“It was amazing to have Hulu and Sony television get behind such a bat-shit crazy show,” exclaims Josh Hutcherson about the comedy “Future Man.” In our recent video interview (watch the exclusive video above), he continues, “They allowed us to do whatever the hell we wanted. In all three seasons at some point I had to attach a penile prosthetic to myself. Something I never dreamed I would do coming into this business. It’s something I may have never wanted to do. But nevertheless, it’s a pretty unique experience that I’m happy to never have again.”
In “Future Man” Hutcherson plays Josh Fetterman, an underachieving young adult who is asked to be a savior when it turns out his favorite video game characters are real and sent from the future to save the world. He says, “I found the most joy in the ridiculousness. As an actor it allows you to disconnect from reality. From the first season I thought ‘the only way this is gonna work for me is if I dive in headfirst. The more ridiculous it was, the freer I felt. This season we had to do twinning, where I played different versions of myself. I was playing both characters. That was a very challenging but fun experience to have as an actor. The other version of me was this crazy, whacked out, Brad Pitt in ‘12 Monkeys,’ psycho. For me that was something where I got to completely let loose and just have fun and go for it.”
The series finished after its third season, and Hutcherson explains that goodbyes are “always weird. After I finished “The Hunger Games” there were such mixed feelings. Missing the people and experience. But you finished, so that feels good. Same thing with ‘Future Man.’ The cool thing was, going into it, we had no idea if we were going to get one season or two seasons or something else. Our goal was three seasons. I was producing on the show and creatively we always said three seasons was what we wanted to tell the story of these characters. So, we are all very satisfied but honestly, shocked they allowed us to.”
Comparing this experience to “The Huger Games,” where Hutcherson played Peeta Mellark, the actor confesses, “There is something similar about the experience of going and working with the same crew. But TV is way harder than doing a big studio film. Because of the page count you have to shoot every day. In ‘Future Man’ specifically, each episode we had a big set piece. It was a very heavy workload. On TV you had to shoot them that day.”
The show marked Hutcherson’s first foray into both television and comedy. He explains, “I’d never really done comedy at all. That’s a new thing I’d never explored. For me, going into comedy and television, I had to believe in the people I was working with. Day one I was nervous as hell. All of a sudden, I thought ‘shit, how do you be funny?’ But the writing was really good. I realized it’s just acting and suspending disbelief. It doesn’t matter if it’s drama, psychological thriller or comedy. It all comes from the same muscle. I got comfortable quickly. I had to, I was whipping my fake dick out. There was no other option.”
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