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 authentic Starvation Video games films. However the prequel film, set 64 years earlier than Katniss and Peeta’s story, wanted a brand new set of actors who might 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 bold younger scholar who had not but grow to be the cutthroat politician we see within the primary 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 charming 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 on the lookout for recent faces when it got here to the lead roles. Numerous actors auditioned for the function 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] might see in his face, Okay, I might purchase that possibly 65 years later, he might flip into Donald Sutherland.”

Picture: Lionsgate Movies

Picture: Lionsgate

But it surely wasn’t nearly how feasibly Blyth might appear like a youthful Donald Sutherland. Whoever landed the function 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 performing chops to the function, and Lawrence was frequently impressed all through filming.

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

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 performing and singing in Steven Spielberg’s West Aspect Story made her Lawrence’s high contender for the function.

“So she and I met, I feel, for 4 hours or one thing the primary time, and had an important chat in regards to the e book and in regards to the character and in regards to the music,” Lawrence says. “I simply knew she was the one instantly.”

Photograph: Murray Shut/Lionsgate

An enormous a part of Lucy Grey’s character includes music. She’s a member of the Covey, a touring band of musicians impressed by related 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 vital to getting her to outlive the video games. So Lucy Grey’s singing needed to be life-savingly good and slot in a particular style.

“I had excessive expectations, as a result of I feel she’s an important actor and an important singer, however the singing blew me away,” Lawrence gushes. “The truth that she might shift proper from theatrical sort of singing — one thing you’ll 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.