New Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes Still & Interview With Francis Lawrence In Empire Magazine

An exclusive new still from The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes and an interview with director Francis Lawrence is in the October issue of Empire Magazine. The digital copy will be available Thursday, August 31st for Empire members. 

In the interview Francis discusses how Lucy Gray Baird differs from of Katniss Everdeen, how Rachel had to jump right into the arena, and a key scene we're all looking forward to from the book:

“Katniss was an introvert and a survivor,” Francis says. “She was quite quiet and stoic. Lucy Gray is the opposite. She wears her sexuality on her sleeve, and she really is a performer. She loves crowds,” says Lawrence. “She knows how to play crowds and manipulate people.” 

The new film is set against the tenth annual Hunger Games, in which Lucy Gray, a travelling musician confined to one of the competing districts, has been chosen to enter. Zegler - who broke through as Maria in Steven Spielberg's West Side Story - had already proven she had the musical chops for the part. But how would she fare as a contestant in a brutal fight to the death?

She didn't have long to find out. Two days after wrapping Disney's live-action Snow White, Zegler was in Poland shooting intense battle scenes in the staged Hunger Games arena. "The opening of the games we call 'the bloodbath, and that's exactly what she had to jump into right away," says Lawrence. He describes Zegler's first few days, which saw her running around a dusty, crumbling set while performing combat choreography. "She was leaving [the set] bruised pretty much every day, but those fighter qualities came in," he remembers.

Mentoring Lucy Gray through the games is Corialanus Snow (Tom Blyth), who, it's no spoiler to say, rises to become the big bad played by Donald Sutherland in Katniss' story. In The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, young Snow is trying to restore his family's legacy when he succumbs to Lucy Gray's well-rehearsed charms. "She loves crowds. She knows how to play crowds and manipulate people," says Lawrence, who reveals that rather than deadly weapons, this is the character's strongest survival tool.

The film will play up to its new hero's performative personality with a series of musical numbers, some of which come courtesy of Lucy Gray's troupe, the Covey. Żegler was learning the guitar when she came on board and had tutorials to further prepare for the role, while Lawrence gave her country music from the 1930s to listen to. A particularly key performance will occur at a crucial point in the games. "It was so emotional to hear the song, which is an a cappella piece that she sings near the end of the arena sequence," he says. "I think it stunned everybody."

After one of these songs, she delivers a slow, defiant bow to the crowd, a nod to Katniss and proof that some connective tissue exists between the polar-opposite protagonists. "The bow was actually not scripted," Lawrence reveals. "I thought it could be really interesting, as [we] start to develop more history and mythology, if somebody else long before [Katniss] had done that." 

Enjoy the show!