Hunter Doohan doesn’t so much arrive in Hollywood as he does survive it—usually with jet lag, a new project, and the lingering sense that something demonic is about to happen on set.
He’s just landed in Los Angeles after a 19-hour flight from Dublin, where he’s filming season three of Netflix’s Wednesday. There’s barely time to unpack before he’s back in front of the camera, this time for Out magazine’s Love Issue cover shoot under moody red lighting that feels fitting for someone currently entering the Evil Dead universe.
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“I’ve been working hard and taking relatively good care of myself, so hopefully the photos will turn out good,” he says with a laugh.
Hunter Doohan for Out Magazine 🫦 pic.twitter.com/i4Rj36NsCF
— ★ (@POPin4k) June 17, 2026
At 32, Doohan is quietly building a résumé that reads like a tour of modern genre chaos: haunted teenagers, sinister transformations, and now one of horror’s most infamous franchises. The throughline? He keeps ending up in stories where things go very, very wrong.
Hunter Doohan From Nevermore to the Necronomicon
Most viewers met Doohan in Wednesday as Tyler Galpin, whose small-town charm eventually curdled into something much darker. Others saw him lean into psychological menace in Daredevil: Born Again as Muse. Now he’s stepping into a different kind of nightmare entirely: Evil Dead Burn.
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This July, he appears as Joseph in the sixth installment of the Evil Dead franchise, directed by Sébastien Vaniček. The series, built on ancient books, possession, and an aggressively committed approach to practical gore, has spent decades perfecting cinematic chaos. For him , joining meant immediate immersion.
“I had seen Evil Dead, the Fede Álvarez one,” Doohan explains, referencing the 2013 film directed by the Uruguayan filmmaker. “And I had seen Evil Dead 2. My character Joseph, he’s researching the lore in the story, and so through that audition process, I went and watched it and watched all the movies all over again and checked out the show as well. I was running out of time — but I was all over the Wiki and learning everything I could about the Kandarian Dagger and everything I could get my hands on.”
Basically: research, panic, repeat.
A Franchise That Comes With a Warning Label
Evil Dead doesn’t just cast actors—it briefs them.
“I remember when I first got to New Zealand, Rob Tapert, who’s produced them all, sat me down and — I think he did it with every cast member — and basically gave us a warning of how grueling these Evil Dead shoots are,” he recalls with a grin. “He was like, ‘There will come a moment when you will have a breakdown,’ and I was like, I’m excited. I think it’s going to be good. But yeah, it was taxing, for sure, just physically and emotionally, because the way that this script unfolds is just, once shit hits the fan, it is relentless.”
Joseph, his character, is tied into the franchise’s deeper mythology.
“Joseph is working on a book about his grandfather’s research,” he reveals. “His grandfather knew Professor Knowby. I loved how this script not only ties back a little bit to Evil Dead Rise — but this movie connects the lore through the whole franchise, which I found really exciting.”
In other words: the Deadites are organized. Still, the appeal for Doohan is simple.
“Just as a fan of horror, it’s exciting, and for it to be an Evil Dead movie. I was literally jumping up and down when I got the call,” he says. “It is gnarly. It is super gruesome. And the makeup and special effects team on this movie were just unbelievable. The Deadite makeup they did was insane. I’m really hoping that it comes across as gruesome as it was on the page and how it felt when we were filming.”
Horror, But Make It Queer History Too
There’s another layer to Doohan’s casting that sits just beneath all the blood. Horror has long been a genre embraced by LGBTQ+ audiences—full of outsiders, transformation, and social metaphor. But openly gay men leading major horror franchises is still relatively rare. He hadn’t thought much about it until it came up.
“That’s really interesting. I haven’t thought about that, but you’re right,” he muses. “It’s really cool because I feel like gay audiences are really drawn to horror. I feel like that’s a huge Venn diagram crossover section, because horror as a genre takes these social commentaries and wraps it up in a super entertaining movie to watch. But I feel super lucky, and it’s so nice to work with people where it’s like not even a thought in their head. Me being out and open was never a detriment to me playing the part of Joseph, who is not gay in the film.”
Despite being openly gay, he’s mostly played straight roles so far—not by design, but by the unpredictability of casting.
“People ask me that, and I’m like, I have auditioned for queer roles!,” he recalls with a laugh. “So there’s definitely been some that would have been amazing to do. I’ve only played queer roles in some shorts. I’ve never really had the opportunity to do it in a feature or on television yet. But it’s not something that I’m avoiding. When it comes to choosing projects, I always say I am genre agnostic. It’s really about the people doing it and the script.”
Meeting the People You Used to Watch on Screen
Success has a way of collapsing distance. Jonathan Bailey is now a peer.
“He really is a hero of mine. He’s amazing,” Doohan says.
Colman Domingo too.
“Love him. Oh my God,” he recalls. “He’s definitely a hero of mine, and he was so sweet. Those moments are always really cherished: when you meet someone you look up to, and they’re so kind and everything that you want them to be.”
And Bryan Cranston sits at the top of a very personal list.
“He is just number one for me,” Doohan says of Cranston. “Breaking Bad is my favorite show of all time, and so to get to work with him and him be the sweetest man on earth…it was just everything to me.”
That connection went beyond set life: Cranston officiated Doohan’s 2022 wedding to husband Fielder Jewett. The two met on Tinder in 2015 and are now marking 11 years together. He describes their relationship with striking simplicity.
“I think when a lot of our friends are starting to date people, something that Fielder always says to them is, ‘When you find someone you really like, it will be easy.’ It’s like, you won’t really be thinking about that much. You just want to spend time with them and hang out with them and, if anything’s holding you back from that, then it’s probably something telling you it’s not right.”
Back to Burton, Back to Outsiders
Doohan is currently filming Wednesday season three under Tim Burton, a director whose work has long centered on misfits and outsiders.
New look at Hunter Doohan in ‘Wednesday’ Season 2 pic.twitter.com/LRagPa4cCk
— ☆ (@MENin4K) May 21, 2025
“Working with Tim is amazing. He’s so inspiring — he’s just so himself all the time,” Doohan reflects. “To me, all of his main characters are these outcasts in the world, and then you get to know them deeper and see why they don’t fit in. I feel like every queer kid feels that way growing up. So I think that’s why I always gravitated towards his work. And to get to work with him now is just incredible.”
He’s also enjoying the revolving door of cast talent, including Eva Green and Billie Piper.
On AI and the Real Thing
One thing he’s not excited about is artificial intelligence in filmmaking.
“That is so creepy and weird. I hate that,” Doohan says of AI deepfakes. “As far as it affecting the industry, besides unions getting it in contracts, I think it’s going to come down to us as audience members not showing up and paying for that when that stuff starts to come out. We need to be adamant that we want to respect and honor human-made art, which is insane that we even have to clarify that now.”
The Next Act (Possibly Less Blood, Hopefully)
Right now, Doohan is thinking beyond haunted houses and demon-infested scripts.
“I feel like I play a lot of really tortured souls. [laughs] I feel like I need to do a rom-com. Let’s get a musical going. Something like that,” he jokes.
He’s also writing his first feature and hopes to direct it—shifting from surviving stories to shaping them. For now, though, he’s still very much in his “covered in fake blood between flights” era. And if horror history is any indication, that’s exactly where a modern scream king belongs.
“I’ve had several encounters from young queer fans coming up to me, and they’d said really sweet things. That always means so much,” He says. “When I was looking up to people, I always felt an instant connection with finding out a musician or an actor was queer. I hold that really dear when someone just says whatever nice thing. It’s great.”
For now, Doohan is still moving between sets, time zones, and worlds that tend to end in bloodshed. But with every role, he’s quietly carving out something rarer than survival in horror: longevity. And if the scream king label sticks, it won’t be because of the gore—it’ll be because he knows exactly how to outlast it.
Source: OUT