Jack Martin knew all about Murray Hill, the New York neighborhood at the center of his latest series.
“So many of my friends and people I knew moved to Murray Hill, and they worked in jobs like the ones in the show. And then I didn’t,” the 27-year-old actor tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom. “I chose to pursue acting — which was weird, or at least that’s how it was perceived. It was a conscious choice to not go through with that lifestyle.”
But then Martin found himself on TikTok, making sketches satirizing the corporate world and the young men that often find themselves working in it. Then came Not Suitable For Work, Hulu’s latest Mindy Kaling offering.
The actor plays Josh Teitelbaum in the Friends-esque comedy about a group of young people living and working in New York. “There’s something funny about choosing to not do that and then ending up in a role that’s where I’m pretending to do it,” he says.
Martin had been gunning for the show the minute it was announced, and he even had people in his life telling him he needed to be on the show. “I really wanted to be in it, and I just got really lucky,” he says.
The actor’s audition process was likely a good indication of how he’d feel about the rest of the show — he can’t stop hyping up the cast and crew of the series, assuring it’s not a PR response but his genuine feelings about working on the series. “I always call my people when I leave an audition room. I call my parents, my team and my girlfriend, and the first thing I said was, ‘That’s the nicest person in an audition room I’ve ever interacted with,’” Martin says of his now-boss Kaling.
“She came up to me and said she’d seen all of my videos and that they’re so funny and she loved my audition. She was asking me about myself,” he continues. “She was just so polite and her notes were very thoughtful and generous. She wasn’t intimidating. She wasn’t rude. She was just wonderful. And that’s how she was on set too.”
Martin was extra excited when he booked NSFW because he’d been friends with his eventual co-star Will Angus for years. He’d been testing for the role, something he was not trying to get too excited about given the unpredictability of the auditioning process, when his team told him that Angus was the first choice for another role in the series.
Max Montgomery
“I freaked out. I got so excited. They didn’t even know we were friends and had done stuff,” he says. Martin called Angus, who was in Italy shooting Luca Guadagnino’a Artificial, and immediately asked if the other actor wanted to live together. Angus, of course, said yes.
Nicholas Duvernay rounds out their trio of 20-something men on the show. “I met Nicholas pretty shortly after that. We just clicked and were very fast friends,” he continues. If the show gets a season two, Martin says he and Angus are convincing Duvernay to live with them. They’re not sure if they’ll live in Murray Hill, however.
The men of NSFW are all “emotionally vulnerable and open guys,” as Martin puts it, which can feel like a rarity on television at times. But it’s not so unusual for the actor. “It doesn’t feel that crazy to me because that’s how I am and my friends are in my life,” he says.
“I cried when I watched Moulin Rouge, so it’s pretty familiar territory to me,” he continues. “Not to say we’re the same as our characters, because we’re definitely different. But I do think that aspect of being open with your friends is something that I’m used to.”
Martin’s character Josh is the type of character we can’t seem to escape in media these days — a nepo baby. The actor’s always enjoyed comedy that satirizes rich people — he name drops some of his favorites including The White Lotus, Succession, The Menu and Triangle of Sadness. And Josh fits right into that world rich with humor.
Much of Josh’s arc comes back to his relationship with his dad. “He wants so badly to be a good person, and I think his arc is all about figuring out what that actually means in real life. And not in a platitude, in actually becoming independent and taking on responsibility,” he says of his character. Martin doesn’t want to take credit for most of that character arc — he credits the “brilliantly written” material he’s been given.
“Mindy is a genius and Charlie Grandy is incredible and so is our whole writer’s room — Beth Appel, Sarah Tapscott, Kate Lindenberg — everybody in there,” he continues, also shouting out co-stars Avantika Vandanapu and Ella Hunt. “They just wrote such a great character, so it really gives me everything I need to play with it.”
Martin in ‘Not Suitable For Work.’
Disney/Gwen Capistran
Looking ahead, Martin’s using his experience on NSFW to grow but he’s not using it as a bridge in his career. “I don’t see anything as a stepping stone. I always feel overwhelmed with gratitude when I get to do anything in this business,” he says.
Martin still very much sees acting as a dream job that hopes he can continue doing. He’s less so looking for the right character and instead looking for the right writing. He enjoys playing different types of characters, including his “absolutely crazy character” in Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney’s Hulu original film Pizza Movie, which was released earlier this year.
He’d never auditioned for a role like that before, and he found genuine enjoyment in the challenge it presented. “I think the industry can make these decisions for you a little bit, but I love feeling pushed and challenged by a character and feeling like I have to step more outside of myself to play someone,” he says.
But Martin does admit there’s one genre he’s yearning, no pun intended, to tackle. “I’d really like to do romance,” he says. “I love the genre, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Brokeback Mountain.”
Horror isn’t likely a genre he’d thought too much about until three years ago. He admits that he’d previously been too afraid to watch horror movies but his girlfriend, actress Lili Reinhart, got him into it. Now, he estimates he’s seen about 300 horror films. The actor’s found himself inspired by the wave of Gen Z horror filmmakers, like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, that are thriving.
“I love writing, and I’ve always wanted to direct. Seeing Gen Z filmmakers do it has made it seem a little bit more possible,” Martin says.
“Total credit to Curry and Kane for being incredibly talented and having great visions and the ability to execute them, but I feel like I’ve noticed a difference immediately just in terms of meetings. Everyone seems a lot more excited about the prospect of me writing and directing than they did six months ago,” he continues. “I’m all for young people getting a chance, if I still count it.”
Martin attends an advanced screening for ‘Not Suitable For Work’ at 92NY on May 27, 2026 in New York City.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
He’s not going to lie and pretend like social media is all sunshine and rainbows, but he does note that there’s a good side to it as well. The actor’s excited by the fact that anyone, regardless of connections or experience, can create something, upload it and potentially have it be seen because of its merit.
Acting often requires the ever-present balancing act of taking on projects that excite you and because you need to get experience. Martin points out that you never quite know what’s going to hit and what won’t. “This is a business where you get 24 hours notice for a life-changing opportunity. So it feels so out of my hands,” the actor says.
“I’m also just keeping it about the work as much as possible because that’s really why I’m in it. My goal is to have the kind of impact on people creatively that all my favorite things have had on me,” he continues. “Whatever extent I’m able to do that is really the dream.”
