Click for full size
With all the casting news coming out for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it’s getting tough to keep track of who’s who among all the new faces - especially with the sheer number of characters in the film, and the fanciful (yet always meaningful) names Suzanne Collins uses in the book. We thought it was time for a visual guide to the characters and cast!
*There are light spoilers here for those of you who haven’t read the book.*
Mentors & Tributes
Click for full size
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set around the 10th Hunger Games, and was the first Hunger Games to introduce mentors for the tributes, recruiting 24 of the Capitol Academy's best and brightest seniors for the task.
We‘ve laid out the tribute and mentor pairs to help you familiarize yourselves with who has been cast. You’ll find the Capitol mentors up top paired with their tributes from the corresponding districts below. We’ve left out tributes and mentors that haven’t been officially announced yet, so you’ll see there are some districts missing. It seems like some of the mentors and tributes that have a, shall we say, “limited” amount of time in the story will be treated more as featured extras and won't be part of an official casting announcement.
The Covey and District 12
Click for full size
Next up is the visual guide for The Covey and District 12. We’ve got the full cast for The Covey and it’s really fun to see them all together. There are so many new faces and I think they made awesome choices. I can totally imagine them playing music at The Hob.
For background, The Covey were a group of traveling musical performers in Panem whose name means family or small flock of birds.They made their money by performing at places like The Hob. After the war, they were rounded up and forced to settle in District 12.
A Covey member's first name was taken from a ballad, their middle name from a color, and their last name was a family name. The one exception was Lucy Gray Baird, whose first and middle name both came from the same ballad. The three Baird girls are cousins, Clerk Carmine Clade and Billy Taupe Clade are brothers and Tam Amber is, according to Maude Ivory, “a lost soul.”
The Covey consists of 5 members:
Lucy Gray Baird (vocals, guitar) played by Rachel Zegler
Maude Ivory Baird (vocals, percussion) played by Vaughan Reilly
Barb Azure Baird (bass) played by Honor Gillies
Tam Amber (mandolin) played by Eike Onyambu
Clerk Carmine Clade (fiddle) played by Konstantin Taffet
plus one ex member, Billy Taupe Clade played by Dakota Shapiro.
The District 12 of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is similar to the place you know from The Hunger Games series - it’s a poor district, coal mining is the main industry, and there’s a brewing rebellion. There’s also a Peacekeeper base where new recruits are trained.
District 12 book characters are:
Mayor Lipp
Mayfair Lipp (Mayor Lipps's daughter) played by Isobel Jesper Jones
Rebels in D12:
Spruce played by George Somner
Arlo Chance played by Raphael Zari
Lil
Peacekeepers in D12:
Commander Hoff played by Burn Gorman
Smiley played by Carl Spencer
Beanpole aka Junius played by Scott Folan
Bug
Cookie
District 12 Peacekeepers and citizens not yet officially cast are Bug, (Snow’s bunk mate) Arlo, Lil, Cookie, and Mayor Lipp. We know Arlo and Lil are definitely a part of the production. The Hanging Tree story line and song are important parts of the book and the larger Hunger Games lore, and there were fans on site for the filming of the hanging tree scenes in Germany who saw an actor or stunt person get “hanged” over and over for hours.
The Capitol
Click for full size
The Capitol we experience in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is 10 years after the first rebellion, a civil war between the Capitol and the districts. The effects of the war were still felt in the Capitol - rubble lay in piles on the sidewalks, whole buildings were still gutted, food was scarce for The Snow family and the black market was alive and well.
The Academy was “the finest secondary school in the Capitol” educating the offspring of the prominent, wealthy and influential. Coriolanus and Tigris were able to attend due to their family’s long history at the school and prominent family name.
The Citadel was an imposing structure which housed the Capitol's War Department. Dr. Volumnia Gaul, Head Gamemaker of the 10th Hunger Games and head of Citadel experimental weapons division, was based here. She had laboratories underground, where she bred various muttations, including snakes and rabbits.
The Capitol characters in the book consist of:
Snow Family
Coriolanus Snow played by Tom Blyth
Tigris Snow (his cousin) played by Hunter Schafer
The Grandma'am (their grandmother) played by Fionnula Flanagan
Crassus Snow (Coriolanus' father)
Mrs. Snow (Coriolanus' mother)
Plinth Family
Sejanus Plinth (one of Coriolanus Snow’s classmates, close friends, and a reluctant mentor along side him in the Games) played by Josh Andrés Rivera.
Strabo Plinth (Sejanus’ father, a munitions magnate from District 2 who bought his way into the Capitol) played by Michael Greco
Ma Plinth (Sejanus’ mother) played by Daniela Grubert
The Academy & The Citadel
Dr. Volumina Gaul (Head Gamemaker, instructor, head of Citadel experimental weapons division) played by Viola Davis
Dean Casca Highbottom (Dean of The Academy) played by Peter Dinklage
President Ravinstill (President Of Panem, great uncle to Felix Ravinstill, mentor)
Dr. Kay (assistant scientist in Gaul's lab)
Prof Satyria Click (Academy instructor and a mentor of Coriolanus Snow)
Prof Agrippa Sickle (Academy instructor of physical education)
Crispus Demigloss (a history professor at the Academy)
Dr. Wane (a doctor who took care of Coriolanus Snow and Clemensia Dovecote)
The Games
Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman (Hunger Games Master of Ceremonies) played by Jason Schwartzman
Lepidus Malmsey (Capitol News reporter)
Capitol Citizens
Pluribus Bell (an old Snow family friend who runs the black market) - Producer Nina Jacobson confirmed on twitter that this character will not be in the film.
Fabricia Whatnot (fashion designer in The Capitol, as well as Tigris's boss)
Nero Price (a neighbor of the Snows, father of Persephone Price, mentor)
Remus Dolittle (Gamemaker-in-training and a downstairs neighbor of the Snow family)
As you can see, there are quite a few minor Capitol characters yet to be officially cast. With such a character dense book, I’m sure some of the smaller characters had to be cut from the adaptation.
We hope this helps to familiarize you with this huge cast!
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes debuts in theaters on Nov. 17, 2023.
PanemPropaganda 
Centennial Hall;)
Image via @BalladofPanem on twitter;)
Image via @BalladofPanem on twitter;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)