Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, the award season podcast from Vanity Fair.

I am delighted and proud to introduce him as Academy Award winner.

And the Oscar goes to.

And the Oscar goes to the winner. It's a tie.

And any little girl who's practicing their speech on the telly, you never know.

Mom, I just want an Oscar.

I am Katie Rich. I'm here for today's interview episode with a very special first time,

but first of many times guests on our show are colleagues of Anna Walsh. Hi, Savannah.

Hi, Katie. How are you? Thanks for having me.

I'm great. I'm so happy to have you here and especially happy to have you talking to Tom Blithe,

the star of the ballad of songbirds and snakes, which is the Hunger Games prequel that as I was telling you

before we started recording, I didn't necessarily have that high in my radar, but you and some of our other colleagues have been raving about it.

And especially Tom's performance. He's not someone who I really knew that much about, but it kind of feels like a star is born kind of moment for him.

And I wonder if you if you talked to him about how he's feeling about all this.

Yeah, it was so great to talk to him. I was super excited by his performance.

He is playing a young president snow before he's the president.

The character played by Donald Sutherland. And it was interesting because he kind of tried to avoid doing any Donald Sutherland isms in his performance,

which I think really spoke to the strength of it. It felt like a holy new character. And yet by the end of it,

you see how he becomes the sort of villainous, looming figure that he is in the other films.

Yeah, I mean, as someone, I think all of us in some ways grew up with versions of the Hunger Games.

And you know, it's a world that had so many other stories to tell. Does it feel like you're kind of experiencing something totally new?

Does he, you know, he and Rachel Zagler are playing new-ish characters, even though presidents know someone we knew already.

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