Mckenna Grace is operating on two hours of sleep when she opens her Zoom window. Fresh off a night shoot, she is losing her voice and has the beginnings of a black eye from taking an accidental knee to the face. She uses the camera as a mirror to check for damage, joking, “I’m so thankful that this is what I get to do and have my butt kicked on.” She goes on to enthusiastically detail how her days on set have been filled with snake wranglers, poison ivy, and feral kittens found in the woods.
It’s all very Hunger Games–coded and very fitting, of course, considering Mckenna stars in the upcoming Sunrise on the Reaping as Maysilee Donner, a snarky tribute from the fictional world of Panem’s District 12 (Mckenna also plays Maysilee’s twin sister, Merrilee, in the movie). It’s an adventure and not one without risk, but she is very much here for it, having spent most of her life throwing herself—literally—into the universes she loves. From Scream to Ghostbusters to The Hunger Games, Mckenna has been working on her favorite franchises since she was 5 years old (“I grew up on sets, out of a suitcase,” she shares).
Her IMDb page is already longer than a CVS receipt, with eight credits in 2025 alone, several in 2026, and the soon-to-premiere Netflix series Scooby-Doo: Origins, in which she plays Daphne. (If you’re curious about just how big a fan of that project Mckenna is, she named her dog, who she’s posing with on her Cosmopolitan cover, Scooby Doo and her cat Scrappy Mew.) The enthusiasm bleeds into her relationships, too, and comes through in how she speaks about her boyfriend, her Regretting You costar Mason Thames (“my best friend”), and her Sunrise on the Reaping costar Joseph Zada, with whom she spent many nights playing chess while shooting in a remote village in Spain (“I beat him constantly. Because one thing about the 20-year-old is crystal clear: Whatever she decides to tackle, she’ll be going all in. The one thing it would require is Mckenna Grace.
No, but I’m just out here clawing my way through, trying to get jobs and do things I’m proud of. It’s scary because unlike in the ’90s or early 2000s—where your favorite actors did the same thing in a bunch of movies—now with social media, people get really sick of seeing people really fast. It’s like, “This is the hot new commodity, the new face we’ve been wanting.” Three weeks later, everybody is hating on them.
The internet is a big part of the industry but very fickle. There was a time where people wouldn’t give you an interview because you had less than 3 million followers.1 Yet it’s a catch-22 because if you’re too present…but, hey, I’m just thankful to be here. And lately, I’ve been blessed to be able to do these franchises that I’m a huge fan of.
I am the biggest Hunger Games fan. 1. Mckenna has a total of 13+ million social media followers. I was very invested in all of it—the headcanons and the fan base.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
