McKenna Grace tears up reflecting on the scale of appearing in Hunger Games

Hunger Games actress McKenna Grace became emotional as she reflected on the scale of starring in the dystopian franchise, saying she had “never experienced anything like this”.

The 20-year-old appears as District 12 tribute, Maysilee Donner, in the sixth and latest instalment of the hit blockbuster, The Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping.

The prequel follows a young Haymitch Abernathy, played by Joseph Zada, who is selected to fight in the 50th Hunger Games, a form of violent televised entertainment set up to maintain control in the fictional country of Panem, alongside Donner.

Speaking to press at a London fan screening event, she teared up after looking at a poster hanging from the ceiling.

She said: “It’s like one of the most absurd events I’ve ever been to. This is insane.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this. It’s making me really emotional looking up at that. There’s a poster up there of all of our faces. I don’t know. I’ve never.

“I think I’m increasingly realising that I’ve never been a part of anything quite like this, and I don’t know if I ever will again and so this has been like the opportunity of a lifetime.

“Getting to be on this press tour with what’s like my family has been really fun. And getting to be on set every day, it just – it didn’t feel real.”

She said during filming she lived with her “little family”, made up of her co-stars Zada and Iona Bell.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she added.

The film sees Haymitch and Maysilee face twice as many tributes from each district, two boys and two girls, with Abernathy determined to rebel against Panem’s authoritarian regime and break the arena from the inside.

Speaking on the message of the film, she said: “Change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, but if you truly are working towards something you believe in – it’s easy to say don’t give up, but change takes time.

“In a world where we have so much instant gratification from our phone, and we can find anything, things take time, and that’s kind of the moral of this story.

Grace described her co-stars as family (James Manning/PA)

PA Wire

“Change is possible if you work hard and you believe, and you don’t give up in what you believe in, and you hold on to your humanity throughout a system of people that are trying to actively strip it away from you.”

Directed by Francis Lawrence, the upcoming blockbuster stars Ralph Fiennes as the cold and calculated President Snow opposite Kieran Culkin’s Caesar Flickerman, Elle Fanning’s Effie Trinket and Jesse Plemons’ Plutarch Heavensbee.

Glenn Close also appears in the prequel as chaperone Drusilla Sickle along with Billy Porter who plays stylist Magno Stift.

The first Hunger Games film was released in 2012 and based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian novel about a totalitarian society that forces young people to fight to the death on live television.

The original trilogy was turned into four films and starred Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth – propelling the trio to fame.

Collins expanded The Hunger Games universe in 2020 with her prequel novel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, which was adapted into a film released in 2023 starring Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth and Hunter Schafer.

Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping will be out in cinemas from November 20.