The ‘West Side Story’ Actress Channeled Some Of The Legendary Female Musicians Including The ‘Jolene’ Hitmaker For ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’.
Jennifer Lawrence starred as Katniss Everdeen in four previous installments in “The Hunger Games” series, but director Francis Lawrence recently insisted Rachel’s character Lucy is nothing like the original protagonist.
He told Empire magazine, “Katniss was an introvert and a survivor. She was quite quiet and stoic, you could almost say (she was) asexual. Lucy Gray is the opposite. She wears her sexuality on her sleeve, (and) she really is a performer.”
The director compared how Katniss became a reluctant face of a rebellion and suggested that Lucy Gray is a show woman by comparison. Francis added, “(Lucy Gray) loves crowds. She knows how to play crowds and manipulate people.”
Lucy Gray is the love interest for 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the tyrannical president of Panem who was introduced to audiences in the original “Hunger Games” movies. Producer Nina Jacobson said of the villain, “He is a shape-shifter who craves control but is drawn to a woman who threatens everything he thought he wanted.”