Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbird & Snakes director Francis Lawrence gives his opinion on whether Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) and Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) are in love. In the movie, Snow and Baird develop a friendship as mentor and tribute after Lucy Gray saves Snow’s life during an attack on Panem. After being sent to District 12 as a Peacekeeper in the aftermath of the 10th Hunger Games, Snow starts to deepen his relationship with Lucy Gray, which develops in a more romantic light.
In an interview with People, Lawrence responds to the attraction between Snow and Baird. After first explaining that the two both have a bit of songbirds and snakes in them, the filmmaker admits that he doesn’t know if they are truly in love, even if they are attracted to one another. Check out what he said on the matter below:
[Producer] Nina [Jacobson] often says that not everybody’s a songbird and not everybody’s a snake. And I think that’s true. They both have a little bit of both in them. He needs her to survive and win the prize. She needs him to survive. Are they attracted? Sure. Do they truly love one another? I don’t know.
How Snow & Lucy Gray’s Relationship Differs From The Original Book
While the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes retains the core storyline of the original book and the relationship between Snow and Lucy Gray, it addresses it far further than it is treated in the movie. For instance, one of the bigger details that the film doesn’t explore is Lucy Gray’s relationship with Billy Taupe (Dakota Shapiro). The character does appear in the movie, but far too briefly for his relationship with Lucy Gray to psychologically affect Snow.
In the book, Snow feels jealous of Billy Taupe, questioning whether his love for Lucy Gray is real. In the movie, Snow viciously attacks Taupe when he attempts to win back Lucy Gray while she is singing on stage, but the character development stops there. Snow and Lucy Gray are unconcerned about his feelings, even though it is revealed that the two, alongside Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera) and a group of rebels from District 12, are planning to escape.
Taupe is ultimately killed by one of the rebels, while Sejanus is hanged for treason. Snow and Lucy Gray escape District 12, but their relationship begins to falter, which makes the him question if they were indeed in love or if it was all a ruse by Lucy Gray. However, even with slight changes from the book, their relationship ends in the same way Collins wrote it, making it a largely faithful adaptation of her prequel book. Audiences can see the changes Lawrence made for themselves, as The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is now playing in theaters.
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