Everything We Know About Hunter Schafer’s Role in ‘The Hunger Games’ Spin-Off
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by Ian Carlos Crawford
Euphoria star Hunter Schafer is entering the Hunger Games. Not the games themselves, but the franchise. She’ll be starring as Tigris Snow — a character we did meet in the first trilogy, albeit when we met her she was older and had the face of a tiger — in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Schafer will star alongside the stacked cast of Viola Davis, Jason Schwartzman, Peter Dinklage, Rachel Zegler, and Tom Blyth.
Tigris was someone deemed “too altered” by the Capitol, where nearly everyone was heavily altered. She was the first stylist for the Tributes of the Hunger Games but was very much against the games themselves. She’s also the cousin of Coriolanus Snow, aka the very evil President Snow played by Donald Sutherland in the original trilogy. The character appeared on screen in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2, played by Eugenie Bondurant. She helps Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss and her team of rebels style themselves to fit in with the Capitol and eventually take down President Snow himself. She smiles when Katniss mentioned murdering her cousin.
“It’s not just about winning,” Schafer’s Tigris says to her cousin in the trailer.
The movie takes place during the 10th Hunger Games and 64 years before the original trilogy. As to what we’ll see go on between her and cousin is unknown — but she is someone who always sympathized with the Tributes.
Having a famous out trans actor star in a huge franchise like this is pretty groundbreaking — as is the fact that she’s playing a character who was not specified as trans prior to the casting.
We live in a world where a hateful trans panic is in full effect — it’s terrible and scary. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill that makes it a felony for health care workers to provide children with treatments that can include puberty-blocking drugs and hormones. In Montana, Rep Zooey Zephyr was exiled because she told fellow lawmakers banning trans healthcare would leave “blood” on their hands and because these GOP lawmakers have been the actual snowflakes all along. HRC has stated that 29.6% of trans youth live in states that have passed bans on gender affirming care.
The GOP have always and will always be the party of hate. They are the villains in every movie. They have presidential candidates who can barely form sentences but they’ll vote for because they only care about power. They use the tired “what about the children” and religion as an excuse to hate. They say they want less government, yet constantly make rules to control the bodies of queer folks and women. They ignore the constant mass shooting in which children are senselessly murder, yet pretend drag queens and trans folks are the real threat to children.
So, to say that casting a trans woman in such a big role in an incredibly popular YA action series is a big deal is quite the understatement. Schafer rose to fame with her role as trans teen Jules Vaughn on the hit HBO show Euphoria. And while that role is playing a teen on a show about teens — Euphoria is definitely aimed at a more adult audience. Whereas The Hunger Games series is based on a YA book series of the same name, and is more of a family friendly type action movie. Trans folks, youth and adult, will be seeing themselves on a big screen in a big blockbuster.
Schafer herself identifies as “bi or pan or something.” In 2021, she told Harpers Bazaar that she felt there was a lot of herself in her character Jules and that, “Blurred lines between an actor and a character make a deeper character.” She is an LGBTQ+ star on the rise — and one we hope to see plenty more of.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is set to premiere in theaters on November 17th 2023.
About the Author:
Ian Carlos Crawford grew up in southern New Jersey and has an MFA in non-fiction writing. His writing has appeared on sites like BuzzFeed, NewNowNext, Junkee, and other random corners of the internet. He currently hosts a queer Buffy and Marvel focused pop culture podcast called Slayerfest 98 and co-hosts a horror podcast called My Bloody Judy. Follow him on Twitter @ianxcarlos!
