Starvation Video games’ director on casting Rachel Zegler and Tom Blyth

Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson’s performances as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark outlined the unique Starvation Video games motion pictures. However the prequel film, set 64 years earlier than Katniss and Peeta’s story, wanted a brand new set of actors who may maintain their very own.

The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is an origin story for Panem’s dictator, President Coriolanus Snow. It takes followers again to a time when Coriolanus was simply an formidable younger scholar who had not but turn into the cutthroat politician we see in the principle books and flicks. His story is entwined with that of Lucy Grey Baird, the District 12 Tribute he’s assigned to mentor, whose pure aptitude for showmanship and fascinating songs encourage him to show the brutal Starvation Video games into extra of a flashy spectacle.

Director Francis Lawrence tells Polygon the filmmakers have been searching for contemporary faces when it got here to the lead roles. Quite a lot of actors auditioned for the position of Snow, particularly, however Lawrence says Billy the Child star Tom Blyth instantly “blew everyone out of the water.”

“A part of it’s bodily,” he admits. “He has these nice blue eyes — [you] may see in his face, Okay, I may purchase that perhaps 65 years later, he may flip into Donald Sutherland.”

Picture: Lionsgate Movies

Picture: Lionsgate

But it surely wasn’t nearly how feasibly Blyth may appear like a youthful Donald Sutherland. Whoever landed the position needed to stroll a line between being charming and conniving, somebody you wish to root for, but aren’t stunned after they find yourself turning right into a villain. Blyth introduced his appearing chops to the position, and Lawrence was frequently impressed all through filming.

“Telling a narrative a couple of younger man’s descent into darkness, it’s important to have anyone that may earn the viewers’s empathy, however then believably additionally descend into that darkness,” Lawrence says. “[Blyth] is absolutely, actually good. This type of charisma continued to astound me. His sense of management in his efficiency and nuance additionally astounded me. That basically caught me off guard and stunned me in a incredible manner.”

Blyth stood out in auditions, however when it got here to casting District 12 songstress Lucy Grey, Lawrence had a primary alternative in thoughts from the get-go. Rachel Zegler’s appearing and singing in Steven Spielberg’s West Aspect Story made her Lawrence’s prime contender for the position.

“So she and I met, I feel, for 4 hours or one thing the primary time, and had a terrific chat concerning the ebook and concerning the character and concerning the music,” Lawrence says. “I simply knew she was the one straight away.”

Photograph: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

An enormous a part of Lucy Grey’s character entails music. She’s a member of the Covey, a touring band of musicians impressed by comparable performing teams from turn-of-the-century America. Her passionate outburst of track at her Reaping instantly sparks one thing in Snow, who acknowledges that her performing expertise is essential to getting her to outlive the video games. So Lucy Grey’s singing needed to be life-savingly good and slot in a selected style.

“I had excessive expectations, as a result of I feel she’s a terrific actor and a terrific singer, however the singing blew me away,” Lawrence gushes. “The truth that she may shift proper from theatrical form of singing — one thing you’d do in West Aspect Story or on stage — into the precise style of nation bluegrass that we have been doing on this film that feels prefer it’s from the flip of the century to the [19]20s-30s Appalachia. To have the ability to hit that model and do it so effortlessly, and sing reside daily, that was fairly mind-blowing.”

The Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is out in theaters now.