Melissa Leo's name was tossed into the Mags casting craze last week. Rumor has it that Melissa Leo was offered to play the role of Mags but then few days after that Lionsgate has released an announcement that Lynn Cohen will play Mags in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." Now, Melissa Leo has talked to Moviefone about her involvement in the Mags casting rumor:
I would have liked to have done it, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be mine,” she said while chatting with Moviefone Monday afternoon, in support of her new film, "Why Stop Now." Informed that Cohen had been confirmed as an addition to the cast, she responded, “Who? Oh, I’ll have to look her up.”
Leo said that being a part of the Hunger Games franchise was “a dear hope.” She hadn’t read the books, she told Moviefone, but the trailer for the first film excited her.
“I’m not much of a reader and that might very well be part of the reason that I did not get the role,” she said.
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“Lynn Cohen is Mags!” Elizabeth Banks, who plays Capitol crony Effie Trinket in the popular series, crowed on her blog early Monday morning. Lionsgate confirmed Cohen’s casting late last week.
Cohen, whose previous credits include “Sex and the City” and “Munich,” among others, will play the aging former Hunger Games winner who becomes important to heroine Katniss Everdeen over the course of the series’ second installment.
Banks, for her part, was thrilled about the choice of Cohen to play Mags.
“She seems like a pretty rad lady and I’m excited to work with her,” Banks wrote. “I know she’ll mentor Finnick like nobody’s business.”
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