‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2’ Star Wes Chatham on His Favorite ‘Hunger Games’ Film, How His Military Background Came in Handy and More

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is in theaters now and follows Katniss and her loyal team on their dangerous path to the Capitol to take out President Snow.

The Mockingjay depends on her team to help her survive and help spread the word about the truths of war and revolution and Wes Chatham’s Castor helps to do just that. Castor is a member of Cressida’s (Natalie Dormer) media team, and along with his brother Pollux (Elden Henson), helps film the realities of war and spread them to the people.

We recently had the chance to sit down with Chatham at a roundtable and talk to him about working on the film, including what it was like filming in his home state, how his military background helped him prepare for his role and more.

Chatham joined the military after high school, working as an aviation firefighter in crash and salvage for four years, and as it turns out, his time spent serving helped him prepare for his role as a soldier of the rebellion. “I definitely think the military training helped tremendously in a lot of ways,” Chatham told reporters. “One of the ways was the technical way of handling weapons and how you would walk and do things but I also think that it actually, that it gives you the discipline to thrive in a structured environment like movie making.”

The actor read the books once he was cast in the film and quickly became a fan of the series himself. When we asked him which film was his favorite, he quickly replied “This last one…In terms of the movie, I think it was this one. This one is the book realized at its highest potential in a movie and it comes to a really strong conclusion and a satisfied feeling with it ending.” As far as the books go, however, the first is Chatham’s favorite. “I might like the first book the best because it was a world I didn’t know, so discovering everything for the first time I thought was really interesting.”

Along with being cast in one of the biggest franchises around right now, Chatham also had the added bonus of being able to work in his home state. That’s right! The actor is a Georgia boy at heart, and said that getting to come back and work here was a “dream come true.”

“I lived here so long ago and all my family and friends are all here and I come back as much as I can to visit and spend time, but my work life has existed outside of this,” he said. “It’s almost two different world. In doing this movie, both worlds collided and it was just a really weird, but amazingly wonderful experience where my family got to- I got to share this experience with my family and with my friends and they got to come be a part of everything, so it’s a dream come true, quite simply.”

Read more on what we thought about the film here, and catch Wes as Castor in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2, in theaters now!

Photo Credit: Jasmine Alyce/ FanBolt.com/Lionsgate