Elizabeth Banks appeared on Bustle’s “One Nightstand” podcast to promote her new Peacock series “The Miniature Wife” and called out the white women who voted for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. While the actor can’t understand how one could make that decision, she did evoke her “Hunger Games” character Effie Trinket while sharing her wish for Trump voters to renounce fascism.
“Effie for me is one of the characters that has the greatest arc that I’ve ever played because obviously she props up this fascist regime that she benefits from and it’s not until she really comes to care for and see how unfair it is when they want to pull Katniss and Peta into the games again…” Banks explained.
“I think in ‘Catching Fire’ when she’s like, ‘I want to be part of this team,’ and you really see her struggling and then by the end she’s like a revolutionary… I wish more of us were becoming revolutionaries!” she added. “Effie is the model, guys! I don’t understand the 53% of white ladies that didn’t vote for Kamala.”
Banks played Effie in “The Hunger Games” movie franchise, appearing in all four movies: “The Hunger Games,” “Catching Fire,” “Mockingjay – Part 1” and “Mockingjay – Part 2.” The film were released between 2012 and 2015.
“My husband and I were looking for film rights to some of those YA books,” Banks explained to Bustle about how she ended up in the franchise opposite Jennifer Lawrence. “I read the first one right away when it came out, I think because I was reading ‘The Maze Runner’ and thought, ‘I’m so into this world and I want to find another one.’”
Banks wanted to attach herself to “The Hunger Games” as a producer and “immediately looked for the rights” after reading the first book, but “they were already sold and Nina Jacobson… I thought, ‘Okay, oh well! But God I love these books.’ And so when ‘The Hunger Games’ was being developed as a film series… I was so immediately on that because I just loved the world.”
Effie will be returning to the big screen this fall in the prequel movie “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.” Elle Fanning is taking over the role, with Banks saying: “I think she’s perfect…I think she’ll play that wide-eyed idealism of being taken along by Snow…”
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Banks had previously told Variety that Fanning is “perfect casting,” adding, “I’ve always said it. The fans loved it and wanted it, so I was really happy about it.”
Watch Banks’ full interview with Bustle in the video below.
From Variety US