‘It was not intentional,’ the ‘No Hard Feelings’ actress said with a laugh during a recent appearance on First We Feast’s hit YouTube series ‘Hot Ones’
Almost 10 years later, Jennifer Lawrence is setting the record straight about the garlic-and-tuna-fueled kiss she shared with Liam Hemsworth on the set of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1.
“It was not intentional,” the No Hard Feelings actress, 32, responded with a laugh when asked by host Sean Evans about the alleged smooch, during a recent appearance on First We Feast’s hit YouTube series Hot Ones.
As Hemsworth, 33, said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in November 2014, “Any time I had to kiss Jennifer was pretty uncomfortable. When you look at it on the outside it looks like a great picture. She’s one of my best friends. I love her.”
“But if we had a kissing scene, she would make a point of eating garlic or tuna fish or something that was disgusting,” he added at the time.
But according to Lawrence, “It was just, like, what I was eating, and then we’d kiss! He should just, you know, get over it,” she joked to Evans, laughing.
All kidding aside, the Oscar winner did credit Hemsworth with teaching her to have more of a backbone, in a 2014 conversation with PEOPLE.
“I am a wimp about standing up for myself,” Lawrence admitted, adding that Hemsworth “taught me how to stand up for myself. I would always be like, ‘Please like me! Please like me!’ ”
“Maybe not with this movie,” she joked, referencing The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. “Not since Catching Fire.”
“But there were times when I was really bad about that,” Lawrence continued. “It’s my biggest weakness – with negotiating, or even with people. Liam is always fair, he is always kind, he is always strong. He’s teaching me to toughen up a little bit, and it’s important. I need that.”
As for ever possibly returning to the Hunger Games franchise as her tough-as-nails protagonist Katniss Everdeen,Lawrence recently told Variety that she would be “totally” open to it.
“If Katniss could ever come back into my life, 100 percent,” she added.
Lawrence starred as the heroine of the first four Hunger Games films, which are based on the young-adult dystopian book series of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The movies broke box-office records from 2012 through 2015, earning more than $3 billion worldwide.
Along with Lawrence and Hemsworth, the series also featured stars including Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland, Stanley Tucci, Julianne Moore and more.
A Hunger Games prequel film — The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, based on Collins’ 2020 book of the same name — is set for a theatrical release on Nov. 17.