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Arts & Entertainment

Wes Chatham and Evan Ross on getting down and dirty in 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2'

You might not remember Evan Ross and Wes Chatham from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, despite the fact that they're with Katniss Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence) during many of her biggest scenes. As the characters Messalla and Castor, respectively, Ross and Chatham are the men behind the camera -- in front of the camera.

They're part of the TV crew that sets out to record "propos" (propaganda) about the Mockingjay, Katniss. Their job is to inspire the rebellion by capturing footage of Katniss in various circumstances during the war, even if what they're showing isn't entirely real.

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"We're supposed to be capturing what was going on at the same time that we're also being captured on film," Ross said in an interview during a press stop in Dallas. "But then it almost turns into something else because in this movie we're really in it. It's survival mode. It's like a war movie at this point."

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He wasn't lying. There are several moments in the movie where the action is intense and the chances of survival for all of the characters become slim. I asked them about one scene in particular that takes place in an underground sewer that's quickly filled humanoid lizard monsters.

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2."
"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2." (Murray Close / Lionsgate)

"We were in the trenches," Ross said. "It was real, all day long. But it was incredible. All that stuff, I remember when we were shooting we had to be so precise, to make sure we were at a certain angle so that we weren't hitting anybody else. It was intense."

While the threats themselves might have been fake, the location was more real. "They created these elaborate sewers," Chatham said. "Practical sewers that we were in. Sometimes there was water up to our necks, water up to our ankles, knees. And we were there bent over in these dark sewers for three weeks."

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It's not all death and explosions, though. In part two of Mockingjay we get to explore the relationship with Castor and his brother, Pollux. Pollux is an Avox, a character in the Hunger Games universe that have had their tongues cut out as punishment for rebelling against the Capitol.

"Francis [Lawrence, the movie's director] came to us, and we knew there was going to be a relationship that we had to show, but we weren't going to be able to do it in words," Chatham said. Instead, the two actors developed very simple ways to communicate with each other that weren't standard sign language, but that were similar. "So in the scene sometimes he would sign to me certain things, and if Francis liked it he would pick it up," Chatham said. "And a few of those things made it into the film. Just to create this history and this relationship that we had as brothers."

I also asked the actors how close we are to the post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games becoming a reality.

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"Have you been to L.A.?" Chatham responded, laughing. But later he added, "It definitely strikes a chord of truth [about] the media and manipulation and the abuse of power. So there's a lot of parallels to what's going on in our world right now. As in any good story."