Josh Hutcherson is reframing himself: 'I'm not the 18-year-old kid in Hunger Games'

While Josh Hutcherson does not appear in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the release of The Hunger Games prequel last November still managed to prompt some agita in the actor. Hutcherson, of course, portrayed the character of Peeta Mellark in the franchise's first four installments and describes how, whenever he saw a billboard for the new film, he'd experience a strange panic.

"Like, I’m supposed to be somewhere!" he describes. "It was triggering, because, for years, when we saw that, that meant that we had our movie coming out." Speaking with EW over Zoom in December, Hutcherson, 31, admits he has yet to check out The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes but says, convincingly, that he is "really excited to see it" and thinks "it’s nice to hand the torch off to the next group that’s going to bring that story to life."

"It’s just surreal to see Hunger Games coming out and [think], yeah, dog, that’s not you, that’s someone else!" he adds.

The actor's ultimate equanimity about the film series continuing without him may have been helped by the recent success he enjoyed with a very different franchise, playing the lead role in horror movie Five Nights at Freddy's. Released in October last year, the video game adaptation, which starred the actor as an animatronic robot-battling security guard named Mike Schmidt, earned a jaw-dropping $80 million over its opening weekend, going on to gross a total of $239 million around the globe. Hutcherson's filmography since his last appearance as Peeta in 2015's The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2 has been light on big-screen hits, and he describes the movie's success as "wildly pleasing."

Just a couple of months on, the actor has another plum role as the main villain in the Jason Statham-starring action movie The Beekeeper (out this Friday). Directed by David Ayer (Fury, Suicide Squad), the film finds Hutcherson playing the dastardly Derek Danforth, a corporate criminal who runs afoul of Statham's tough guy Adam Clay after one of his companyies scams an acquaintance of our hero. It is a larger-than-life character that allowed Hutcherson to exercise some different acting muscles from those he used to portray the lovelorn Peeta, who is perpetually pining after Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen, and the troubled Mike, who is haunted by the abduction of his brother.

He's more of "a hyper-wealthy crypto-douchebag who lives in a delusional world where he’s god," Hutcherson explains. "He is hitting every kind of substance that you can dream of and [has] this crazy haircut with bleach blonde tips and a diamond-stud earring, just absolutely unhinged. It was really fun for me, because I’m not the guy that you typically call for that kind of character."

So, should we call this the comeback of Josh Hutcherson? The Hutcher-ssance, if you will? "Sure! Yeah! Who doesn’t love a comeback?" he says, before going on to dispute the term a little. "I have maintained working and stuff," the actor continues. "I think it’s just reframing myself, because I'm not the 18-year-old kid in Hunger Games."

The Kentucky-raised Hutcherson has spent a lot of time playing kids and teenagers, for which he only has himself to blame, having started in the business at a precociously young age. He remembers telling his parents at the age of 9 that he wanted to be an actor. "They said, 'Okay. When you’re older, you can try it.' I was like, 'No, I’ve got to do it now,'" he says. "I found a phone book and called an acting agency. My parents were like, hell, I guess this kid won’t stop. And the rest is history. My mom and I drove to LA, stayed in a motel in Glendale, and I started auditioning."

Hutcherson starred in Jon Favreau's 2005 science-fiction film Zathura: A Space Adventure and portrayed the nephew sidekick of Brendan Fraser's character in 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth, but it was his casting alongside Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth in 2012's Hunger Games that elevated him to true star status. The actor describes the ensuing few years as "wildly transformative."

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

Asked how he felt when the Hunger Games rollercoaster came to an end in the fall of 2015 with the release of Mockingjay — Part 2, Hutcherson says he had conflicting feelings. "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 continues. "I missed making the movies, I missed being on tour with the whole gang."

After his time on the Hunger Games concluded, Hutcherson appeared in James Franco's The Disaster Artist and a crime thriller called Burn. He also starred on three seasons of Future Man, a Hulu science-fiction sitcom executive produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, about a janitor who is tasked with saving the world. "That was insane, man. You just never knew what their writing team was going to come up with next," Hutcherson says, possibly thinking about the scene in the premiere when his masturbating character ejaculates over a visitor from the future. "I hadn’t done much comedy in my life and definitely had not been the lead of a show. That was really an exercise of not judging yourself and being an absolute clown. I had a lot of fun doing that."

Then for The Beekeeper, Hutcherson originally put himself on tape for the smaller role of a low-level villain who is despatched by Statham's army-of-one early in proceedings. It was the guy spotted in the trailer getting pulled off the bridge. "David saw something in that tape that made him say, no, I want this guy to become Derek," Hutcherson recalls. "The fact that David saw that in me, that I could bring this guy to life was a huge vote of confidence."

Ayer himself says he cast Hutcherson in the role because, "He's a real actor."

"Part of my job," he adds, "is to recognize the diamond hiding in the person. That was so much of the fun of this, working against expectation. It’s such a new lane for Josh. I feel like we’re going to introduce him in a new way to an audience, but in a way that’s really fun."

Hutcherson was shooting The Beekeeper when he was approached about playing Mike in Five Nights at Freddy's. He didn't know anything about the video games, but a bit of research and a Zoom meeting with the director, Emma Tammi, went a long way. Hutcherson's Five Nights at Freddy's costars included Matthew Lillard, who describes his work on the film as grounded. "In a movie like this, you need that kind of authenticity," Lillard remarks. "It allows people like me to chew the scenery behind him."

Regarding a Five Nights at Freddy's sequel, Hutcherson reveals that he has "not been given the 100-percent go yet," but adds, "I would be very surprised if there wasn’t another one. I'm really excited to see where they go with it, because the video games go in a lot of different directions."

In the more immediate future, Hutcherson spent last summer shooting an action movie titled Land of Grace in the jungles of Colombia, an experience the cheery actor sums up as "very hot, brutal hours, you've got a bunch of snakes and wildlife, but fun!" Beyond that, he has a thirst — a hunger, even — to see what other opportunities will come his way following the success of Five Nights at Freddy's.

"I’m happy now to be in a position, with Freddy’s having come out, Beekeper about to come out, that I can find the next thing that I can sink my teeth into," he says. "I’m coming into the next era of my career, being in my early 30s. I think that Freddy’s is a great stepping stone in that regard because Mike feels older. He doesn’t feel like a teenager, he feels like a young man. I’m really excited to see what that brings me in the future."

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