‘Hunger Games’ Star Josh Hutcherson Says Billboards For ‘The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’ Were “Triggering”

It’s been nearly a decade since Josh Hutcherson played Peeta Mellark in The Hunger Games — however, that still didn’t stop the actor from panicking whenever he saw advertisements for the franchise’s prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which came out last November.

While Hutcherson didn’t star in the film, he opened up about the surreal feeling that would overcome him whenever he would see a billboard promoting the Rachel Zegler-led flick.

“Like, I’m supposed to be somewhere!” he told Entertainment Weekly. “It was triggering, because, for years, when we saw that, that meant that we had our movie coming out.”

The star admitted that he hasn’t watched The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes just yet but is “really excited to see it” and believes “it’s nice to hand the torch off to the next group that’s going to bring that story to life.”

He added, “It’s just surreal to see Hunger Games coming out and [think], ‘Yeah, dog, that’s not you, that’s someone else!'”

Hutcherson starred in the original four Hunger Games movies alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth. According to the actor, the years he spent filming the action flicks were “wildly transformative.”

“I shot the first Hunger Games when I was 18,” he said. “Eighteen to 22 were my university years. That was my college.”

He continued, “The movies were so fun to make and then the press tours were just wild. Me and Jen and Liam experienced a quantum shift in our notoriety, and having people there by your side that have a similar lived experience made it more enjoyable and more sane than if we were doing it on our own.”

When his run with the franchise ended with 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, Hutcherson said it was “nice” at first, but then he started to “miss it.”

“For the first little bit, it definitely was nice because it was a lot of work, and it was all-consuming. But then I missed it,” he said. “I missed making the movies, I missed being on tour with the whole gang.”

Nowadays, he’s gearing up for the release of The Beekeeper, in which he plays a character far different than Peeta, who some may describe as the charming simp to Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. Instead, his new villainous character is “a hyper-wealthy crypto-douchebag who lives in a delusional world where he’s God,” according to Hutcherson, who acknowledged that he’s “not the guy that you typically call for that kind of character.”

Despite this, the busy actor decided to take on the role, telling the outlet, “I think it’s just reframing myself, because I’m not the 18-year-old kid in Hunger Games.”