What came first, the script or the book?

Tara Macken: I didn’t know anything about the book until I had to audition for it and then I read it after the audition. 

When you read it, did you just read it to read it or were you focusing on your character?

I just read it with an open mind because I didn’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna get this work,’ or, ‘I want to be this character;’ I just really wanted to enjoy it. I’m a big fan of Harry Potter, I love reading, so it was really good to find another book that I could be obsessive about for the weekend. 

As a Harry Potter fan, how’s it been looking at this like it could be the next Harry Potter?

They’re two completely different styles of books. The stories are completely different and the whole world. I feel like it’s similar in the sense that you have a huge fan following and also, I think originally Harry Potter was meant for kids, it was meant for a younger audience and then the audience grew as the books progressed whereas, The Hunger Games, you’re also targeting a pretty youthful audience, but everyone loves it. One thing I really love about The Hunger Games is that it has a very strong female movie character, which, you know, Harry Potter obviously has Harry Potter and then you had his sidekick and then you have Hunger Games and you have Katniss. It’s really cool to be able to see a very inspirational, young female character fight for her family and fight to change a system. 

How about your character? We don’t know much about the girl from District 4 from the book, so did you develop your own backstory for her?

Yeah, absolutely. I tried to make the character as similar to my situation as possible, to make it real. I’m originally from the Philippines and I grew up on the beaches, so I thought it was perfect casting when I found out that I was going to be representing District 4, which is the fishing district. And then also, in the book, my character’s supposed to be one of the bigger, stronger tributes and I think it goes hand in hand and they really thought deeply when it came to casting each of the tributes. It’s good that you have a big background in stunts and action; I thought it was extremely fitting for me to be a stronger tribute and definitely a tribute that’s living in the fishing district. I think that really played to my advantage. And, in addition, my tribute partner, in the book he’s supposed to be a really small tribute, like the youngest of all of them besides Amandla [Stenberg], so it was really good as a contrast to have me there. I’m not the biggest of people. I’m only 5’4” so to have a tribute partner who is 4’10”, I think aesthetically it helped develop my character. 

Did Gary Ross give you any pointers?

He definitely helped when it came to getting the feeling for it, especially for the Cornucopia scene. He worked one-on-one with each person. Certain characters wanted to be in the arena and actually enjoyed fighting, like the career tributes. They’re trained from a young age to be in these games and so for us, it was a matter of really thinking about our character and our motives for being there and why we were chosen and whether or not we wanted to be there in the first place. Gary would talk about our characters so we would understand the emotion that these characters are gonna go through, knowing that they could die in an instant. They could die as soon as they fall off the platform and explode. It was pretty hard in the sense of the level of fear, when it came to the battle scenes just because you’re there with all your peers, these awesome actors and you’re all having fun and this is really cool, but at the same time, you know that you have to live this character, live as this person who’s actually really scared and trying to survive and trying to not die in the next five seconds. 

And how about during the opening ceremony? Do you get a dress?

Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun. When I read the book, I was envisioning the costumes and they go into great detail describing how every district looks so it’s kind of a trip to finally be in a position where everybody had really unique and pretty avant-garde costumes that apply to their district. It was definitely a very cool experience. On the chariot and to have these awesome costumes, it was just cool. We had about 700 extras that day to play the audience watching and so it was really quite a trip to see 700 people dressed up in all these pretty flamboyant costumes. 

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Yes, in case you still don’t know, Tara is half-Filipina & she grew up here ;) Another tribute, D10, Jeremy Marinas is a full Filipino! Isn’t amazing to have Pinoy tributes in the Arena?? ;)