Josh Hutcherson Leon Bennett/Getty Images for HBO Josh Hutcherson is opening up about why he stays off social media, using the backlash he received for not being a Taylor Swift fan as an example.
During a recent interview with GQ, the actor recalled almost being canceled last year for a comment he made about the global popstar during the press tour for I Love LA, in which he plays Dylan, opposite Rachel Sennott’s Maia.
At the time, Hutcherson was playing a camera roll roulette game with his I Love LA co-star Jordan Firstman during a video interview with i-D Magazine. When The Hunger Games star pulled a photo of him and his mom in the VIP section at Swift’s Eras Tour show in New Orleans, he said, “My mom made me. … I’m not a Swiftie. Very much not. No shade, all respect, but definitely not.” The Swifties clearly weren’t happy, slamming the actor for accepting VIP tickets when he’s not a fan of the singer.
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“I got some heat because I did a photo shoot with Jordan, and Jordan asked me something about being a [Taylor Swift fan], and I was like, ‘Oh no, I’m definitely not a Swiftie,'” Hutcherson recounted to GQ. “All of a sudden it garnered this, ‘Fuck him! He’s a monster! Destroy him! He’s short! He hates her because he’s short!’ [He’s 5ft, 5in.] It’s just like, whoa! I think she’s great. Her music is not my kind of music. That is why I don’t want to be online.”
So when Hutcherson isn’t actively promoting one of his projects, he’s more than happy to be offline and focused on being present in real life.
“I don’t need that energy,” he said, adding that being a social media star is “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.”
However, he knows he can’t escape social media forever. Whether it be the many memes he’s found himself at the center of throughout his career or being subjected to TikTok dances by his Gen Z co-stars in I Love LA.
“Being thrust out again in the world and online in such a big way, doing a bunch of press and being on TikTok, all those things made me feel very exposed,” Hutcherson admitted. “I started to get a lot of anxiety about it.”
It also resurfaced the Five Nights at Freddy’s actor’s own insecurities, but thanks to therapy and a mindset shift, he’s learned “to cope and accept that these are my genetics.” He no longer looks at his insecurities “as negatives or as beauty faults, but part of your whole character, your whole existence.”
Hutcherson added, “I feel like it has led to me being able to handle it in a much more healthy, sane way, and not spiral out and feel like a piece of shit.”
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