TikTokker lands role on ‘CSI’ after playing dead for a year

Now that’s dead-ication.

A Kentucky man demonstrated the power of social media after landing a role on “CSI: Vegas” due to a macabre TikTok challenge that saw him play dead in public for almost a year.

“I dropped the phone in disbelief,” Josh Nalley, 42, told The Post of the moment he found out about his death star-making moment.

The restaurant manager posed lifeless on the ground for 321 days in his campaign for stardom, pretending to be dead at various locations around the Bluegrass State.

Nalley told The Post he began the trend because he was “bored” to death but turned it into a yearlong audition for the hit CBS show.

Showrunners awarded Nalley the “posthumous” part after seeing his daily tryout on TikTok, where he’s racked up 4.3 million views.

Shortly after casting directors flew him out to California for filming, Nalley — who posts under the name @living_dead_josh — announced his cameo on TikTok, of course. In a clip viewed over 323,00 times, he splayed out “dead” on the star-spangled Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles as the “CSI” theme song “Who Are You” plays in the background.

Nalley will be in Episode 6, which airs Nov. 3, directed by Mario Van Peebles, whom he met during production.

The Elizabethtown resident posted his first stiff-simulation video in October 2021 and, since then, he’s amassed 351 corpse-cosplaying clips.

“I’m lucky to live in a part of the state where there’s like some pretty decent parks that are abandoned that if you’re going to dump a body, that’d be where you’re going to dump them,” Nalley said.

One clip sees him splayed out on a river bank as he plays dead in the water while another shows the “stiff actor” lying prone on the ground under the Corvette Museum sign in Bowling Green. Nalley even filmed himself hanging mock-lifelessly from a rope like in a Western.

One year later, Nalley has amassed nearly 115,000 followers simply by playing possum.

While playing dead may look like a job you could do lying down, it actually requires a lot of practice, Nalley said.

“It’s a lot of holding your breath and trying not to move, especially if you’re in an uncomfortable position,” the aspiring TV star told The Post. “I’ve learned that even if you’re holding your breath and trying not to move, you’re going to move involuntarily especially if you got like a rock in your back.”

“Rarely do we find an actor as well prepared to play a corpse as Josh,” “CSI: Vegas” showrunner Jason Tracey told The Post. “It was a pleasure watching him work. He’s a pro at this death thing.”

While he’s become somewhat of an expert at being lifeless, there are some workplace hazards, so to speak.

“Insects and laying on the ground never bother me,” he said. “It’s getting into weird positions on the ground. I try to look for places that aren’t that crazy and I make sure it’s clear. Skinned up my knees and knuckles on rocks and stuff but it’s all for the art.”

Fortunately, working himself to death has paid dividends as it doesn’t take “as many takes to do them [death scenes] now,” Nalley said.

It also helped him prepare for the grueling production process on “CSI: Vegas.”

“I was on set for about five hours with all the different takes and angles I had to get,” the working stiff said. “It was all lying down. I was on a gurney for that entire five hours.”

Nalley said it was a metal gurney, but they provided a heating pad to keep him warm.

“At one point, I’m like ‘Can y’all turn this off, I’m getting a little warm and I don’t want to sweat the prosthetics off,’ ” he said.

While Nalley hasn’t “fully decided” what he’ll do in the future, he said he definitely wants to “keep doing TikToks.” He said he wasn’t paid for his role on “CSI: Vegas,” but he said he’s still contemplating continuing his foray into Hollywood.

“I might still try for another show or a movie.”