Image by John Wright
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Sam Claflin and Jena Malone talk about Mockingjay and their characters Finnick Odair and Johanna Mason in Empire Magazine's 2014 Movie Preview Issue. Check out the article by Olly Richards:
When you're appearing alongside the most famous actress in the world right now, it's hard to steal much glory for yourself, but in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire both Sam Claflin and Jena Malone managed to wrestle just a little limelight from Jennifer Lawrence to become the sequel's breakout stars. And without warning to spoil anything, both are about to become even more significant in the final two films, in very different ways. Not that any of this is quite registering with Claflin, who plays the studly Finnick Odair, just yet.
"I'm still surprised they've picked me," he says, with a very British self-deprecation that is likely to serve him well in America. "Every time I see Francis I'm convinced he's not going to know who I am... I mean, I'm not the Finnick in the book. I've got brown hair, a beard, I'm a bit overweight, not 24 and I'm not seven foot... I was fully ready for the fans to hate me!"
Claflin has had a good warm-up to becoming a household name. After the old actorly cliche of a burgeoning football career truncated by injury, he slipped fairly easily into the romantic role in Snow White and The Huntsman, before The Hunger Games came calling. "It is weird that all those films are big, but I've done very little things that nobody's seen too," he says, absolutely determined that he not at any point celebrate his own achievements. "And honestly, nobody's recognizing me. Maybe it's because Finnick always has his top off. I've not been walking round much with my top off."
Mockingjay will see less nudity and more neurosis from Finnick. "I'm honestly so scared about saying anything at all, even though, as you say, the books are out there," say Claflin. "But you see more of Finnick. No, not like THAT. More of his reasons for being how he is. Oh, you know what I mean!"
Unlike Claflin, Jena Malone has had almost two decades of being recognized, starting her acting career at the age of 11 and working consistently since in everything from Stepmom to Donnie Darko to Sucker Punch. But more often than not she's been the good, sweet girl - something her Hunger Games incarnation, Johanna Mason, would find deeply off-putting.
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"I remember going into the audition just being annoyed about everything," Malone says. "Only because that's who Johanna is. So I was annoyed by the receptionist, the person next to me in the elevator, the room. I think Francis was a little frightened...." Francis Lawrence confirms he most definitely was. Johanna is perhaps the most interesting character in the Hunger Games series, one who's shut out everyone else in order to survive, and then has to reverse that to help save the world. Thanks to the events at the end of Catching Fire, she'll be almost an entirely different person again in Mockingjay.
"I think it's really interesting how she develops," says Malone. "It would be really boring if she was just this really bitchy person, but that's not who she is. She's pretty much an animal who's adapted, because she has to. Bitchiness is just a surface thing, but you start to see what's underneath."
The next film will be where the political world of the Capitol and the violent world of the Hunger Games arena and the rebels within clash together fatally, with Johanna right in the middle. "It's pretty amazing how much political sophistication Suzanne Collins put into this series that is also really entertaining," says Malone, who hadn't read any of the books when she was cast and had to rely on her younger sister to fill in the blanks. "That clash of powers has come to a head." And when that clash happens, not everyone is going to make it out alive.