JAN 25: Recent Mockingjay - Part 1, 2 Interviews

Many of the cast have been included in some interviews after the movie's release, so take a look here.

Hunger Games: Mockingjay | Mahershala Ali ("Boggs") Interview on Jan. 23 from Screen Rant

The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1: Interview with Director Francis Lawrence from Collider on November 20. 

Donald Sutherland reveals ‘Mockingjay’ deleted scene between Snow and Peeta from Hypable on November 25

Like any film, Mockingjay, Part 1 had to leave some scenes on the cutting room floor.

Despite the fact that the shortest book in The Hunger Games trilogy was expanded so that they could split Mockingjayinto two parts, there were still scenes that had to be deleted before hitting theaters.

In interviews with the media over the past couple weeks, director Francis Lawrence has revealed that there will be about 10 – 12 minutes of deleted scenes on the Mockingjay DVD/Blu-ray when it hits store shelves in 2015.

One of those scenes will be three-pages of dialogue between Peeta and his captor, President Snow.

In an interview with Hitfix, Snow actor Donald Sutherland revealed that they had shot additional scenes between Panem’s leader, his assistant, and Peeta, but they were ultimately cut.

On the scene between Snow and Peeta, Sutherland says that it was too far off from Katniss’ point of view. “It just didn’t fit with their paradigm. …It wasn’t evident when we wrote it, it was a lovely scene. Just lovely,” he said. “At the end of it…Peeta said ‘so you’re asking me to say all these things.’ And [President Snow] said, ‘you have everything right except one detail. I’m not asking.'”

Some of our favorite moments during Mockingjay, Part 1 were the moments where we saw what was happening away from Katniss, so we would’ve welcomed an additional scene with Snow and Peeta. Adding more of the latter would’ve been especially nice considering we saw so little of him during the movie while he was locked up in the Capitol.

While we thought Mockingjay ran at a good pace, there were some scenes – like the second reveal of District 12 in ruins and Coin’s brief chat with Katniss at the very end – that felt like they were only there to fill time.

There’s no word yet on what other deleted scenes will be a part of Mockingjay, Part 1’s DVD/Blu-ray release at this time.

Mockingjay, Part 1: Sam Claflin on the Beautiful Tragedy of Finnick from CraveOnline on November 11th 

Sam Claflin doesn’t take part in lots of big action sequences in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, but that doesn’t mean his job was easy. As the tragic figure Finnick Odair, a veteran of The Hunger Games whose life has been destroyed after the events of Catching Fire, Claflin plays a sad, solitary figure whose greatest contribution to the revolution may turn out to be something more subtle and depressing than blowing up fighter jets with a bow and arrow.

Struck by his performance in Mockingjay, Part 1, we sought out Sam Claflin to discuss the unique journey of his character from charismatic hero to lonely loner, what was going through the actor’s mind during his most harrowing moments on set, and what – exactly – Finnick Odair is doing with that rope throughout the entire film. Sam Claflin also reveals which prop from The Hunger Gameshe got to keep after the production concluded, and no… it’s not his trident.

Some minor spoilers lie ahead, but they should come as no surprise to readers of the Suzanne Collins novels.

CraveOnline: Hello, sir. How are you doing today?

Sam Claflin: I’m good, how are you?

I’m good. Thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate it.

No, thanks… Thanks for talking to me! I feel wanted.

Oh my god, you are so wanted. Are you kidding me?

[Laughs.]

My stars. First off I wanted to say congratulations, I think this is the best one yet.

Oh cool. Thank you, I’ll pass that on.

Please do. Spread the word. I haven’t read the books, so this went in places I did not expect. I guess I expected Finnick to be stabbing guys by the dozens with a giant trident or something, but he’s in a really bad place in this movie, isn’t he?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the sort of guy that we got to know during the last movie is broken, quite literally, in more ways than one. So yeah, it’s matter of trying to piece himself back together, to regain that confidence that we all got to know in Catching Fire. As an actor, I guess it’s always a dream come true, to be able play a character with two personalities, two sides of the coin. It was a treat to revisit him, but it was quite challenging I guess, to play a character who felt pretty much brand new.

What is going on in Finnick’s head when we first see him in Mockingjay, Part 1? Obviously he misses Cresta but it seems to go deeper than that.

I think he, in a sense, as much as Katniss does, I guess in a sense he feels somewhat betrayed or lost. He realizes that even Katniss has family and friends around her. She has Gale, she has her mom and her sister, even her cat. Whereas Finnick literally has nobody. He is a lone wolf, and so the one thing that he did love and cherish has been taken from him. So I think it really hits him harder than it does with Katniss. And also she has obviously the rebellion, the whole Mockingjay, to keep distracting her, whereas he is just left to his own devices and sort of forgotten about. That’s the beautifully tragic reality of Finnick’s life. He’s a lonely man, and so you can seem to have everything, but have nothing. I think that’s a beautiful story.

CraveOnline: What is Finnick toying with? It looks like he’s tying knots in something. What he is making or doing?

Sam Claflin: It’s kind of a comfort blanket, I guess. It’s his way of trying to take his mind off what’s going on in the world. What isn’t apparent is what sort of knots that I’m tying. Every knot was symbolic to how I was feeling, so whether it was a good luck knot or a forever knot, or it was a… I think that was it, actually. [Laughs.] I perfected them to the point that I didn’t have to look at them while I was doing them. I was doing them behind my back, et cetera, et cetera. In the books there’s a moment where Finnick hands that rope to Katniss, like, “This will keep you going.” So it’s a real symbol of his feeling lost, I guess you could say.

Did you have to consult a knot-tying expert. I don’t know anything about knots. I was never on a ship or anything…

I was given a couple of books but I found them really difficult to follow, honestly. There’s a transitional period from one photo to the next, and I feel like they sort of missed out on how to get from A to Z. [Laughs.] There was always a stage that I thought I couldn’t work out. So I watched a lot of YouTube clips, honestly, and there are many, many, many knot-tying videos. You could bore yourself silly, I’m sure, with the amount of knot-tying that goes on. I watched those for about a year. Nonetheless it was very interesting. Now I can happily tie a boat to a pier, so I’m quite proud of myself.

Well, well done, sir.

[Laughs.] Thank you!

“I was just randomly standing there in my underwear wishing Katniss luck.”

No worries. You say Finnick is left to his own devices, but he’s also off-camera quite a bit in this movie.

Mm-hmm.

Were there scenes that you shot that showed what you were up to, that didn’t make it into the final cut of this movie?

Not really, no. I think the important elements of his story and his journey are shown. The fact is, he very slowly starts piecing himself back together, but you don’t really see that in the book or in the film. There was one scene that we shot that didn’t make it into the film, which is totally understandable in the context of the movie and the fluidity of the journey that everyone was going through at that point. It seemed quite jarring, so it makes sense that it didn’t make the film…

What was that scene? Was it just an isolated moment or were you interacting with another actor?

It was an isolated moment. I was still in the hospital gown, but for a brief moment in that scene, before I took it off, I was just randomly standing there in my underwear wishing Katniss luck. [Laughs.] I think what they realized was, it was kind of not in keeping with the tone of the movie. They needed to keep moving forward. The fact that she was about to go to war, you know, it didn’t quite sit right. I think that was the general consensus. To me it makes sense if someone was a little wary of how people might take it. It makes so much more sense that it’s not there than if it was.

You get a hell of a scene at the end of this movie, that I thought was spectacular. Again, I guess because I haven’t read the books, it illustrated just how damaged Finnick must be even before all this happened, after what he went through after his Hunger Games.

 Mmm… It’s the real Finnick, that moment. I think that’s what me and Francis [Lawrence] had discussed quite a lot, which was that that is the moment that he really is naked and he gives everything. For the good of Panem, he basically tells them his life story and it’s hugely emotional but at the same time he doesn’t allow himself to get emotional. I think the reasoning behind it is, I’m ready to fight. This is my small, small donation to the cause. In comparison to what other people have sacrificed, him telling his story is a small sacrifice.

So it was a very intense day on set, as you can imagine! [Laughs.] At the same time what me and Francis had decided was it shouldn’t be emotional, it should be factual. It’s him telling people why they should join their cause. So yeah. 

CraveOnline: You say he’s naked in that moment. I view acting as working in layers upon layers upon layers, so just being confessional sounds scary to me, even just when you’re acting.

Sam Claflin: Yeah. 

Yeah?

I mean, slightly. I definitely felt naked, if you know what I mean. I felt like everyone was watching me. [Laughs.] I felt like everyone was expecting a lot from me, so therefore… I remember Francis being complimentary in the sense that I was well-prepared for it. Like, I’d learned my lines. I was sort of surprised that people don’t learn their lines. How do normal people do this? This is normal to me, that I have one small job, that’s to learn my lines, turn up to set on time, and here I am! And hopefully act it well. But he was very happy that I’d done a lot of work behind it, that I had an idea of where I wanted to go with it.

It was well prepared, so that therefore… Doing these sorts of scenes, doing any form of acting, any scene you do feels quite, quite naked, and feels like I’m allowing a part of myself to be looked at, you know? So that was just in addition to the amount of other things like that.

“I was sort of surprised that people don’t learn their lines.”

So all the films are wrapped, yes?

Yeah. Yes.

Have you done anything to commemorate the occasion? Are you going to get a tattoo or anything to remember the experience?

[Laughs.] It’s still not over yet, so there’s potential for anything. I’ve definitely not discussed any sort of real symbolic remembrance. I think the memory of this film will forever kind of be remembered anyway, so I don’t think that I need anything to commemorate this experience. However, like I said, we’ve still got another film to come, so we still have a year to decide on something if we do decide on something. We shall see.

Did you get to keep your trident, at least?

I didn’t get to keep my trident. I got to keep my rope, which is pretty special. [Laughs.] I won’t tie a knot every again, but nonetheless it was a nice little memento.

EDDIE REDMAYNE

By JENNIFER LAWRENCE

Photography CRAIG MCDEAN

from interview mag

 Excerpt from the Article

REDMAYNE: Are you guys finished with Hunger Gamesnow? 

LAWRENCE: I think we're done with the press tour. I've got, like, one more thing to shoot for Hunger Games. We just have one scene to do for the end. 

REDMAYNE: It's over? Wowzer. That's quite intense. That's, like, several years of your life. 

LAWRENCE: I know. I'm not happy about it at all. 

REDMAYNE: Wait, can't they write some more? 

LAWRENCE: I know, right? I would totally do it. And now Liam [Hemsworth]'s doing a movie in Australia for two months. It's the longest that the three of us have ever spent apart. 

REDMAYNE: Are you like siblings?

LAWRENCE: Yeah. We were just on the plane, and Josh [Hutcherson] was eating something that I don't like—salmon or something. I was eating my own snack and he kept eating my snack. I was going to share with him because I'm not an asshole, but then finally I was like, "I can't eat your snack. So it's not fair that you're eating my snack!" Our security guard just started laughing at us. And we were like, "It's been a lot of years!" [laughs]

IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN MOCKINGJAY - PART 1, DO NOT GO BELOW THE CUT. 
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Mockingjay: Josh Hutcherson Talks "Strangling" Jennifer Lawrence—Watch Now! BY MARK MALKIN ON E NEWS, FROM NOV. 18. 

Poor, Josh Hutcherson.

Not only does his character, Peeta, seem to turn on Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, but he actually physically attacks her, too.

"When I had to strangle Katniss at the end of the movie that was really intense," Hutcherson told me last night at the Mockingjay premiere at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live. "It took a lot of choreographing and a lot of time. So that was definitely the hardest."

Saying goodbye to the Hungers Games franchise is pretty hard, too.

"I'm going to miss everything," Hutcherson said. "I'm going to miss the shooting so much. I'm going to miss the cast, the crew, everyone.

"I'm personally sad right now," he continued. "I'm putting on a fake happy façade, but internally I'm crying."

Last night's white runway premiere (the traditional red carpet was replaced by glossy white wood) also saw Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, Elizabeth Banks, Julianne Moore, Sam Claflin,Willow Shields, Evan Ross, Natalie Dormer and Jeffrey Wright.

"I'd also like to thank and remember a missing part of our family here, Philip Seymour Hoffman," director Francis Lawrence said in memory of the late Oscar winner, who died from a drug overdose in February.

After the screening, a party was held under a giant tent erected on top of a nearby parking garage. (Lawrence changed out of her white Dior dress into a black ensemble for the bash.)

The entrance included giant pieces of fake cement rubble and hundreds of President Snow's white roses. Inside, guests were greeted by several woman dressed as Effie and avoxes.

Flashing fluorescent red, orange, yellow and white lights were hung over the party, which also included pots of lush green succulents and industrial pipe fixtures and grey couches.

The buffet offered chicken, beef and salmon dishes along with kale and faro salad. Dessert stations were stocked with pumpkin spice whoopie pies, black forest cake, apple tarts, chocolate pudding parfait and peppermint cheesecake bites.

Mockingjay is in theaters on Nov. 21.