ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — Plenty of people chase their fifteen minutes of fame. But Elizabethtown's Josh Nalley never intended to be an actor.
Instead, his shot at the limelight started as a joke and a way to kill time.
"I thought maybe a couple people would get some laughs out of it," he said. "I never intended it to blow up like it did."
About a year ago, Nalley started posting daily TikTok's "playing dead" in various locations around town. He set a goal of daily posts until he was cast as an "unalive person" in a television show or movie.
"I'd go out to the different parks in the area and say 'hey does that look like a good place to dump a dead body,' or 'would that be a funny visual in front of something that's not normally seen?'" he said.
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He'll appear face down, slumped, or leaning near just about anything, from rocks in a creek bed to a bouncy castle at a Subway store.
Nalley said one of the first videos to become popular was of his friends acting in a scene together around Thanksgiving. Then in July, after more than 300 posts, the big day came.
"'CSI, their social media account, had commented on one of my posts and two or three days later they sent me an email saying 'hey would you be interested in being one of our episodes?'" Nalley said.
A dream and a goal come to light, he said his shoots for "CSI: Las Vegas" were a far cry from TikTok's at home.
"One day I was in makeup for two and a half hours and then we were on set for five hours filming the scene," Nalley said. "Normally I'm by myself, I'm my camera man, so to have a whole crew around me and getting makeup done was a totally different experience."
In the future, he'd love to book more gigs, especially for one of his favorite directors. Overall though, Nalley said the experience taught him to be humble and have a sense of humor.
"If you have a goal, persistence is the key, just keep grinding keep going at it and eventually you may get noticed if you just keep grinding," he said.
Nalley's appearance is set to air on Nov. 3.
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