"Wait till you see Stanley Tucci do Caesar Flickerman," teased "Hunger Games" director Gary Ross back in August as MTV News was getting set to debut first-look footage from the upcoming adaptation of the best-selling young-adult series.
We had to wait then — the teaser only showcased Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen — and we continue to wait to finally peep Tucci as Flickerman, the flamboyantly attired interviewer who chats with each tribute before the start of the gladiatorial competition known as the Hunger Games. But whenever fans do get to check out Flickerman, they can be sure the character will stay true to the guy readers are familiar with from Suzanne Collins' novels.
How do we know? Tucci told us himself.
"Absolutely it [stays true]. Blue hair. Very bizarre," the actor said while promoting his upcoming drama about the mortgage crisis "Margin Call."
Earlier this year, Tucci was in England shooting "Jack the Giant Killer" when he began to map out his Flickerman look. "We had wigs made there," he said. "I had some noses made, which we ended up not using and teeth and a whole bunch of different things. When I got to North Carolina [to shoot 'Hunger Games'], we played around for about seven hours and we started shooting the next day. I was only there for about a week, but it was fantastic."
One of the scenes he shot was the pre-Games interviews with Lawrence's Katniss and Josh Hutcherson's Peeta Mellark, who confesses his love for Katniss during the chat. Both Lawrence and Hutcherson, Tucci said, pulled off the pivotal scene with an aplomb that defied their years.
"She was amazing," he said. "They were all amazing. She's just so good and so mature at such a young age. It was really fun. Really fun. And Gary, he's great."
Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."
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