If you have read the books, you probably know that Katniss and President Snow really don't have much confrontations with one another. However, the actor playing President Snow (Donald Sutherland) suggested Director Gary Ross about his interest in playing the character, which eventually led Ross to add two scenes between Snow and Katniss. Just read
EW's interview with Director Ross:
Donald Sutherland isn’t shy: he wrote to director Gary Ross about why he belonged in the Hunger Games
cast. The formidable actor sent Ross an impassioned email about
playing the insidious President Coriolanus Snow, the long-standing ruler
of author Suzanne Collins’ futuristic world who forces children to
fight to their deaths as a way of keeping the masses in line. ”It was
a long thoughtful analysis of the way power is wielded and why,”
remembers Ross, “how it controls people and what the use of the Games
were and how pernicious they were and the way that they were used as an
instrument of political control.”
“It was so eloquent and brilliant,” continues Ross, “that it actually
inspired me to write two extra scenes for him that I think are pivotal
in the movie and that Suzanne really loves.” Ross was already shooting
in Asheville, NC when he received the actor’s missive. While on break
he remembers wandering down to a clearing by the edge of a lake to
ruminate over Sutherland’s ideas. “So I sat down in this chair and
stared at the lake and came up with these two scenes,” he says. “And I
realized that not only were the scenes vital but they actually fit a
piece that was missing. That was a gift I got from the actor.”
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! In this first
installment of the film trilogy, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen
and Sutherland’s Snow really only have one scene together. But Ross says
to prepare for a doozy. “It’s only when she’s crowned that they
confront one another and it’s very electric.” The Hunger Games hits theaters on March 23.
Wow, that was indeed brilliant. I'm looking forward to see the tense between these two big characters in the movie.
