Josh Hutcherson Is Madly In Love

While HBO’s I Love LA has been praised for its cocaine-fueled and roofie joke-laced brand of comedic chaos, one of the pilot’s standout quips is also among its most low-key ad libs. Moments after Maia (Rachel Sennott, the show’s creator) begs her boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), not to let an earthquake interrupt their birthday sex — “If we’re gonna die, I just wanna come!” she cries — she starts lamenting how much older she looks now that she’s turned 27. “You’re skinnier now,” Dylan replies dryly. Then, he waits a beat before dropping the punchline Hutcherson improvised mid-take: “Which I know you love!”

The way Hutcherson sees it, it’s this kind of tiny-but-telling aside that reveals who Dylan really is and what his relationship with Maia is actually like: something far more layered than just being the nice, normie Spanish teacher to her high-strung influencer manager. “When I was reading the scripts and talking with Rachel about it, [I said], ‘I don’t know why Dylan is with Maia. We have to figure out what that is [because] there’s a version of Dylan that’s very judgy of her,” the actor tells me over a bacon-heavy breakfast at Nine Orchard, the Lower East Side hotel he’s staying at for the week. The version that interested him most was a Dylan who isn’t totally comfortable complimenting Maia for being thinner, yet will still do it because he knows it’s exactly what she wants to hear. “What I wanted to bring to Dylan is that he finds her existence attractive: her wackiness, her spinning, chaotic mind.”

The “perfect boyfriend” is an archetype the 33-year-old has been mining since 2005’s Little Manhattan, where he played a 10-year-old approaching his first crush with all the neurotic intensity of a Nora Ephron lead, and later as The Hunger Games’ Peeta Mellark, the baker-turned-hero who convinced a generation that nice guys don’t always finish last. And while Hutcherson eagerly signed onto I Love LA — he was a longtime fan of Sennott’s work and quickly became enamored with Jordan Firstman, Odessa A’zion, and True Whitaker, who play Maia’s Greek chorus of bad-influence besties — it was the process of working with Sennott to ground their relationship that ultimately made the project a true dream job.

“From the first moment that I started shooting the show and hanging out with everyone, my girlfriend was like, ‘I love what they bring out in you.’”

“On paper, that relationship looks like the most boring f*cking sexual dynamic you can imagine. But the fact that they have that sexual spark, they turn each other on, even though they’ve been living together for a few years, is important to understand,” he says, fiddling with the Prada sunglasses perched on the rim of his acid-stained hat. (“The whole cast is begging me to get new sunglasses already. I’m like, ‘I will when I lose these!’” he says.) “These two really f*ck with each other.”

Hutcherson says working on the show, about a group of friends reuniting after many years, has “reignited” his life. His girlfriend of 13 years, Claudia Traisac, is inclined to agree. “From the first moment that I started shooting the show and hanging out with everyone, [my girlfriend] was like, ‘I love what they bring out in you,’” he says. “Especially me and Jordan, there’s a real beautiful bromance between us that just kind of pushes me to be more expansive, and Clau loves it. She’s like, ‘This cast is the best thing that’s happened to you in years.’”

Below, the actor reflects on being a Jessa-Charlie-Adam, the performative nature of the internet boyfriend existence, and his very millennial screen time habits.

You joined the show a bit later on than the rest of the cast, but it seems like you were very down to jump right in. How aware were you of Rachel and her work prior to that offer?

I had seen Shiva Baby and Bottoms. I had always admired her and thought that she was incredible. So when the show came to me, it was like the dream combination of factors: HBO, a Sunday night comedy that’s a Rachel Sennott creation.

Were you a fan of the show’s predecessors, like Girls?

I love Girls. That brand of comedy, filmmaking, Lena’s voice. I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched the whole thing. It’s just my show.

There’s so many parts of different characters that I connected with in that show. I feel I’m a hybrid of Jessa, Charlie, Adam. I want to have Jessa’s carefree, go-with-the-wind f*cking thing, and I feel like that is so much of my spirit, but it’s wrapped up in Charlie’s straighter, down the middle [vibe]. Then there’s some of the wild, more explosive sh*t that I embody in Adam’s wackiness. That’s kind of where I feel like I live.

“He’s one of those guys where his red flag is that he doesn’t think he has any red flags.”

Your character, Dylan, is definitely more of a Charlie than an Adam. He’s that nice guy, perfect boyfriend archetype — but he also has some real layers to him. What excited you about the role?

One thing that we wanted to figure out with Dylan, and I feel like we landed it, is that his character is very much an access point for the audience to get into this world because he’s a “normal dude.” But those kinds of characters can sometimes fall very flat. When you have so many flamboyant, over-the-top people around, he can just seem like the most boring, stick-in-the-mud guy. So we wanted to find ways that he can be quietly confident, have his own little world that he lives in, and still read a little cringey. He’s also not perfect. He’s one of those guys where his red flag is that he doesn’t think he has any red flags.

He’s also the millennial foil to their Gen Z chaos. Have there been times working on the show where you just feel so of your generation?

We had this interview where they were going to potentially ask us to show our screen times. We had to look at each other’s, and it was shocking. I’m at two-and-a-half-hours-a-day kind of vibe. Jordan had gone and Googled a lower screen time screenshot to show. He’s so f*cking funny.

“I don’t like a lot of attention, I don’t like to be loud, I like to follow the rules, and this cast is making me break all of that.”

I love the slutty little TikToks you two do together.

Jordan will just grab me and be like, “Babe, we’re doing a TikTok.” I’m like, “Jordan, I don’t know. What do we have to do?” He’s like, “Just be sexy.” I’m like, “I don’t even know what that means. Just be sexy?” Then he’s like, “We went viral again, just so you know.”

The photos of you guys kissing on the GQ Man of the Year red carpet also went pretty viral. I was listening to a podcast where the hosts were talking about it and they were like, “I think Jordan and Josh are f*cking?”

I can confirm we are not f*cking, but I love that. Let the rumors cook. The cast was just on fire [that night]. Everyone in line had to have hated us because it was an I Love LA red carpet takeover for a half hour. It’s so fun, but it’s also wildly out of my comfort zone. I’m pretty low-key. I don’t like a lot of attention, I don’t like to be loud, I like to follow the rules, and this cast is making me break all of that.

Even though you’re close in age with Rachel and Jordan’s older than you, you’re the industry elder of the cast. You’re watching them get shot out of the canon, which is an experience you already had in your teens. Do they come to you for advice?

Odessa’s on a rocket ship. [She stars alongside Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme.] She’s not ready for it. We’ve had many conversations of her having near panic attacks about all the press, photo shoots, and travel she has while also trying to maintain her relationship. My only advice to her was like, “You’re on that incline and it is a very steep climb, but then once you get to a certain plateau, it’s about what movies you want to do. It’s all in service of building the career that you want.”

It was just so clear to me, from the moment Odessa shows up in the pilot and jumps on Rachel, that this is a person who’s so electric on screen that she’s meant to be a star.

I’m getting chills right now thinking about it because I have the same feeling. It reminds me, in ways, of working with Jennifer Lawrence. Odessa and Jen are both just very warm, big, charismatic, electric people. But when you’re working with them, it’s hard to know how it’s going to translate on screen. Then when I saw I Love LA and Odessa flies in, I was like, “People are going to go crazy for this.”

You mentioned on Armchair Expert that when you were a child actor living at the Oakwood Apartments, parents would come to you for advice about their kids’ career because you were already working so much. It feels like that dynamic has followed you — that your success has always given this elevated stature. Is that ever difficult to navigate?

Thankfully with this cast, it’s nothing about weird competition or anything. But yeah, I’ve been doing this a really long time. What’s interesting is before I Love LA came into my world, I was taking a cynical view of the industry. I’ve been a part of amazing projects I’m so proud of, but since The Kids Are All Right, I haven’t been a part of something that’s had that kind of prestige to it. So there was a part of me that was accepting that sort of fate. Then this show came around and has absolutely reignited my life.

The Vanity Fair Hollywood issue recently went live, and the whole thing was dedicated to a label you’ve been given many times over the years: the “internet boyfriend.” What do you make of the description they gave?

I don’t identify with that. I started acting when I was 9 years old because I love movies and I fell in love with being on set and making them. I don’t want to be an internet boyfriend, I don’t want to be doing press all day talking about myself. What’s the line between “I’m playing a character” or “I’m just being me”? It’s a dangerous game, because if you don’t know when you’re being performative and when you’re being yourself, you’re going to have a psychotic breakdown.

Where I’m at in my life and career right now is that I’ve lived in the spotlight for so long that I found this comfy mix of being myself within the performativeness. I think it’s because of what I wanted when I got into this job: It’s not for attention, it’s not proving something, it’s not fame, it’s not money. I’ve gotten all those things over the years — but it was because that intention was pure, I think.

“If you don’t know when you’re being performative and when you’re being yourself, you’re going to have a psychotic breakdown.”

The way you’ve used your platform has always felt very authentic. When I was preparing for this interview, a few different friends of mine who are gay and in their early 30s brought up that you were the one of the first vocal straight, white, male allies they saw in Hollywood and how much that meant to them.

That’s really cool. I came out as an ally kind of early in the game of allyship being a “thing” to talk about, and my perspective hasn’t changed. It’s literally just like, “Why is this even a thing? How is anyone not an ally to a human being?”

As far as the idea of being performative, I don’t know who I would be performative to or for what because I don’t know what my goals are. My mom gets so mad at me when I [say that]. But the thing is, it’s not to win an Oscar. It’s not to be directed by Tarantino. I know the kinds of jobs I want to do, and that’s kind of it.

You met your girlfriend while you were filming The Hunger Games. What was it like to get into a serious relationship during the craziest time of your life?

We made a movie together and fell madly in love. Then both of us were thrust into that madness, and it was hardcore. A lot of bullying and mean sh*t online that just broke both of our hearts. We’re sensitive, open-hearted people, so to see people saying things that are that mean was like, “How? Humanity, why? Why?”

What were people saying?

A lot of it was based in this hyper-fandom that [thought] me and Jen had a secret relationship. What’s always weird is these people would call themselves “Josh’s number one fan.” But to be attacking my girlfriend who I’m madly in love with and build my world around? That’s not being a fan at all. So that sh*t was really, really psycho.

But what I would say is, to forge our relationship and love in the throes of that? We’re very, very solid. We’ve grown up together. Sometimes people are like, “All your 20s you were with the same [person]?” I’m like, “How amazing is that?” All my friends that are single and going through that, I’m just like, “I don’t envy for a second at all.” Trying to find love, intimacy, sexual connection? It’s the Wild West out there.

Between I Love LA and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, you’re in a very intense, press-filled moment right now. Are you finding ways to take a step back and ground yourself?

I’m used to it, but it’s always weird. My friend Jeremiah is here in town with me, though, and on Saturday night we went to a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden, which is obviously my whole bag. It’s just wild. I can’t tell you how many MAGA hats I saw and just this hypertoxic masculine thing. But then I respect the f*ck out of the fighters. It’s like, this is so violent and intense, and these people have been training for their entire lives, and now they’re putting it all on the line. You knock someone out, which means in theory, you could just continue and kill them. I don’t know. The drama’s amazing. And the people watching? Next level.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.