The director was in the midst of casting his adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and a London lunch assembly with West Side Story standout Rachel Zegler had simply effortlessly developed right into a four-hour dialog. Lawrence walked away from that Soho meal final spring assured his best choice was wanting to play heroine Lucy Gray Baird. Then she turned down the job.
The likelihood to work on the origin story of President Coriolanus Snow was interesting to Zegler, however she’d simply gone by way of a precautionary COVID-19 quarantine by her lonesome within the U.Ok. to star in Disney’s live-action Snow White, and that shoot was scheduled to wrap simply three days earlier than Songbirds and Snakes would begin. “The concept of going from six months in London to go deeper into Europe — into Poland — for an additional six months of her life freaked her out,” Lawrence, 52, remembers a yr in a while a balmy late September afternoon in his workplace, a comfortable refashioned one-story home tucked an arrow’s shot away from Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. “She went ghostly white.” He made guarantees (“We’ll convey your boyfriend out!” “We’ll convey your loved ones out!” “We will not quarantine you!”), however the now 22-year-old was undeterred — till the summer time of 2022 when it got here time to forged Coriolanus’ pal and classmate Sejanus Plinth.
After a galvanizing audition, Lawrence chosen Josh Andrés Rivera, 28, for the wayward Academy pupil. “My assistant was like, ‘Do you recognize who that’s?’ And I’m going, ‘Yeah. He was in West Side Story,'” Lawrence remembers saying of the actor, who performed Chino alongside Zegler in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake. “She says, ‘That’s Rachel’s boyfriend.'” Were the chances really in his favor? The filmmaker thought to himself, Zegler “was almost on the finish of her schedule. I guess she’s seen the sunshine on the finish of the tunnel. Her boyfriend’s going to be in Poland with us. I’m wondering if we’ll get a name.”
They did — the subsequent day.
And so Songbirds and Snakes had its main woman. It could appear a frightening process to inform a brand new Hunger Games story with out the different Lawrence, Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, who propelled the blockbusters to properly over $1 billion worldwide. But the director — who helmed the three Hunger Games sequels after Gary Ross’ authentic — and franchise producer Nina Jacobson have been truly entertaining the thought of exploring the origins of the survival-of-the-fittest video games lengthy earlier than Collins produced her 2020 prequel novel, which launched a younger model of the sinister President of Panem (performed by Donald Sutherland within the first 4 movies).
Lawrence admits he and Jacobson have been “involved” about centering a narrative round a reviled character, however the staff continued to circle again to the singular and paramount fact that lives within the undercurrent of many villain origin tales: Bad guys do not begin out as unhealthy guys. It’s that swap, that how and why, that they knew makes for wealthy and sophisticated storytelling. It helped, too, that the inventive staff couldn’t have discovered a extra compelling snake to Zegler’s songbird than Tom Blyth, the 28-year-old English actor greatest identified for his roles on the TV Western Billy the Kid and coming-of-age movie Scott and Sid. “Tom is extraordinary because the flip occurs,” Jacobson, 58, says of the main man. “As he begins to interrupt unhealthy, as you begin to see the person that he turns into breaking out of the shell of the person that he may’ve been, it is extremely gratifying.”
Set 60 years earlier than the Girl on Fire sparked a revolution, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (or BOSS, for brief) follows the 18-year-old future tyrant (Blyth) throughout his last yr on the Academy, the elite secondary faculty in Panem’s Capitol. Unbeknownst to his friends, the Snows — additionally comprised of cousin Tigris (Euphoria‘s Hunter Schafer) and their grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) — have fallen on onerous monetary occasions following the primary civil struggle the districts waged towards the Capitol. It’s Reaping Day for the tenth annual Hunger Games, a televised spectacle whereby district youngsters are pressured to battle to the dying as punishment for the revolt, and Coriolanus has his eyes on the Plinth Prize. The money reward, bestowed upon the mentor whose tribute emerges victorious, would all however safe his spot on the Capitol’s college. Much to his displeasure, he is assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird, the feminine tribute from District 12, a area not precisely identified for producing the cream of the crop.
But Lucy Gray is a member of the Covey, a bunch of musical nomads, and when she captures Panem’s consideration with a tune on the Reaping, Coriolanus realizes he is acquired a wildcard on his arms — and that they only might need a shot at profitable. It’s the mentors’ job to show their tributes into spectacles amidst declining viewership of the video games, in any case. And Coriolanus realizes one thing else as properly, one thing Hunger Games followers might discover acquainted: Much like with Katniss Everdeen (J.Law) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), indifference quickly provides method to love between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray towards the brutal backdrop of the video games. “[Katniss’] draw to Peeta is that this shared trauma,” the director observes. “You undergo an expertise collectively and really feel extra understood by that individual than anyone else. It’s the identical right here.” With Coriolanus and Lucy Gray, “there’s this mutual want,” he provides. “He wants her to win and survive so he wins. She wants him to assist her win and survive so she survives.” But additionally, it is… difficult. “There’s manipulation on each side.”
It was across the time that Zegler signed on that Blyth’s audition tape rolled in and, as Lawrence places it, “blew everyone out of the water.” It actually helped, too, that the Juilliard alum bears some resemblance to a young Sutherland. And his chemistry with Zegler sealed the deal. “It was like, ‘Okay, we acquired it,'” Jacobson remembers of her future stars connecting over Zoom — one in London ending Snow White and the opposite dialing in from New York — and Zegler serenading Blyth with an acapella model of Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower,” a wistful folks ballad about love misplaced. “To see how a lot he could not take his eyes off of her — she surprised him in the best way that Lucy stuns Snow.” After all, “their first second of connection is a efficiency,” Jacobson notes, citing the songbird’s Reaping showcase. “They each put on masks for various causes. They join after they determine to carry out collectively [and watch each other] carry out for the second. Tom and Rachel have been actually very able to making these shifts and doing them with one another.”
Lawrence actually solely had one observe for his main man: “I did not need him to check early Donald Sutherland performances,” he says. “I did not need it to be mimicry in any approach. I needed him to play the half in the best way that he would play the half.”
Not but totally corrupted by the world wherein he lives, Coriolanus, like most young individuals, remains to be determining his life’s path when BOSS begins. The scholar’s virtues are formed by these in his orbit, together with Tigris, his closest confidant. She’s actually not the prized Capitol stylist we meet in Mockingjay Part 2 (dropped at life in that movie by Eugenie Bondurant). In the prequel, “she’s attempting to attract [her cousin] into goodness and hold him in goodness,” Lawrence says of the character, now performed by Schafer, 24, with an “endearing authenticity.” (Though a variety of actors learn for the half, they have been channeling Elizabeth Banks’ Effie Trinket greater than Tigris, placing on a “Capitol impact” that simply felt “so phony,” he laments.) Then there’s Sejanus, Coriolanus’ pal and a former district citizen who finds himself unraveling from the immorality of the video games. “He’s really essentially the most morally right individual within the film, however there is a naivete to him that is unlucky,” Lawrence says. “He lacks the road smarts that someone like Snow or Lucy Gray has, so he is always stepping into bother.”
In stark distinction to those personalities are head gamemaker Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) and faculty dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), who function adversaries to Coriolanus’ virtues. With Volumnia, notably, “we needed to create a special type of character, when it comes to highly effective girls in these tales,” Lawrence says. Whereas Julianne Moore’s rebel boss Alma Coin was a frontrunner corrupted by energy, Volumnia is a “robust believer in a really particular philosophy, and is grooming Snow in that course,” he says. It’s necessary to notice, too, that the filmmaker has by no means been one to view his antagonists as villains. “Even working with Donald enjoying Snow, lots of people would say, ‘He’s villainous and evil.’ But Donald and I by no means actually considered him that approach,” he explains. “I do know, objectively, the character is. But these characters need to consider of their philosophies.” Volumnia is resolute in hers: “She really believes that at our core, people are savage, and that is why we’d like the video games. People must be dominated with an iron fist.”
“The twisted factor,” he provides, “is that she finds pleasure and creativity in designing the video games and making them extra entertaining. So, she’s really the primary actual gamemaker to suppose exterior the field.” Casca, then again, has ties to Coriolanus’ father, a common who died in the course of the struggle. They have been as soon as classmates who performed a significant function within the creation of the video games, and Casca’s contempt for the late Snow trickles all the way down to his son. Lawrence hails Dinklage and Blyth’s dynamic as a few of his favourite scenes within the film.
All these figures pull young Coriolanus in several instructions, both “towards the darkness of Gaul’s beliefs, towards the idealism of Sejanus’ beliefs,” or “towards the hope and heat of Tigris’ beliefs,” Lawrence says. “Young persons are all the time looking for themselves, and what they discover to be true about individuals and society.”
And although we all know how his story ends 60 years on, the director has full religion in audiences’ urge for food for a superb villain origin story: “You have a look at the draw of tales like Macbeth and the downward spiral of that character, and also you have a look at reveals like Breaking Bad and the draw that [Bryan Cranston’s Walter White] has, the place you’ve a man who has actual issues and places himself right into a world and will get sucked additional and additional in till he actually turns into a horrible individual. They’re simply actually interesting tales.”
“He goes to interrupt unhealthy,” provides Jacobson. “You know precisely what is going on to occur. There’s no thriller. But the very fact is you continue to a lot need him to interrupt good. There’s one thing about that pressure and the best way you might be at struggle inside your self as you are studying the e book and watching the film.”
Like the gamemakers and technicians within the management room modifying the arenas, “We have been all the time modulating how a lot we really feel like we are able to get individuals rooting for him,” Lawrence says of engaged on BOSS. “Suzanne would all the time ask us, or anyone that learn early variations [of her prequel novel], ‘How lengthy have been you with him? How lengthy have been you rooting for him?’ I all the time type of rooted for him till the tip. Other individuals had completely different spots the place they stated, ‘This is the place he went unhealthy, now I’m not empathizing with this man anymore.’ So, it was actually simply determining methods to navigate that in a approach the place we hold individuals rooting for him so long as potential, however nonetheless perceive and purchase into the flip into darkness.”
When Lucy Gray and her fellow tributes step into the video games’ enviornment (filmed at Centennial Hall, a historic and imposing dome situated within the Polish metropolis of Wrocław), the battleground stands in stark distinction to those followers know from the earlier movies. It’s a post-war reconstruction period as Panem rebuilds, so there aren’t any huge and extremely managed jungle terrains, no spinning islands with hostile waters enclosed by inconspicuous domes, no modern hovercrafts to pluck lifeless our bodies from the world flooring. It’s additionally lengthy earlier than the period of Careers, haughty tributes from wealthier districts who’ve educated their whole lives for the video games. The reaped youngsters are simply that: youngsters; removed from militant. And do not anticipate fancy tribute uniforms, because the contenders are thrown into the world carrying the identical garments from after they have been ripped from their properties. “There’s a way more individualized feeling by way of all of them, and also you get a stronger sense of character,” Lawrence says. “These are simply regular individuals. Some occur to be robust and good at combating, some cannot even use their legs and are simply crumpled on the bottom crying.” It’s these components that make that sequence more durable to abdomen.
But there’s levity to the brutality within the type of this yr’s emcee, Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), an ancestor of Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman. Schwartzman performed a significant function within the display screen improvement of the zany showman, who wasn’t practically as fleshed out within the preliminary script. “There was a variety of riffing and crafting” in an effort to “make extra of a meal” of the character, Lawrence says of working with Schwartzman, who referenced footage of vaudevillian magicians and information anchors from the ’70s and ’80s. “He in all probability did essentially the most homework out of anyone.” But, in fact, “We all the time had the North Star of Stanley Tucci’s efficiency, and knew that we needed it to really feel like this character was aiming at Stanley Tucci. You may really feel the origins of the host and the way it may inform two generations later.”
The Flickerman bloodline is one among a number of callbacks to the unique franchise, essentially the most hanging being the reintroduction of “The Hanging Tree.” Katniss first sings the ballad in Mockingjay Part 1 whereas filming insurgent propaganda to rally allies. It’s revealed within the prequel that the tune originates from Lucy Gray, who pens the haunting ballad after witnessing the execution described within the tune.
Music, in fact, performs a extra outstanding function within the prequel given the songbird’s Covey background. To craft the ballads of the musical nomads, producer Dave Cobb and the inventive staff drew closely from Appalachian-country folks music, whereas early Dolly Parton and Sissy Spacek’s Loretta Lynn (from the 1980 musical-drama Coal Miner’s Daughter) knowledgeable Lucy Gray’s sound. (Collins, because it seems, is a big nation music aficionado.) Zegler even sang all of Lucy Gray’s musical numbers stay all through filming, which regularly made for rousing days on set. Lawrence remembers the West Side Story powerhouse lowering among the crew to tears throughout one notably grandiose musical second within the enviornment: “It gave everyone chills.”
Other callbacks have been much less intentional. At the Reaping, Lucy Gray concludes her tune with a defiant curtsy, mirroring Katniss’ gesture within the first Hunger Games after she shoots her arrow by way of an apple tucked in a roasted pig’s mouth. The huge second shouldn’t be within the e book, nor was it even within the script. Lawrence and Zegler — each impressed by the concept that Lucy Gray’s gesture turned a extensively informed story handed down by way of generations — determined so as to add the curtsy on the day of filming.
Then there’s the wickedly apt inclusion of Sutherland’s voiceover: “It’s the issues we love most that destroy us.” Coriolanus says this to Katniss in Mockingjay Part 2 after Peeta and different captive victors are extracted from the Capitol, to forewarn of Peeta’s brainwashing. The line additionally poignantly encapsulates Coriolanus and Lucy Gray’s love story, which doesn’t have the identical completely happy ending as Katniss and Peeta. “I keep in mind being blown away by it and the way it completely match the themes and mysteries of the film that we have been making,” Lawrence says of the road, which was added to the BOSS trailer by the Lionsgate advertising staff. In reality, he was so impressed by its relevance that he added it to the ultimate minimize of the movie as properly.
With the prequel hitting theaters in lower than two months, Jacobson concedes there are anxieties about how BOSS will likely be obtained by Hunger Games followers dedicated to the unique movies and their stars. (“Katniss is so massively recognized with the franchise, so a narrative that does not have her in it’s all the time going to be a giant step for an viewers,” she says.) But the producer is happy with the strategy that was taken in selecting to maneuver ahead with the prequel, which was merely: “If we can’t get to a spot the place we really feel now we have a narrative that’s worthy of the franchise, we simply will not do it.”
As for whether or not she’d return to Panem sooner or later, ought to Collins have extra lore to inform, Jacobson affords a powerful “hell sure.” “If she has one thing to say, I need to hear it,” she declares, shortly noting that Collins has by no means been one to crank out a e book for the sake of it. “Like Lucy says, ‘I do not sing when I’m informed to. I sing when I’ve one thing to say.’ That’s Suzanne,” Jacobson explains. Lawrence shares the producer’s sentiments. “If Suzanne has one other thematic concept that she feels suits into the world of Panem — whether or not with new individuals or acquainted characters — I’d be involved in being part of it,” he says. “But I haven’t got any pull of simply going, like, ‘I’d like to do Finnick’s video games.’ What are the thematic underpinnings that make it price telling? The authentic ones have been all in regards to the penalties of struggle. [BOSS] is in regards to the state of nature. That’s what makes them really feel wealthy — and why they’ve stood the check of time.”
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes arrives in theaters Nov. 17.
Video interviews for this story have been performed previous to the beginning of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
