Josh Hutcherson stars as Derek Danforth in The Beekeeper. The new action movie is currently in theaters and IMAX.

In The Beekeeper, one man’s brutal campaign for vengeance takes on national stakes after he is revealed to be a former operative of a powerful and clandestine organization known as “Beekeepers.”

“It was a challenging character for The Beekeeper. I haven’t had much experience playing like the villain, bad guy type thing,” the actor explained to me. “It was really fun. I had a great time doing it and when they called me, I was like, ‘Are you sure about this?’ But we really did the work, me and David, of just trying to find the truth about Derek and why he is this way, and his privilege, his power, his money, and his insecurities and kind of finding how to make him into a real grounded person that lives in a different reality. And then, from there, once you do that, you have a lot of freedom to go balls to the wall, do insane stuff, and you can get away with it. So it was trying to walk that line between making him real and relatable, bad and evil, and then also, really fun for an audience to watch this villain and you just want to see him get taken down so bad.”

We discussed a time in his career when he felt underestimated in the same way that Clay (aka “The Beekeeper”) was, his incredible fan base, and why this character challenged him.

Watch my interview here: