It won't be long before the entire world of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, both parts 1 and 2, is cast. The final two films in the series won't have a ton of new characters to add to begin with, but the few remaining ones have been lining up in the last few days, including today's announcement from the film's Facebook page that Evan Ross has been cast as Messalla. Part of the two-person camera crew who, along with reporter Natalie Dormer's Cressida follow Katniss around and film propaganda ads, Messalla is a relatively small part, though he does get to take place in one of many big action sequences near the end of Mockingjay.
You may not recognize Ross unless you're a fan of the new 90210, on which he played Charlie Selby for nine episodes, or caught him as Kevin in Jeff Who Lives At Home, the kid whom Jason Segel's nutty character befriends thanks to what he believes is a sign from the universe. He's also Diana Ross's son, if you're into that kind of thing, though he wasn't cast entirely because of possible nepotism-- he's described in the book as "a slim young man" who wears earrings and a tongue rings, something that 25-year-old Ross ought to be able to pull off just fine.
In Mockingjay-- can we just go ahead and spoil the premise of Mockingjay, and thereby the ending of Catching Fire?-- Katniss, Peeta, her family, Haymitch and several other familiar faces are ensconced in District 13, which has secretly been hunkered away along the East Coast (what's now Washington D.C., basically) while the rest of Panem devolved into the kind of brutal state that comes up with The Hunger Games to begin with. District 13 is ready to wage war on Panem, aided by the revolutionaries all over the country whom Katniss inadvertently inspired at the end of The Hunger Games, and to do so they enlist Katniss-- the symbolic Mockingjay-- to star in the propaganda films that will be blasted to TVs all over Panem. It makes sense in context, I promise-- though hopefully if you're reading this paragraph, you've read all the books anyway.
Joining Dormer and Ross as the new cast of characters for Mockingjay are Stef Dawson as hunky Finnick's (Sam Claflin) one true love, and maybe Julianne Moore as the District 13 President Coin, a character not quite as evil but even more complicated than Donald Sutherland's President Snow. Before any of that, though, we've got to get through this fall's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which comes to theaters November 22 this year. Check out the latest trailer for everything we can expect from it:
(Evan Ross image via s_bukley / Shutterstock.com)
