The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes: Rachel Zegler Explains How Her Character "Echos" Katniss Everdeen

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is hitting theaters next weekend, and it takes place 64 years before the first The Hunger Games. Some characters are returning as younger versions while others are new characters who are related to people from the previous stories. However, Rachel Zegler's Lucy Gray Baird is an all-new addition with no blood ties to any of the characters we know and love. Despite not being related, Lucy Gray still has a lot in common with Katniss Everdeen, the original heroine played by Jennifer Lawrence. While speaking to the press during a virtual conference attended by ComicBook.com, Zegler explained how Lucy Gray "echoes" Katniss. 

"As actors, watching Jennifer's performance in the original trilogy is watching a masterclass in performance in general," Zegler shared. "When it came to the approach of Lucy Gray, I kind of felt like I didn't have to [study her]. I came to what Tom [Blyth] was saying, it kind of puts an unnecessary pressure because it's a different character and a different time of Panem. And I feel like Lucy Gray is a war-torn teenager who's had everything she knows ripped from her yet she's still making the best of it. And so it was very similar to Kanes in that perspective, but she's a very different dynamic in response to being placed in an arena in front of a bunch of people and having to make the world root for her. She's very good at that."

Zegler continued, "She's very persuasive in her performance and very good at getting an audience on her side. So it was very fun to play that. But I do think that there's elements of Katniss within her and that makes it all the more fun to go back and watch the original trilogy and kind of see how Snow remains haunted by Lucy Gray even in his later life because there are echoes of her within Katniss Everdeen."

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Producer Talks Casting: 

Nina Jacobson, who has served as a producer on every film in the franchise, spoke with ComicBook.com about the new film's casting. 

"Well, of course, any time that you're casting somebody, like you say, who's related or a younger version, obviously you're going to lop off a whole bunch of people who could be great, but who just don't look like they would ever grow up to be that person," Jacobson explained. "So you have the demands of, 'Can I believe that this young man becomes that older man?' And then also on the Lucy Gray [Rachel Zegler] front, even though she's not related to anybody, she has to be able to sing to inhabit that performer's personality, but also to kind of convey both the sort of savviness and street smarts of this character."

"And to have those questions of like, 'Is she Songbird or is she Snake?' Because she's always singing, but she's also always got a snake, or not always, but a good amount of the time," Jacobson continued. "So, just a reminder that none of these characters are meant to be all one or the other. And so, you have to get actors who can bring that level of complexity and nuance. It's much easier to just play a straight-up good guy, straight-up bad guy, but to have to kind of live in the middle and the pull and the push, and we wanted audiences to also wonder, is it real or not real?"

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th.