Josh Duhamel revealed that he experiences a sense of physical relief immediately after leaving Hollywood behind for his remote heartland cabin.
The 53-year-old actor maintains a home in Los Angeles but has shifted most of his life to the Midwest in recent years. Duhamel’s primary residence is now in Fargo, North Dakota, but he often escapes an hour and a half away to his 50-acre off-grid cabin retreat in the woods of Minnesota.
During a recent appearance on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s “Fly on the Wall” podcast, the “Transformers” star opened up about how cabin life has impacted his health and spirit.
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“What I think I love the most about it is I just get out there and my heart rate drops about 25%,” Duhamel shared.
“My priorities change too,” he continued. “I feel like I have purpose.”
“I’m always working on something where I don’t even mow my own lawn here,” Duhamel added.
“It’s just absolute freedom out there.”
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Duhamel went on to detail how he built the property from the ground up after first purchasing the land almost 17 years ago.
“I bought like a little half a parcel for 12 acres for like nothing,” he recalled. “And then the other half of that parcel went up for sale.”
“Then I had then 26 acres with a little shack of a cabin with no electricity, no water, but it was a cabin,” Duhamel continued. “It was a structure. I got a cabin. I’m not going to sleep there with the rats or the mice or the raccoons. And then the one next to that went up for sale.”
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The “Las Vegas” alum recalled that he purchased the next parcel of land, which is on a lake, for “nothing,” as he marveled over the difference in cost of property between Minnesota and Southern California.
“I’ll tell you what I paid for it — $189,000 for 26 acres,” Duhamel said. “The amount you can get there versus what you pay for it here is crazy. I’m not sure I would be able to get it for that now. But then all of a sudden, I had two little cabins and like 50 acres on this place and I never planned to do that. I just wanted something out there somewhere that I could just get away and go, you know, fish and stuff like that.”
Duhamel explained that he came to embrace the process of building his rustic sanctuary piece-by-piece over 15 years.
“It’s turned into like a whole passion of mine,” he said. “I started moving dirt and I started shaping it.”
“And we actually built a property,” Duhamel continued. “[Because] these cabins are so small, they’re just big enough for three people or family of three.”
Duhamel’s family has grown in the years since he first purchased his land in Minnesota. The Daytime Emmy Award winner was previously married to singer Fergie, 51. The two, who share son Axl, 12, tied the knot in 2009 but finalized their divorce in 2019.
In 2022, Duhamel married model Audra Marie, 32. The couple are parents to son Shepherd, 2, and newborn daughter, Rocca de Leon, whom they welcomed last month.
While speaking with Carvey and Spade, Duhamel recalled how he adjusted to living in the cabins, which were lacking in modern amenities during the early days.
“For the first few years, there was no water. There was no bathroom,” he said. “We had electricity in the little cabin — the second one — but no water,” he said. “So, we were like washing our dishes in the lake and it was like homesteading. But, I loved it. You know, it was like so different than anything I’d ever done before.”
Duhamel noted that due to the remote location of the property, it now functions entirely detached from local municipal utility lines and instead relies on independent, off-grid infrastructure for water, heating and electricity.
“We had to build wells,” he explained. “Each one of the cabins has a well.”
Duhamel said that they also use solar panels to generate daily electricity as well as propane tanks, which can power high-energy appliances and provide heating.
While describing the activities that he enjoys at his lakeside retreat, Duhamel shared that he recently “splurged” on a pontoon boat and also has a “little old fishing boat out there and a couple old jet skis.’
He also shared the story of how he acquired a 1954 Chriscraft motor yacht, which was featured in a scene from his 2022 action-comedy “Shotgun Wedding.” Duhamel said that he expressed an interest in buying the boat after production was completed on the movie, which also starred Jennifer Lopez.
“I was like, ‘What’s up with that boat?’ and they said, ‘We paid a lot of money for this thing.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll give you this for it.’ They said, ‘No, no, we paid this,'” he recalled.
“I let it go,” Duhamel continued. “Well, about six months later, they come back and they say, ‘You still want the boat?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ll give you like half as much as I offered before.’ They said, ‘Fine.’ They took it and then it was over in Puerto Rico or something. I had to get it all the way back to the States.”
“They were having to do all that and they said, ‘You know what? It’s yours,'” he remembered. “So they just gave it to me.”
However, Duhamel explained that between transporting the boat to Fargo and paying to have it professionally restored, the “free boat” became a “huge money pit.”
“But it’s all done now and it’s out on the water and it’s a really cool ride,” he said.
While Duhamel said that he and his family spend a lot of time at their Minnesota property, they primarily live in Fargo, which is his wife’s hometown. Duhamel noted that he appreciates the slower pace of life in Fargo compared to L.A.
“It’s a really fun town, too,” he said. “I mean, people know of it from the movies and the TV shows, and it’s it’s very different than that. But I just love North Dakota. I love the people there. I love the way they live their lives. It’s a little bit slower.”
Duhamel also opened up about his cabin in Minnesota during an interview with Fox News Digital in March.
The actor said that he was now 72% ready for a zombie apocalypse at his “doomsday” cabin after previously joking that he was about 70% ready last summer.
“Every year, I get a little bit more fully prepped,” he said. “But that’s part of the fun is the journey of figuring it out, seeing what the latest and greatest is. I’m less afraid of zombies and more afraid of AI robots now. I don’t know if we’re ever gonna fully be able to, you know, protect ourselves from what’s coming, but at least I can hopefully turn off all devices and just sort of shut ourselves off from the world if we need to.”
“Is that too dark? Maybe that’s too dark,” he wondered. “I don’t know.”
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Duhamel, who hails from Minot, North Dakota, explained that living in his home state keeps him grounded.
“Hollywood can be a very seductive place, and it can be a very dangerous place if you don’t remember where you came from,” he said.
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“I’ve always stayed very close to my roots,” Duhamel continued. “I’ve got a very tight-knit group of friends that have been very close to me forever, since kindergarten, some of them. So, I’ve leaned on them a lot just to keep my a– in check throughout the years.”
He said he’s been really “grateful” to have had “a place like North Dakota to root myself in, because it’s helped me stay true to myself throughout all these years.”
The “Ransom Canyon” star also shared that he could see himself living in his Minnesota cabin full-time and noted that spending time there provided a good balance for his children.
“My 12-year-old gets to get to see both sides of that,” Duhamel explained. “He’s in L.A., but he’s also at the cabin a lot, so he gets to go out there and kind of see the world as I did as a kid.”
Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson and Larry Fink contributed to this report.
