“I don’t need that energy,” he adds, of internet idolatry. Being a TikTok star doesn’t lend itself to his brand of acting, anyway. “It’s counterintuitive to my job, because if people know you more, you can’t disappear into characters. They see you as, ‘Oh, that’s Josh.’ You know what I mean? So, if you’re a fucking meme, people know you for the meme.”
Hutcherson has had his fair share of that. He’s the (begrudging) face of many a meme. Some he doesn’t mind. Others, he thinks, are pretty stupid—like the one from Hunger Games, where Mellark, a baker, inexplicably paints himself to camouflage into a rock. The whole scene is silly, he says. It should be noted, he did raise his concerns at the time. “I was like, ‘Look, I know this dude’s a baker, but how is he doing this? Baking sourdough is not painting. How the fuck did he do that?’” he says. “Why didn’t someone stop it? There are so many people who could have stopped it. They let it happen to me. I just lay there.”
That moment aside, it’s clear he still has a lot of love for The Hunger Games. There are actors who spend their entire careers trying to distance themselves from the franchise that made them— Hutcherson isn’t one of them. Not only does the series mean a lot to him, but he also recognizes how much it means to everyone else.
“I could talk all day about Hunger Games,” he says. “I think [they] are amazing books. They’re fantastic movies. They stand for something important and real, especially in today’s world. The themes of authoritarianism and overpowering violent governments are very present. They didn’t listen to The Hunger Games.”
