Who Is FBoy Island's Josh McDonald?
Summer is the perfect season for fun, mindless entertainment — and if it contains a little intrigue and a lot of eye candy, so much the better. Happily, HBO Max is offering both in "FBoy Island," streaming on the network starting July 29.
In many ways, the show is like other established "reality" dating programs, such as "The Bachelor" and "Too Hot to Handle": impossibly gorgeous women looking for The Right One out of a bunch of equally impossibly gorgeous men. Naturally, they're doing it on a tropical island resort. The twist, however, is straight out of "Joe Millionaire." (You know, the one where the cute "rich" guy turned out to be an average blue-collar dude, per IMDb.) Of the 24 men, only half of them are "Nice Guys" who are genuinely in this for love. The other 12 are "FBoys" who are in it strictly for the $100,000 they stand to win. The three women have to decide which ones are the players — and, the show hints, perhaps some of those FBoys might "truly reform" in the process (via HBO Max).
One of the hunky guys in the cast is Josh McDonald. The 34-year-old Chicago native is a self-proclaimed entrepreneur (via his Instagram) and world traveler who co-hosts a podcast called "The Travel Guydes." But is he competing for love or money?
Josh lied to his listeners — did he lie to the ladies, too?
To tantalize viewers, HBO Max posted mini-profiles of each man on "FBoy Island," designed to look like magazine issues. Josh McDonald's profile "zine" drops such tidbits as the fact that he's attracted to women with "beautiful hands." But he also values intelligence and ambition, and since he loves traveling, it stands to reason that his future mate should be "open to new experiences." McDonald is quoted as saying, "I'm really looking forward to peeling back the layers and seeing what's under the hood." (A rather mixed metaphor, but we get the idea.)
One clue that McDonald might be on the level is the fact that he's a Scorpio. Guys born under this sign take romance very seriously, according to Love to Know, and "game playing is off limits" if you know what's good for you. On the other hand, it seems that this contestant can fool people when he wants to. On his Insta feed, he posted a video in which he confessed, "I need to get something off my chest, because I haven't been totally honest with y'all. ...I told y'all that I went to the British Virgin Islands back a few months ago, and in reality, that was a lie. ...I was on a different island. I was on FBoy Island."
As HBO Max asks, "Is this traveling titan a sightseeing sweetie ... or a first-class scoundrel?" We know we can't wait to find out!