In the interview footage Lionsgate shot on set for The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Molly McCann is still dressed as Louella McCoy, braids and all. Louella is the youngest of District 12’s four tributes in the prequel, which tells Haymitch Abernathy’s story at the 50th Hunger Games, and McCann filmed her part in Germany alongside the rest of the young cast. Her closing soundbite from those interviews is not about the Games at all. It is about the friends she is taking home from them.
The soundbite, recorded for the film’s electronic press kit, centers on two of her fellow District 12 tributes, Mckenna Grace, who plays Maysilee Donner, and Ben Wang, who plays Wyatt Callow.
“Ben and Mckenna, we just got up to the most crazy stuff on set. We were just exploring everywhere. They’re so great to be around. We have so much fun on set. Sometimes we’re literally just like singing songs together and we’re gonna miss them a lot. I’m so happy that I’m able to go away now, knowing I’ve just made so many new friends,” she says, before calling the whole project a standout moment for her.
Here she is saying it in her own words:
It is a fitting note from McCann, whose Louella has known Haymitch since childhood back in the Seam, two doors down from his house, long before either of their names is called at the reaping.
The young cast’s closeness has been a running thread of the film’s rollout. Maya Hawke, who plays Wiress, recently praised Grace’s grit and discipline during the shoot, and Grace has been front and center on the film’s world tour, including its Berlin stop. The trailer for the film puts McCann’s Louella right beside Joseph Zada’s Haymitch as the tributes are introduced.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens in theaters on November 20.