Making an iconic villain your own is no easy task, as Tom Blyth can attest. The actor plays Coriolanus Snow in The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is set some 64 years before we meet him in the original films.
In this version, the future President of Panem is brought on as a mentor for the 10th annual Hunger Games. Given Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) as his tribute, he must navigate keeping her alive while also stopping anyone from realizing the dire consequences that losing would have on his family.
In short, he’s a far cry from the tyrannical leader played by Donald Sutherland who makes a personal enemy of Katniss Everdeen in the original trilogy. But, as Blyth tells 12DOVE, he couldn’t resist adding a few nods to the character’s future.
"For me in terms of like nodding towards the other films, or layering that in it, it was all about the arc," he explains. "So, I wanted him to be vastly different at the beginning from Coriolanus that we see later on, as played by Donald [Sutherland]. As the film progresses, in those three acts that are distinctive, he gets more and more close to the future president.
"By the end, I wanted his posture and his voice to just start to get closer to what he's like later on, and I hope that people can see that in the movie. His voice changes, he's become a man, he's gone away to District 12 and come back and has been through some shit. So, he comes back and literally has a different vocal quality and speaks slower and more precisely. I think I layered that in as much as I could."
Blyth isn’t the only one who added some Easter eggs in for fans, as his co-star Rachel Zegler tells us some little nods she added too, including "as many nods to her attitude" as she could. She adds: "They are really very different characters but I think there are elements of them in each other respectively."
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes arrives in theaters on Friday, November 17. You can listen to our full interview with Blyth and Zegler on the Inside Total Film podcast, out this week.
For more exclusive insight, check out what director Francis Lawrence had to say about the film’s violence, whether he’ll return for a sequel, and what’s happening with his upcoming BioShock movie. We also speak to the film’s producer Nina Jacobson about how the prequel will impact your next rewatch.
