Almost a decade after The Hunger Games splashed across our screens, the portal to the dystopian state of Panem is being flung open again with the franchise’s prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. And, actor Tom Blyth delivers a performance of a lifetime as the new leading man. In the wake of the highly anticipated spin-off’s overwhelming response, he meets up with school friend and star of Stranger Things, Maya Hawke, to reflect on the road that’s landed him at Hollywood’s front door.

It’s been nine years since the adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games last hurtled through the box office. The four-part action film series transported viewers to the totalitarian nation of Panem, home of the vicious fight-to-the-death games that had legions of viewers in a chokehold. Quickly positioning itself amongst the critically-acclaimed fantastical worlds of Twilight and Harry Potter, The Hunger Games movies are considered some of the most beloved book-to-film adaptations of their time. They’re responsible for launching the careers of Hollywood heavyweights Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson, after all. Despite a growling hunger for more, fans knew an on-screen reunion between heroine Katniss Everdeen [portrayed by Lawrence] and her band of rowdy rebel lovers was unlikely – if you don’t know how the films end, we suggest you strap yourself in for a weekend spent glued to your TV screens. Besides, rehashing a modern-day classic is no easy feat – and as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. To the delight of many, director Francis Lawrence has decided to disregard that age-old adage entirely. And, thank God he did. It is because of him that the soon-to-be heartthrob, and effervescent 28-year-old actor, Tom Blyth, has landed his first major Hollywood role.

Reopening the doors to the dystopian domain, the Nottingham-born actor is making his highly-anticipated debut in the franchise’s gruelling prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, set 64 years prior to the originals. Blyth stars as a young Coriolanus Snow (the junior version of the villainous President Snow played by Donald Sutherland in the originals), alongside co-lead Rachel Zegler and Euphoria’s very own Hunter Schafer. Blyth’s mission in the film is simple: journeying the franchise’s loyal fans through the making of the fictional dictator they know and love – well, love to hate.

Blyth is under no illusions. He knows that with an audience this devoted comes considerable expectations. But thanks to his training in the infamous Juilliard and his current leading role that sees him slide into the boots of the titular gun-slinging outlaw in 2022’s Billy The Kid, he is no stranger to an analytical eye being cast over his performance. It’s held him in good stead for the outpour of opinions that naturally lie in the movie’s wake. Luckily for him, the Twitter critics, and odds, have been in his favour. Dubbing his turn in the movie “brilliant and gritty” and “a treat to watch,” the praise has been resounding. Oscar whispers are already growing. But they say it best themselves: “Tom Blyth gives the performance of a lifetime.” Taking on such a challenge, and succeeding at it, is something fellow Juilliard alumni and Stranger Things superstar Maya Hawke knows a thing or two about. Ahead of the release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, the pair met in a charming New York City apartment on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Blyth, wearing an unsuspecting black beanie, Hawke, a striped rugby shirt and tousled hair. Between a disruptive Uber Eats driver delivering Hawke’s pasta order mid-interview and fondly reminiscing on their days spent tearing through the school halls, they make time to discuss the key to successfully spearheading a franchise that’s unequivocally and fiercely adored.

Tom Blyth Thank you for doing this.

Maya Hawke Are you kidding me? Of course. So, my first question, which I am sure everyone is dying to know, is how do we know each other?

TB Wow. We’ve known each other for how many years now? Seven years?

MH Something like that, which makes me feel very old.

TB That makes me feel old too.

MH We didn’t meet in our childhoods, we met as semi-functional adults.

TB Did you say we were functioning? I was highly unfunctional when we met.

MH Functioning is different from functional [laughs].

TB We met at our Juilliard audition. If I remember rightly, the first time we started talking was in a Q&A for the school. We were whispering like bad school kids.

MH That sounds completely accurate and we continued that pattern throughout the rest of my brief time at school, and your extended stay. You’ve got a big movie coming out and have had consistent work since you graduated, even through a strike and a pandemic – congratulations, by the way. How much credit do you give art school generally?  

TB I would credit the school we went to for quite a lot. The amount of access we had was a huge thing. I didn’t grow up in New York, I grew up in the north of England and had to travel down to London to go see a play or audition. Coming to Juilliard was the first time where I felt it was all on my doorstep. I had access to professional work which made me feel like I was part of it instead of on the outside looking in. It was actually more of an emotional thing than anything else. I was one step closer to being in amongst good work, you know? As for the craft side of it, I felt like suddenly I had a skill set that was tangible, or more tangible because acting never is. We were there for a year together and it was rough. We were going in from 9AM until 11PM and we were exhausted. You get to a point where it becomes second nature because you’ve got no energy to think about it. I always knew I had a good instinct though, but I didn’t always know how to craft it.

MH Where do you go when the instinct doesn’t kick in?

TB In one of our first classes I asked one of our teachers, Richard Feldman, ‘What do you do if you can’t get there?’ He said, ‘You’re lucky if you get there 50% of the time.’ The rest of the time you have to lean on your toolkit to make it seem like you’re getting there. That has been a major takeaway for me.

MH I remember when I was at school, I was complaining that the job was 80% magic and 20% bullshit. And then I got out and I was like, ‘Oh!’ You are hoping for 5% magic and the world is 95% bullshit. Then occasionally on that perfect Wednesday, you wake up and you have your coffee and your weird eggs from the truck and you get that 5% magic. But that’s rare.

TB I asked you the other day if you missed school and you said yes. I realised I hadn’t asked myself that because I was so keen to act in the real world. I’ve actually been thinking about it since the other day. And the answer is, I really do.

MH I would like to start by just saying a fucking massive congratulations on The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The Hunger Games prequel. It’s a huge deal. The primary amount of my questions land here now that we can talk about it because of your interim agreement [from SAG-AFTRA] – also, congratulations. Before that, are there any weird student projects that you want to direct your The Hunger Games audience to?

TB I come from Nottingham in the UK, which is this tiny little industrial city that has a really good hub for young actors. I came to this place called the TV Workshop, which is a really grungy and improv-based place that tries to give people in the Midlands a shot at getting into TV and film. While I was there, I was really lucky to do a few short films with some Nottingham-based filmmakers. There was a film called Wash Club which was this bizarre short film that was based on a real story but also kind of like Fight Club. It’s a bunch of people in uni who get into washing machines at the dry cleaners for fun. It’s a silly neo-noir film. It gave me a bit of confidence because some indie filmmaker in the UK with a short film budget was taking a chance on me. It was the first time that I also felt that I had been given a real creative say in the process.

MH That’s so awesome. I remember when we were at drama school, you were one of the few people in the class who had any real on-camera experience.  

TB It makes a huge difference. I count myself as being very lucky and grateful that I got that. Again, speaking of access, it meant that the industry wasn’t this big, scary, behemoth.

MH It was so inspiring to me!

TB Really, because I felt the same way about you.

MH I had plus one experience, but that’s different.

TB You were so hard working. I looked up to you a lot. Even though you had, as you put it, plus one experience, I felt like you were coming at it with such fresh eyes. You could have taken it for granted, and you didn’t.

MH As did you with your on-the-ground work experience. With The Hunger Games, unlike most projects, you are going into this with a tremendous amount of source material. You had both the book and Donald Sutherland’s incredible performance. Was that intimidating to you or was it inspiring? I remember when I did Little Women I was intimidated because I had all of these people who’d already played the part and I had this book. It was intimidating to me, but also inspiring.

TB For me, this was definitely the biggest thing I’d ever done. I was a fan of the original movies. I hadn’t read the original books, but I went and saw those movies when they were coming out with my mum and my sister. The movies were amazing. I watched the first one the other day. I thought, ‘Let’s see if this holds up against the test of time.’ And it fucking does. Francis [Lawrence], our director, took over and did the last three and each one was an improvement on the next. When I first auditioned, I didn’t even know what it was [that I was auditioning for]. It was very secretive and I got a script that kind of reminded me of The Hunger Games, but it could have been something else. It was good because it didn’t make me feel any sort of pressure. Once I was in callback mode and doing chemistry reads and stuff–[both look at the screen]. We just got a notification that says you’ve got an Uber Eats on the way. I’m glad you’re going to eat while we chat.

MH It’s important. So, you were auditioning for it and you had a suspicion about what this was, but you weren’t sure. How long was the audition process?

TB I did a total of three or four auditions and a hell of a lot of chemistry reads. While I was doing chemistry reads I’d been told that I had the part, but certainly hadn’t signed on the dotted line. I had the premiere for another project the night of my big in-person chemistry read. Obviously, I went to the premiere, had a few drinks and woke up the next day like, ‘Oh God, I’ve messed it up.’ I got up a little hungover and read the script as fast as I could. My guard was down and I was like, ‘If this happens, it happens. And if not, it’s not for me.’

MH Did you try to impersonate Donald?

TB So, I haven’t even met Donald. Originally I was like, ‘I need to meet Donald, I need to get his blessing and all of that stuff.’ Honestly, I think he’s one of the best villains of modern cinema, that’s not hyperbole. He’s that good. I couldn’t help but start channelling him at the beginning but then I felt myself pull away from that because it is a slippery slope. I had a conversation with Francis early on about what he envisioned for the role. He was like, ‘You know what? This guy is 65 years younger than he is in the original films. A lot happens in those 65 years. You have the licence to do what you want to do here.’ You asked me if I was intimidated by the vastness of the project and I think at first I was. But then I was like, ‘Wait, I can just treat this like any other story.’

MH To me, it sounds like you have faith in your talent, which is really cool.

TB I guess I kind of did on this one…

*Uber Eats driver rings the doorbell*

MH I’ll just go get the door.

TB Please hold, Wonderland.

MH So, that’s all very wonderful and brings me to my next question. One of my favourite things about you as an actor is your body work. I’m curious, in this film did you work with your body?  

TB I’ve always really loved the physical transformation part of acting. I think I liked being someone else more than I liked being myself for a long time, which has changed. Snow is not someone who diminishes himself around other people. Whereas I don’t want to take up space.

MH I think it’s a generational issue.

TB For a long time, I tried to take up less space so it’s fun to play someone who is really comfortable taking up a lot of space. I start with that and I let that feed into what his voice sounds like and things like that.

MH I’m slightly physically limited, I have a lot of body habits. There’s a way that my body moves and it’s gonna come out no matter what I’m doing. You have a really good neutral body.

TB But also when I think about great actors who we’ll remember forever, like Jimmy Stewart or James Dean, they had such a distinct physicality and voice. Jimmy Stewart had his mouth tension and idiosyncratic voice and because of that, he has his own brand of person. Sometimes I worry as an actor because I like to start from a blank slate so I’m like, ‘Do I have my thing?’ You have your thing!

MH Thank you so much. I stepped into Stranger Things and you stepped into The Hunger Games. When I first did that, people kept asking me about the pressure. There is a guaranteed amount of eyes on your performance. Even if you’re bad, people will watch this and talk about how you suck. How does that feel?

TB When and if that ever happens to me, I want to be able to take it on the chin and not let it knock me back. This happening when I’m 28 is very beneficial because I’ve had so many hundreds of no’s for so many years that someone speaking ill of my performance makes me go, ‘So what?’

MH Okay, my next question is goofier. I imagine that this shoot was quite rigorous with long hours and long days. What do you do to get through a really rigorous shoot?

TB It was hard to begin with because two months before we started shooting, I had to get really skinny because [my character] starts off really malnourished. There’s a scene at the very beginning where he’s showering and you can see his ribs, so I had to lose a bit of weight. But at the end of the film – no spoilers – he goes into some sort of training and becomes a bit more buff. There’s a paragraph in the book that says, ‘His body is changing, he’s becoming a man.’ So I had to do this transition halfway through the movie and that was hard because I felt like I didn’t have much energy at the beginning. But, how do I get through a long day? Music. I always have a playlist for every character that I’m doing. Something like this is so sociable because there’s a bunch of young people [working on it]. With your big show, it’s something very sociable, I would imagine. With lots of young actors who are fairly fresh and with this being their first big thing, everyone’s very excited and they wanna talk. That adds to the feeling of levity in the movie, it gives it a vibrancy. But at the same time, you have to know when to step away, put your headphones in and get some peace and quiet because you’ve still got 13 and a half hours left to go.  

MH My trick is much less sophisticated. Stay sleepy because it actually can wear down your tension and make you more loose and relaxed. My trick for night shoots is chamomile tea.  Have you had any experience in your career working with an actor whose process you really admired?

TB The first person that comes to mind is Viola Davis in this new film. Obviously, she’s an EGOT [Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony] winner and has every award an American actor can have.
MH She’s a crusher.

TB She’s a crusher. We were all very intimidated when she got to set because we all thought that we’d flounder and she’d be a pro. What makes Viola so good is that you’ll be in a scene with her and if she fluffs a line, she doesn’t beat herself up about it. She’ll be like, ‘Francis, can we go back on that? I want to try something else.’ She’s so in the driver’s seat of her own performance and doesn’t let the messiness get her down in any way. Mess is such a big part of what we do and it’s like, allow yourself to be a bit messy and see what comes out of the paintbrush. You have to have ego and humility at the same time, which is something that I find really difficult. Viola Davis crushed it with that. I was very inspired.  

MH Working on a job like this is going to introduce a level of public attention. I imagine that’s different to anything you’ve experienced thus far in your life. How do you feel about getting your picture taken?

TB I kind of hate getting my picture taken. You know when you point a camera at a dog and they shy away as if their soul is going to be captured. I feel like that about picture taking. I’m getting better at it, but I think it’s something I need to practise. I get a bit camera-shy when I’m playing myself.  

MH I just got through it after years of red carpets. My response used to be as if someone had just said, ‘Say cheese.’ I’d stand totally straight and smile really big. It embarrassed me for a while, trying to make pictures look good.

TB That goes back to what we were talking about with daring to take up a bit of space, in a confident way. For a long time, I was so embarrassed about that. But recently I’ve gotten better at being like, ‘I’m invited here. I need to promote a movie that I’m really excited about. So, I can stand there and take up space for five minutes on this red carpet.’

MH When my first season of [Stranger Things] was about to come out, everyone on the show was coming up to me all the time being like, ‘You’re not gonna believe how crazy this is gonna be.’ And it actually made me feel really scared and kind of disappointed that it wasn’t as crazy as everyone said it was gonna be. Has everyone been talking to you like that?

TB Hell yeah. Your agents and your managers are saying it because they want to prepare you and because they care about you. I have great people who I love who feel like family, and they’re all doing it out of a lot of care. But you also have friends who look at you as if you’re not you anymore. In fact, I know people were doing that to you while we were in school. Now I’m in The Hunger Games. It’s exciting, but you have to hold on to the core things that make you who you are. Let it be exciting, but remember it’s going to die out a few weeks afterwards. The world we live in comes and goes so quickly. You’re going to wake up the day after the premiere and you’re still going to be back in your kitchen, making coffee like anybody else.

MH That was my experience. There were two weeks after the show came out where I’d be walking around and people would come and say hey. It was, at some points, overwhelming. If you don’t get scared by that and recede into your home in your hood and your sunglasses, the attention quickly dies.  

TB Ultimately you can’t let it get to you. You can’t think about it too much. You can’t change who you are. It’s easier said than done sometimes. But having good people around you really helps. Even this sort of thing reminds you how important good friends and family are. I was so intimidated doing my first cover feature and I was like, ‘I need a good old friend who I can trust to get personal with.’  

MH Some old adage of advice my dad gave me was that if you listen to the good reviews then you have to listen to the negative attention.  

TB My dad always wanted to do what we do, not as an actor, but as a director and producer.

MH And he did.

TB Briefly. He was a photojournalist for years and then eventually started getting into producing soap operas in the UK.

MH Several successful soap operas.

TB But only for about two years. He was doing it and then he passed away when I was 14. If I’m really honest with myself and think, ‘What is the burning thing that keeps me going when I don’t know why I’m doing this?’ It’s carrying that torch for him because he never got to do it in the way that he wanted to. He’d just started getting there and then he passed away, unfortunately. My parents were separated when I was a kid. When I saw him every other weekend we bonded over watching movies.
 
MH It’s a great way to bond with your dad.

TB My dad ignited that passion in me. We never got to talk about work together because I was too young when he passed. But now, even if it’s one-sided, I get to be like, ‘Hey, we’re kind of doing it now.’

MH That’s really beautiful. I’m really proud of you, and I’m sure he would be too.

TB Thank you, I really appreciate that.

MH I love you so much.

TB I love you.