Mckenna Grace is poised to define this new generation of Hollywood. On-screen, she commands every frame with a gripping presence; in the studio, she’s translating that same instinct into music, layering alt-rock riffs over intimate home demos. True to form, at the time of this interview, she’s juggling not only high-profile roles in major franchises – first up Scream 7, and later in the year, Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping – but also a new batch of songs. It’s this multiplicity that makes her so compelling – epic fight sequences and confessional melodies, slasher showdowns and romantic leads (Regretting You). Her Hunger Games co-star Joseph Zada is similarly riding a wave, from his leading role in dramatic series, Invisible Boys, to acting alongside Florence Pugh and Mike Faist in Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Joseph Zada: Wassup.
Mckenna Grace: Hello, Joseph Zada.

JZ: How are you feeling living alone right now in New York?
MG: [laughs] I’m only here for a day. Yes, I am here alone, which is crazy for me. I’m literally about to hop on another flight in like an hour-and-a-half, so I’m not really here long enough to enjoy it. Do you remember how we first met?

JZ: I think it was in the car on the way to rehearsal. That, or we met at the… Remember we were rehearsing the Cornucopia scenes? Because that was the first thing we were shooting.
MG: Yeah, that was bonkers.

JZ: I’ll tell you my first impression of you. I could not understand how you were so sweet. The sweetest person in the world. [Mckenna laughs] Very excited – so excited –which, I don’t know if it came as a shock to me, but it was crazy to think that you’d been such a star for so long – in this industry for so long – but yet you were still so excited to meet everyone.
MG: Oh my gosh, thank you.

JZ: And you continue to be the sweetest person in the world.
MG: Oh God, I don’t know. Some days we had our long arguments. [both laugh] I remember I was there for a bunch of fittings, and I remember trying to find you because I wanted to say hi. The only time that we had ever previously interacted was we DMed, like a year or two prior, because we were both going for a show.

“I can’t sit still and I like to work whenever I can. I always treat every job like it could be my last.” 

JZ: Which was such a crazy, weird coincidence. We had a movie that might have been going up.
MG: I forgot about that. We were both attached to a romance movie together, which is the funniest thing now. And then Hunger Games happened, and I just remember trying to find you because I wanted to introduce myself. Then randomly one day – I feel like my first memory of you was being at the soccer field – you came out in this very bright pink shirt. I remember being stoked because I thought we were really similar, at least in our personalities, and I was like, “This is gonna be so great.” I just knew that we were gonna have a really, really fun time together.

JZ: I also remember asking you about what you’d just come from, and you were off the back of four or five projects. And then I immediately understood that you were somebody who could never stop working. We just bounced off each other. There was no competition to it, but it was just trying to stay on each other’s level of workload. That helped us so much for all those scenes – especially at the start – trying to really get the most out of each other and pushing each other to the
limits. That carried on to Spain, where we would stay up until like one in the morning, even if we had a 6am pickup.
MG: We lived together!

JZ: We lived together! The first six weeks of shooting, we were in these little homes in this little city, right next to each other. I could hear you walking up the stairs next door! I could hear everything.
MG: [laughs] If you coughed next door, I could hear it. I could not believe your lineup of films. It’s crazy that you went from We Were Liars, East of Eden, to freaking Hunger Games being your first movie. That was so wild to me. But then when I finally got on set with you and watched you act, I was like, “Oh, this makes sense.” I think that you’re going to be so huge. And I talk about that to anybody who will listen. You’re one of my favourite scene partners I’ve ever had. It was so cool getting to watch you. I remember immediately after working together for the first time just being so stoked about the rest of the shoot, like, “Oh my god, this is going to be so easy because we get on so well.” But also, “This is going to be crazy to watch.”

JZ: We have some unreal scenes together.
MG: It was insane. When we were living together and you were too tired from stunts and everything to come out or hang out, I would make you come and have dinner with my mom every night. [both laugh]

JZ: It’s so lovely to have you and your mom and Iona’s [Bell] mom.
MG: Our little family.

JZ: And being forced to spend family time so I wasn’t chilling in my own head and going crazy by myself. Our first night in Spain, I’d just turned twenty, and you made me a birthday cake!
MG: I did! [both laugh] With whatever I could find in a random Spanish supermarket. Sponge cake with sliced-up little strawberries and then covered it in whipped cream. [laughs] Ridiculous.

JZ: I remember everyone was a little scared to have a taste.
MG: Nobody told me that! [both laugh]

JZ: OK, I need to ask you about Scream. How are you feeling about that?
MG: I’m really excited. I’m a very big Scream fan – we watched so many movies while we were working together, I’m very surprised that we didn’t watch it at some point or another. That’s like my go-to. I lost my voice on it [laughs], there’s so much screaming. I feel like you’ve heard my scream a lot.

JZ: I have. [both laugh]
MG: It was fun. I still can’t really believe that I got to do that, just like how I can’t believe that I got to do Hunger Games. I’m sure you can relate, it’s weird to be a part of something that you’ve been such a massive fan of for such a long time.

JZ: Well, you’re a bit of a manifester. Do you have any favourite days on the Hunger Games set?
MG: You know that Ben [Wang] and I had such a good time at that big old convention centre. [laughs] That was ridiculous.

JZ: We were in a crazy convention centre for like the last month of shooting, in which they built so many sets for a lot of the Capitol buildings.
MG: That place was literally never-ending.

JZ: The biggest thing, and also just so fun to explore. I didn’t get to do much exploring. You and Ben also didn’t have a crazy amount of time to explore. But in between, any scene that you weren’t in, you would go out of your way and disappear into this incredibly big building.
MG: It all started during the reaping [scene], whenever we were at that big old coal plant. We had three days to do everyone’s coverage, so there were like two days where Ben and I were not really on camera, and I felt so bad because the ADs lost us for two hours because we had left the premises. [both laugh]

“It’s weird to be a part of something that you’ve been such a massive fan of for such a long time.”

JZ: How would you say that your acting process has evolved, and how it might have changed on Hunger Games?
MG: When I was younger, I used to keep a journal for every character I was playing, and I’d try to write in it in character. But then I kind of dropped that in recent years. I hadn’t really journaled until I got to Hunger Games with you, and you kept the most intricate notes. Then you and I sat and watched all of The Hunger Games movies and took notes. That was fun. I feel like I learned a lot from that, so now I’ve started keeping journals again. So thank you for that.

JZ: That was amazing, going through all those films, finding little intricate moments and trying to add them to our characters. I want to know about your first attempts at making music, and what it’s like today?
MG: I started writing music in my room because there was nothing else I could do. And then I somehow got a record label – all of my songs were so strange. Since then, I’ve learned about being in a music studio, how producing works. And speaking of Scream, did I tell you this? I have a song in the end credits.

JZ: I think you did tell me that – it’s insane.
MG: With that band that I was making you guys listen to on the last week, Ice Nine Kills. I did a song with them that we pitched for the end credits and it’s in. I’m stoked. Wait, what are you listening to right now?

JZ: Anything and everything. I bought myself a record player to try and be hip and cool.
MG: [laughs] Have you used it?

JZ: Yeah, actually, quite a bit. I got some Lauryn Hill. I actually got the Call Me by Your Name soundtrack – I love that. I also got a projector and a DVD player. Since I finished working, I’ve been watching movies all day, every day.
MG: What have you been watching?

JZ: So many good things. I’ve been down in this Mike Nichols rabbit hole – The Graduate, Postcards from the Edge. I did a Tom Cruise binge, Paul Newman, Robert Redford. So much stuff. The list goes on and on and on forever.
MG: You watch so many movies.

“I think I started writing music during Covid because I was really upset with some boy or something.”

JZ: I remember I had one or two days where they were doing the chariot coverage, and I was in my trailer. I think I went through like six movies in two days during my time off. It’s so funny that the only thing that I was doing in my time off was watching movies. I feel like a lot of actors say that they don’t watch other movies during a project because they don’t want to mix up what they’re doing with anything else. But I love getting a little bit of inspiration every day to try and find something new.
MG: I love it. With Scream, I just rewatched every single Scream movie that’s ever been made. [During Hunger Games], I had a list of movies that reminded me of Maysilee [Mckenna’s Hunger Games character] in some shape or form.

JZ: What are your musical influences, and what’s your songwriting approach?
MG: I feel like it changes a lot. I like playlists for the day and for every character that I play. I also make playlists whenever I go into the studio, just as a guideline of the vibe I want to do for the day. Usually it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I’ll have really specific things from each song. I’ll put Olivia Rodrigo on there because I like her kind of production. But then I’ll also have Limp Bizkit or Deftones because I like their guitar tones.

JZ: It makes sense. It helps move you into that creative space. This is the first time I’ve admitted this, but on my big fight, I was listening to…
MG: Techno, right?

JZ: Yeah, I listened to a lot of techno for some of the fights, but the last one I did was… Have you seen Barnyard?
MG: The animated movie?

JZ: There’s a part where Otis’ dad dies at the start of the film. [laughs] He dies to the foxes, but he’s fighting them off from the chickens. And he’s singing I Won’t Back Down by Johnny Cash. The song worked for my entire final… [laughs] Whenever anyone sees this final death scene, I’m listening to Barnyard and thinking about that scene because it’s just something stimulating. It just works. Sometimes the most random thing works.
MG: [laughs] You never told me that. For the most part, I was listening to 2000s club girl music, or I listened to a lot of the Hunger Games soundtrack.

JZ: Also, Francis [Lawrence, director of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping] would always play music.
MG: He would always be listening to music while he was shooting.

JZ: It was so crazy that he’d have one ear with the dialogue and one ear with the music while watching all the scenes on the monitor. Then he’d also come up and play some of it for me sometimes if I needed to get into the right space. It was so helpful because then you completely understand the mood of the scene.
MG: Have you ever done a scene where you have headphones in?

JZ: I have. All the sound people hate the idea of you having something actually playing, but I remember in Invisible Boys, it was one of my first scenes and I’m walking into school on the first day, and I’ve got heavy punk blasting in my ears. I begged them to let me play it because I needed it to give me that energy. Have you?
MG: Yeah, I did on this film called Anniversary, which was fun. Then I remember on Regretting You, I had this one scene where I was literally just supposed to be laying in bed crying with my headphones in. And I was like, “Oh, this is great.” I just got to lay there and listen to something really sad like boygenius or Phoebe Bridgers.

JZ: I can’t really do the emotional scenes without headphones. I feel like I always walk around in some crazy little cloud with my headphones on.
MG: Yeah, I remember. [both laugh] Or it would just be us in Spain, and we’ve been there for however the hell long, and we’re just sitting in the sun on a rock with both of our respective headphones on, not talking to each other, but shoulder to shoulder. [both laugh] We’re going to look so insane in all the behind-the-scenes.

JZ: I know!
MG: [laughs] I think about that all the time.

JZ: They’ll cut it favourably. [both laugh] What’s a movie that really inspired you when you were little?
MG: I mean, it was so cool because Elle [Fanning] has always been somebody I wanted to work with. As a little blonde child actor like her and her sister, they were all I looked up to. I loved Uptown Girls and I Am Sam. When I was on this movie called Gifted, our director Marc Webb told me to watch Paper Moon, and so I watched that when I was like nine or so, and I remember it sticking with me – I wanted to be like her, Tatum O’Neal’s character, Addie Loggins. That really inspired me. When I was really little and getting into acting, I really wanted to be like Shirley Temple. I love watching child actors and young actors perform and do their thing – I always get really proud. Did you see IT: Welcome to Derry? Those kids are so good.

JZ: Child actors are just so free, so loose. It’s unattainable.
MG: The golden rule that I used to hear as a kid, and I used to get so offended by, is that everybody always says, “Never work with kids or animals.” And I’m like, “Are you comparing me to a dog?” [both laugh]

JZ: We had so many incredible young actors on Hunger Games, which was so amazing. You already have this crazy calibre of actors around you, and then they’re like, “OK, here come the kids.” And, “Finally, I’m going to be able to be the top dog in the situation.” Then this little kid comes on, twelve years old, and just starts acting you off the table. You’re like, “What?!” [both laugh]
MG: That’s how I felt. It was really fun getting to work with Molly [McCann], watching her do her thing – she was so good. Also watching Iona – she’s playing something so wildly different than who she is. She’s the most energetic, funny kid I’ve ever met, and then she just snapped into it. [both laugh]

JZ: What about way in the future? What are you excited to do?
MG: You know me, I can’t sit still and I like to work whenever I can. I always treat every job like it could be my last. I just get excited to work. It’d be so fun to do another romance, or maybe something dramatic. But I also really love horror movies. I really don’t have a set-in-stone genre that I want to follow. It’s just so exciting to get to dip into different things and test yourself as an actor through different types of characters. Wait, was Invisible Boys your first…

JZ: I’d had small roles, but definitely not a lead role in a series. As I turned eighteen, I got the lead role in Invisible Boys, and then I jumped straight to We Were Liars, and then straight to East of Eden, and then straight to Hunger Games.
MG: What a freaking lineup.

JZ: With like two months off in between. Now I’m in a position where I kind of want to wait for a little bit, and I want the right thing to come up next. After having such amazing experiences on all of those sets, I really just want to work with a great team, great directors, and people who inspire me and push me. Hunger Games was such an incredible space for expressing myself and being heard for what I can bring to the table in terms of my own creativity and ideas. I also want to write and direct.
MG: I want to see you in something where you get to be happy. I want to see you in something where you’re not actively suffering in every single scene. [both laugh]

JZ: You might be the only person in the world. [laughs]
MG: You’re really good at being devastated, so everybody’s going to torture you forever in these films. But I want to see you in something where you get to be happy.

JZ: I wouldn’t mind doing a comedy film.
MG: That’d be fun. You’d do really well in a comedy. I really want to see a Joseph Zada- directed and written project.

JZ: And you’ll be in it.
MG: If I don’t have a job on that set, I’m gonna riot.

Interview originally published in Heroine 24. 

hair by AMBER DUARTE using ROZ;
make-up ANNA KATO;
nails SHIGEKO TAYLOR at STAR TOUCH AGENCY;
fashion assistant GABRIELLE RAM