Inside the Huntington Botanical Gardens, a leafy oasis amid the concrete sprawl of Los Angeles County, a hawk snatched a baby squirrel from its nest, much to the horror of onlookers.
On a commercial flight, a wayward bee buzzed through the cabin, causing mayhem among the passengers.
In both instances, Robert Irwin happened to be nearby.
“Wherever I go, whenever there’s anything animal-related, it’s like when Clark Kent takes his little glasses off,” he said. “It’s like, OK, I can step in and handle it.”
Not all heroes wear capes. Sometimes, they wear khaki.
Mr. Irwin caught the bee, but the squirrel could not be saved.
“I felt really bad. But, I mean, that’s nature, isn’t it?” he said. “Best day ever for the hawk, worst day ever for the squirrel.”
The son of Steve Irwin, the beloved “Crocodile Hunter” conservationist who died in 2006, Mr. Irwin has continued his father’s work, promoting wildlife at home in Australia and around the world, while also doing things his own way.
As a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars” this fall, Mr. Irwin, who turns 22 next month, became a fan favorite from his very first jungle-themed jive.
It was not a surprise. His older sister, Bindi Irwin, won the ABC reality show’s Mirrorball Trophy in 2015, and it was clear that, like his sister, the endlessly upbeat Mr. Irwin had also inherited his father’s ability to connect with people — the judges, fans, children, celebrities. Even Prince William called in to the show to offer Mr. Irwin his support.
“Robert is like living sunshine,” Ms. Irwin, 27, said. “Wherever he goes, he makes people feel better.”
Or, as his mother, Terri Irwin, put it, “He’s kind of what Tom Cruise aspires to be.”
‘I Just Want to Get This Right’
When I first met Mr. Irwin inside his “Dancing With the Stars” trailer in Los Angeles in mid-November, his khaki workout pants were peppered with jagged rips, not from a wayward animal encounter but from aggressive knee-sliding across the dance floor.
“I’m held together with tape and a prayer at this point,” he said. “I feel like I am at my limit, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Though athletic, Mr. Irwin had zero dance experience before joining Season 34 of the hit series. He approached the competition with a dogged determination that has carried him to the finale, which will air on Tuesday.
Since September, the finalists — a group that also includes the Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles, the actress Elaine Hendrix, and the content creators Alix Earle and Dylan Efron — have spent 24 to 36 hours a week in rehearsals with their professional dance partners. Mr. Irwin is paired with Witney Carson, a professional dancer who in 2014 won the competition with Alfonso Ribeiro, who now one of the show’s hosts.
On a recent Monday evening, I watched Mr. Irwin practice his fox trot inside the “Dancing With the Stars” ballroom — technically, a cavernous soundstage — near Hollywood. His mother and sister sat a few rows back. The family, along with his sister’s husband and 4-year-old daughter, decamped to Los Angeles for the show’s entire season to support Mr. Irwin, at his request.
As cameras prepared for the blocking session and producers conferred, Mr. Irwin twirled across the polished floor, his arms wrapped around an imaginary partner, his patent loafers following a silent beat.
“I just want to get this right,” he told Ms. Carson as she slipped into position and they retraced the movements yet again.
At the next night’s live show, while the other contestants chatted and stretched, Mr. Irwin was back at it, furiously dancing parts of his routine until a crew member shooed him into place.
“He puts so much pressure on himself,” Ms. Carson told me inside her trailer. “He’s a perfectionist. He just puts his heart and soul into everything and makes you want to be better.”
Throughout the season, the two have leaned into Mr. Irwin’s budding status as a heartthrob, outfitting him in torso-baring ensembles and integrating the occasional body roll and hip thrust into his choreography.
Yet, there’s a softer side to his appeal.
Positive Masculinity
Mr. Irwin isn’t afraid of raw emotion and he has broken down multiple times during the season. One night, he cried during a dance dedicated to his mother, who raised him and his sister alone after his father was fatally stung by a stingray. Another time he fell to the floor, overcome with emotion, when videos of him and his father were shown.
Fans — and there are many — have praised Mr. Irwin as a beacon of positive masculinity for his vulnerability. He makes no attempt to appear cool or aloof. He often throws his head back in full-throated laughter, and he gleefully celebrates everyone around him.
He has also expressed his support of the L.G.B.T.Q. community and women’s health issues. (He said he was inspired by his sister’s endometriosis diagnosis.)
“I strongly believe that life is too short not to wear your heart on your sleeve,” he said. “When you lose someone important early on, it reaffirms the fact that life is so fleeting. You owe it to yourself to find your passion and to pursue it.”
For Mr. Irwin, that sensitivity is a strength he first saw in his father, who died when Mr. Irwin was 2, and to whom he bears a striking resemblance, both in exuberant mannerisms and blond, rugged physicality.
“He was about as traditionally masculine as you can get, and then, at the same time, he was the most vulnerable, emotional, family-oriented, kind human being,” he said. “That, to me, is the epitome.”
The actor Russell Crowe, who has been a close friend of the Irwins since the 1990s, said Steve would be “so impressed” with the man his son had become and how he had succeeded on his ballroom journey.
“Although Steve could read the rhythms of the seasons and every living creature, he was absolutely not gifted with a sense of musical rhythm,” Mr. Crowe said in an email. “In his hands, a tambourine became a deadly weapon.”
He added, “I think he would watch Robert dancing and how he uses his body, the strength and poise, and he would be in awe of his son.”
Still Learning From His Father
Australia does not have its own royal family, but the Irwins could be considered the closest thing. In lieu of a palace, Mr. Irwin was raised in a zoo.
In 1970, the elder Mr. Irwin’s parents founded a small reptile park that evolved into Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Queensland. After he began managing the park and married his wife, who is American, in the early 1990s, they settled in a home on the site as they expanded the zoo and collaborated on “The Crocodile Hunter.”
When he died, his wife made sure he remained ever-present in their children’s lives through his extensive catalog of work. The children watched episodes of “The Crocodile Hunter” and other documentaries featuring their father every morning with breakfast.
“We had thousands upon thousands of hours of footage, so I never felt like I was missing the picture of who my dad was,” Robert Irwin said.
“Put it this way, I learned how to feed crocodiles from my dad,” he added, explaining that he first tried it eight years after his father’s death, with guidance from the videos and other zookeepers who his father had personally trained. “He is still teaching me every day.”
While growing up, the privately tutored Irwin children made time for typical 2000s kid things. Their mother said Bindi had a Tamagotchi, and Robert had a Game Boy, but they were mostly “free-range kids” who climbed trees and traipsed around the zoo.
The elder Ms. Irwin is now the zoo’s sole owner, and she, her son and her daughter’s family all live on the 700-acre property. They regularly appear there to promote their conservation and animal rehabilitation work, and have found other promotional avenues like reality TV, merchandise, luxury lodgings and nonprofit efforts.
“It’s like I was born into a Disney movie,” Mr. Irwin said. “I wake up every morning to the sound of the lemurs and tigers calling. I’m surrounded by animals, and I’m surrounded by all of this love from my family and this drive to want to make the world a better place.”
‘He’s Like That 24/7’
At a backlot photo shoot the morning after Mr. Irwin earned a perfect score for his fox trot, he vibrated with pent-up energy as he made small talk about the merits of monotremes (egg-laying mammals like the platypus). When he had to pose for a few serious shots, his lips quivered as he tried to suppress his signature toothy grin.
“It’s my default,” he said as his smile won the battle.
Mr. Irwin’s overarching message, like that of the rest of his family, is simple: Treat others — whether they be humans or animals — with kindness.
“Someone once said, ‘Steve’s like the Gandhi of wildlife,’” the elder Ms. Irwin said, adding that her husband’s mantra was “You’ve got to love crocodiles and koalas, vultures and eagles.” As in, the prickly or overlooked animals deserve adoration, too.
“Once you’re accepting like that, it just kind of cuts through your whole life,” she said. “More love.”
Over the course of the three days I spent intermittently trailing and observing Mr. Irwin at various “Dancing With the Stars” activities, his puppylike excitement for anyone and anything that crossed his path never appeared to waver.
But no one can really be that enthusiastic all the time, right?
“I used to think that,” said Luke Reavley, the general manager of Australia Zoo, who has known Mr. Irwin since he was a toddler. “But it’s him. On and off camera, he’s like that 24/7.”
Perhaps because Mr. Irwin has been in the spotlight since birth — a camera crew filmed him as a newborn in the delivery room, and four weeks later he was at the center of an international uproar when his father cradled him in one arm while feeding a crocodile — he doesn’t see any distinction between his public persona and his private self.
“I never change what I say, what I do, who I am one bit, wherever I am,” he said as we sat on a couch in an empty green room before a fresh round of rehearsals. “It’s just me, and I stand by who I am.”
The challenge with that, he conceded, is that “you’ve got no persona to hide behind.”
Instead, he has become an expert at revealing just enough. No matter his audience, Mr. Irwin is disarmingly friendly and welcoming. But every word is spoken with intention. Every answer bounces in exactly the direction he wishes to take it. He is a publicist’s dream.
Topics like his struggles with fame and his dating life are spoken about in broad terms, his cheerful tone belying the wall of privacy he has delicately constructed.
“Holy moly, that’s so challenging to navigate,” he said of trying to date in an era where “anything you do will be on TikTok the next day.”
(He was previously in a relationship with the niece of Heath Ledger, and “Dancing” fans love to speculate about various dating rumors.)
When I asked his family if Mr. Irwin had ever rebelled, Bindi quipped, “His paleontology phase was pretty wild.”
In Australia, he unwinds by surfing in the Pacific Ocean most mornings. He considers himself a spiritual person, and he finds the most solace from being in nature. “That is my meditation,” he said. “It’s my church. It’s my everything.”
Changing the Medium, Not the Message
Now, Mr. Irwin’s at a crossroads. After “Dancing With the Stars,” he will head to South Africa, where he hosts the Australian version of “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here,” a gig he committed to only after the series agreed to stop serving native wildlife in its eating challenges.
But his stint as a dancing star has opened up a new world, he said, one in which he sees a future more rooted in the arts and working, at least part-time, in the United States.
To that end, he has a cameo in Disney’s “Zootopia 2” as a koala named Robert Furwin. And he dreams of one day starring in action movies.
“Mate, 100 percent,” he said, his eyes lighting up at the thought of doing stunts. “Oh my gosh, that would be an absolute dream.”
He’ll never move away from wildlife conservation or the zoo, he explained carefully, but he is hoping to evolve the ways in which he spreads his message.
“What I represent is still so deeply connected to anything I do,” he said. “Even if I’m not in there catching crocodiles, the khaki is still in my heart. It’s always me.”
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