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JOSEPH ZADA as Jonathan Sinclair Dennis in We Were Liars 1x02 "Wrap Her Up in a Package of Lies"

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JOSEPH ZADA as Jonathan Sinclair Dennis in We Were Liars 1x01 "Tell Me Sweet Little Lies"

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JOSEPH ZADA photographed by Lewis Vorn for Polyester (2025).

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JOSEPH ZADA for Vanity Fair (2025).

“It’s weird. It’s really weird,” Zada says. “As long as I was acting, I was happy and I never really expected to get much attention for it. But I feel like my life kind of changed with [The Hunger Games] announcement. It’s a different world now. I’ve got to be a lot more careful about what I’m doing and saying, which is always a good thing. But it’s a little scary sometimes.”

Zada wasn’t interested in performing until his father, Jeremy Cumpston—a real-life doctor who later played an M.D. on Australian medical drama All Saints—encouraged his son to participate in a local production of Romeo and Juliet. “I’m not acting. Acting’s cringe,” an indignant teenaged Zada, then flunking out of his all-boys’ school in Sydney, thought at the time. But he entered stage left anyway, and was a changed man by curtain call. Though he had the bug, finding an acting agent proved tricky: “No one would take me.”

Biding his time during the height of the pandemic, Zada wrote a short film that he and his then-girlfriend could present to her virtual acting class. A classmate’s mother walked by the Zoom screen, and caught sight of Zada: “Who is that kid?” Zada recalled her wondering. “I want to be his agent.”

Zada booked his first major gig in September 2023: an Australian TV series called Invisible Boys based on a best-selling Holden Sheppard novel. Zada’s hair was still dyed blue for that role when he auditioned for We Were Liars. The Halifax set of that series is where Zada got the script for East of Eden, a gig that begot his Hunger Games tryout. “More or less, I’ve only auditioned for one other project,” since that streak, says Zada. “So it’s been so lucky that all these amazing projects have come up, slotting right in time.” To put it mildly: “I haven’t had a lot of time off work so far.”

Born Joseph Cumpston in 2005, Zada—who uses an older family name professionally—is the second-eldest in a tight-knit family of five siblings. Despite growing up thousands of miles away from Hollywood, he was raised in something of a showbiz brood: his father is a director as well as an actor, and his mother, Jessica Brentnall, is a film producer. But it was Zada’s older brother Hal, who has appeared in hit shows like The Walking Dead and Nine Perfect Strangers, whom he credits with really sparking his interest in acting at age 15.

Staging his older brother’s auditions became something of a family affair. “You’re supposed to film them against a white wall, but we always made a meal out of our auditions,” Zada says. “We’d make them into little movies—get costumes and have other actors. Our auditioning processes were our ways to learn about filmmaking.”

Zada spent hours in front of the TV receiving his own version of a film-school education. “My dad and I geek out so hard when we watch films. We’ll watch a two-hour movie and go for six hours, because we sit down there, rewind the scenes, and go, ‘Did you see that moment? Did you see that choice?’” says Zada. The 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand By Me, which he saw for the first time just as he was entering primary school, left a particularly lasting impression. “That’s my favorite film. River Phoenix is my favorite actor. I watch that movie four, five times a year,” says Zada. “Reminds me of hanging around with my little siblings and my mom.”

Phoenix, older brother of Joaquin and star of My Private Idaho—who died at age 23 of an overdose—is Zada’s personal acting hero. “I try to steal as much as I can from him,” he says, before listing his other inspirations: “Heath Ledger, he’s got a very special energy. [Timothée] Chalamet, I steal from him a little bit. Sam Rockwell, I’m trying to steal from right now—he’s dope. I just watched Seven Psychopaths. That movie is insane. Martin McDonagh—that’s the director I would die to work with. He’s my number one.” Others on his bucket list include Blue Valentine’s Derek Cianfrance, Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells, and Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel.

“I love looking at films, thinking about what was on the page and what the actor is doing and going, ‘How did he find that?’’” says Zada. “I love when I can’t figure it out. That’s my favorite thing. I find that with Meryl Streep—I can never figure out where she’s bringing stuff from.” It was a bit of kismet that Streep’s eldest daughter, Mamie Gummer, played Zada’s onscreen mother in We Were Liars. “And they’re so similar!” he says. “I don’t know if she’d be upset that I said that, but they are. Mamie is such a brilliant actress.”

To play the troubled eldest grandson of the WASPy Sinclair family dynasty—he embodies “salt, swagger, and reckless abandon,” according to the show’s first episode—Zada took inspiration from wealthy childhood friends, as well as The Great Gatsby. But above all, he recognized bits of his own adolescent struggles in his searching character. “I just felt like I knew him,” says Zada. “I had an immediate connection. I’m a little more reserved, but it was really fun to just force myself out of my comfort zone. I already was working on such a big production, being from Australia and not having a crazy amount of projects under my belt like all the rest of the actors.”

That mentality also served Zada on the set of Netflix’s East of Eden, a limited-series from writer-producer Zoe Kazan that is “a lot closer” to Steinbeck’s book than the 1955 film directed by Zoe’s late grandfather, Elia Kazan. In the seven-episode project, expected next year, Zada plays Cal Trask—another edgy protagonist navigating a dysfunctional family dynamic—alongside exciting co-stars like Florence Pugh, Mike Faist, and Christopher Abbott. “As much as acting with someone like Florence or Chris is terrifying, it’s also so easy because they’re so good at what they're doing that you just don’t have to work as hard,” says Zada.

“I can’t even explain it; it was magical,” he says of filming in New Zealand, calling Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, one of the series’ directors, “the most lovely person I’ve ever worked with.”

James Dean’s indelible portrayal of Cal in the film earned him the first of two posthumous Oscar nominations. “Zoe wouldn’t let me watch it,” says Zada. After his first callback audition, “I had an email specifically from Zoe saying, ‘Do not watch the movie.’ I was so tempted throughout the entire shoot, but I felt like it was a bad omen.” Instead, Zada kept the film at arm’s length until the day Zoe Kazan’s East of Eden wrapped. “I worked really, really hard for this character and I had a lot of time and space over the shoot to really perfect what I wanted to do,” he says. “I’m really proud of it.”

[...]

Zada is sworn to secrecy on specifics about the film, even though the book it’s based on was published three months ago. But he admits that the audition process was predictably thorough. “It’s a very big, important character, and they needed to get it right. So obviously they put me through the wringer a bit,” he says. “But I’m glad they di,d because I learned so much in that period of time. Now I’m just so excited to know that I'm going to be in safe hands.”

When Katniss gets to know Haymitch, he’s a grief-stricken alcoholic. Zada hopes“to find who he was before he was Haymitch in the original Hunger Games—and what I can bring of myself to that character.” The character’s descent has something to do with his love interest, Lenore Dove Baird, who will be played in the film by an alum of HBO Max’s ill-fated Gossip Girl reboot. “Whitney Paak, I got to meet her,” Zada says, a glint in his eye. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing a bit more of her.”

Sunrise on the Reaping, directed by Hunger Games vet Francis Lawrence, dramatizes the 50th Hunger Games, in which a young Haymitch triumphed over twice the number of typical tributes. His tale takes place after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, starring Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, but before the events of J.Law’s Hunger Games. Zada has yet to hear from any previous franchise stars. “I’ve been in Sydney with my family, just soaking up as much time as I can before I go off to film,” he says. “But I did get a nice little message.” Was it from Harrelson? “From Woody’s niece, I think. He doesn’t have a phone. I’m sure I’ll speak to him eventually, but apparently he’s very happy for me.”

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JOSEPH ZADA answers fan fail with the cast of "We Were Liars" for InStyle

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Joseph Zada said in an interview with Etalk that he will recreate Woody Harrelson's iconic pajama look on the red carpet at some point during the October/November 2026 press tour for "The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping".

We just have to wait until November 2026!

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JOSEPH ZADA visits the Empire State Building on June 11, 2025 in New York City. 

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JOSEPH ZADA promoting “We Were Liars” at the top of the Empire State Building in New York, NY.

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new: Joseph Zada on playing Haymitch Abernathy in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on The Reaping.

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JOSEPH ZADA, from the cast of "We Were Liars", visits the Empire State Building on June 11, 2025 in New York City. 

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JOSEPH ZADA talks about the audition process for the role of young Haymitich in 'The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping'

X: "Tell us about the audition process for The Hunger Games, and what made you participate. Let us know." JZ: "It was great! I mean, they searched far and wide, and they put me through the wringer because it was very important. And I think it was important for me to go through that process not just to learn about who I was working with and feel comfortable. And now I'm comfortable, excited, and nervous."

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JOSEPH ZADA attends the Prime Video "We Were Liars" Tribeca Festival World Premiere Screening and Panel on June 10, 2025 in New York City.

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new: Joseph Zada and the cast of ‘We Were Liars’ during their first day of press in June 9th, 2025 in New York City.

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JOSEPH ZADA as Johnny Sinclair Dennis in Prime Video’s We Were Liars, streaming June 18th.

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JOSEPH ZADA x dancing

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JOSEPH ZADA as Jonathan Sinclair Dennis in We Were Liars.

"We Were Liars" TV series, based on the novel by E. Lockhart, follows Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her close-knit group, the "Liars," during their summers on her grandfather's private New England island.

We Were Liars is an American psychological thriller television series based on the 2014 novel of the same name by E. Lockhart.

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JOSEPH ZADA'S UPCOMING PROJECTS

We Were Liars as Johnny Sinclair (2025)

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping as Haymitch Abernathy (2026)

East Of Eden as Cal Trask (2026)

Invisible Boys as Charlie Roth (2025 -)

Total Control as Daniel (2024)

The Speedway Murders as Dan (2023)

Bilched as Toby (2019)

post production currently filming pre production