CraveOnline: What is Finnick toying with? It looks like he’s tying knots in something. What he is making or doing?
Sam Claflin: It’s kind of a comfort blanket, I guess. It’s his way of trying to take his mind off what’s going on in the world. What isn’t apparent is what sort of knots that I’m tying. Every knot was symbolic to how I was feeling, so whether it was a good luck knot or a forever knot, or it was a… I think that was it, actually. [Laughs.] I perfected them to the point that I didn’t have to look at them while I was doing them. I was doing them behind my back, et cetera, et cetera. In the books there’s a moment where Finnick hands that rope to Katniss, like, “This will keep you going.” So it’s a real symbol of his feeling lost, I guess you could say.
Did you have to consult a knot-tying expert. I don’t know anything about knots. I was never on a ship or anything…
I was given a couple of books but I found them really difficult to follow, honestly. There’s a transitional period from one photo to the next, and I feel like they sort of missed out on how to get from A to Z. [Laughs.] There was always a stage that I thought I couldn’t work out. So I watched a lot of YouTube clips, honestly, and there are many, many, many knot-tying videos. You could bore yourself silly, I’m sure, with the amount of knot-tying that goes on. I watched those for about a year. Nonetheless it was very interesting. Now I can happily tie a boat to a pier, so I’m quite proud of myself.
Well, well done, sir.
[Laughs.] Thank you!
“I was just randomly standing there in my underwear wishing Katniss luck.”
No worries. You say Finnick is left to his own devices, but he’s also off-camera quite a bit in this movie.
Mm-hmm.
Were there scenes that you shot that showed what you were up to, that didn’t make it into the final cut of this movie?
Not really, no. I think the important elements of his story and his journey are shown. The fact is, he very slowly starts piecing himself back together, but you don’t really see that in the book or in the film. There was one scene that we shot that didn’t make it into the film, which is totally understandable in the context of the movie and the fluidity of the journey that everyone was going through at that point. It seemed quite jarring, so it makes sense that it didn’t make the film…
What was that scene? Was it just an isolated moment or were you interacting with another actor?
It was an isolated moment. I was still in the hospital gown, but for a brief moment in that scene, before I took it off, I was just randomly standing there in my underwear wishing Katniss luck. [Laughs.] I think what they realized was, it was kind of not in keeping with the tone of the movie. They needed to keep moving forward. The fact that she was about to go to war, you know, it didn’t quite sit right. I think that was the general consensus. To me it makes sense if someone was a little wary of how people might take it. It makes so much more sense that it’s not there than if it was.
You get a hell of a scene at the end of this movie, that I thought was spectacular. Again, I guess because I haven’t read the books, it illustrated just how damaged Finnick must be even before all this happened, after what he went through after his Hunger Games.
Mmm… It’s the real Finnick, that moment. I think that’s what me and Francis [Lawrence] had discussed quite a lot, which was that that is the moment that he really is naked and he gives everything. For the good of Panem, he basically tells them his life story and it’s hugely emotional but at the same time he doesn’t allow himself to get emotional. I think the reasoning behind it is, I’m ready to fight. This is my small, small donation to the cause. In comparison to what other people have sacrificed, him telling his story is a small sacrifice.
So it was a very intense day on set, as you can imagine! [Laughs.] At the same time what me and Francis had decided was it shouldn’t be emotional, it should be factual. It’s him telling people why they should join their cause. So yeah.
