Let the (fashion) games begin!
Rachel Zegler, the star of the upcoming The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes film, had a fun run-in with OG franchise star Jennifer Lawrence during the Christian Dior Spring/Summer 2024 show at Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday, September 26.
Zegler, 22, took to social media to document the encounter. She posted a video to X of the two women laughing and posing for photographers, surrounded by the hectic crowd of fashion week attendees.
Zegler captioned the video: “A mother to many. a mother to Me.” She also posted the same video to her Instagram story, writing “She’s actual mother”.
Lawrence is a literal mother to her son Cy, whom she welcomed with her husband, Cooke Maroney, in spring 2022 and also starred in the thriller movie Mother! in 2017. But to Zegler, she’ll always be Katniss Everdeen.
Zegler’s Hunger Games spinoff and prequel is due to be released on November 17 and is based on a book of the same name written by Suzanne Collins, published in 2020. The film follows a teenage Coriolanus Snow, played by Josh Andrés Rivera, before he becomes the President of Panem, and his mentorship of female tribute Lucy Gray Baird (Zegler).
The first of the four movies starring Lawrence, 33, Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson was released in 2012.
On Tuesday, the two actresses sat front row and were joined by several other stars at the event, including Charlize Theron, Alexa Chung and Jenna Ortega.
Lawrence has a longstanding relationship with Dior. She landed her first Dior campaign in 2012, the same year of her breakout role in the first Hunger Games movie. In 2014, Lawrence renewed her brand deal for another three years for $15 million and has continued to work with them ever since.
Zegler has also worked with Dior in recent years. She wore black custom Dior Haute Couture dress to her first Oscars appearance in 2022.
While Lawrence doesn’t appear in the new Hunger Games movies, she was recently asked whether she would ever reprise her role. “Oh, my God – totally!” she told Variety in June, adding, “If Katniss ever could ever come back into my life, 100 percent.
In a separate Variety story in December 2022, Lawrence opened up about her struggles starring in the hit franchise and the responsibility she felt to her fans.
“I remember the biggest conversation was ‘How much weight are you going to lose?’” Lawrence recalled. “Along with me being young and growing and not able to be on a diet, I don’t know if I want all of the girls who are going to dress up as Katniss to feel like they can’t because they’re not a certain weight. And I can’t let that seep into my brain either.”
As for the casting of Zegler, Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence recently revealed that the actress originally turned down the role of Lucy. “The idea of going from six months in London to go deeper into Europe — into Poland — for another six months of her life freaked her out,” Francis, 52, told Entertainment Weekly in September. It wasn’t until her boyfriend, Rivera, 28, was cast in the movie that she decided to take on the role.
