Turning a blind eye to the pandemonium may prove difficult, as anticipation ramps up for the upcoming movie adaption of Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping. When filming begins, Zada will take on the challenge of bringing the young version of Woody Harrelson’s Haymitch Abernathy to life as he battles for survival in a poisonously beautiful arena. With the addition of several Hollywood titans to the cast—Ralph Fiennes, Kieran Culkin, Billy Porter, and Glenn Close, to name a few—and a vast and dedicated fan base already foaming at the mouth for the movie’s release, Zada is aware that life is going to change drastically for him.

“I’m kind of in a weird place right now. I don’t want anyone to know anything about me. But now I’m in these situations where I do have to talk about it,” acknowledges Zada. “I just hope that nobody thinks that I’m trying to force any ideas on them over time. I’m just here to act and be in movies, you know, and enjoy me doing it.”

One’s own head can be their fiercest battleground. Zada, who has been suddenly thrust into the limelight on the same stage as some of his favorite actors, isn’t exempt from this. Considering his last four bookings have been projects based on novels, he has the additional challenge of bringing new depth to characters somewhat predestined by the written material and the on-screen versions that came before. “But I’m doing my hard work, and I’m trying to make fans proud,” he says. 

Self doubt is a natural thing for anyone to have. Self doubt for a young, and still relatively new, actor coming into productions stacked with some of Hollywood’s most seasoned and acclaimed performers is thus a given. But after filming We Were Liars and East of Eden, Zada feels more prepared for what’s to come in Sunrise on the Reaping. 

“I’m feeling a bit more confident now, and also because I just learned that these people are actually normal people and they’re doing the same thing that I’m doing,” says Zada. “I have it in me to go toe to toe with Florence [Pugh], I think. I feel like I can go toe to toe with anyone now.” 

It’s not ego that makes him say it—quite the opposite. Zada, who attributes his success equally to talent and luck, is of the opinion that if he just puts all of himself into his work—and that’s exactly what he does—then he has absolutely nothing to worry about. He puts on no airs, perhaps because he’s relatively new to the industry where wearing a proverbial mask is a must for many, or perhaps because he’s just the type of authentic to not be capable of it. 

So despite the story his resume is telling, Zada isn’t a tortured boy. He’s an ambitious professional, a teenager, a breath of fresh air.  It’s the dawn of the era of Joseph Zada—and it’s looking like it’s going to be a good one.

Photographed by Brendan Wixted at Print and Contact

Styled by Charlie Ward at See Management

Written by Maddy Brown

Grooming: Anna Bernabe at Kalpana