Hunger Games star Elizabeth Banks has a message for her fellow white women voters.
During her appearance on Bustle’s One Nightstand podcast, the actress called out her demographic.
“I don’t understand the 53 percent of white ladies that didn’t vote for Kamala. What were you thinking?” she said while discussing her Hunger Games character, Effie Trinket. Effie becomes an ally to the rebellion’s cause against the oppressive regime after experiencing a moral shift in the film series starring Jennifer Lawrence.
“I think in Catching Fire when she’s like, ‘I wanna be part of this team.’ And you really see her struggling, and then by the end, she’s like a revolutionary. You know, she gets turned by the events of it,” Banks said. “Effie is the model, guys. She’s the model.”
Banks starred as Effie in the original four Hunger Games films released between 2012 and 2015: The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 2. The role will be taken over by the Oscar-nominated actress Elle Fanning in the upcoming prequel, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
Banks has been an outspoken critic of Trump since he entered politics. She even compared him to her character Effie while presenting at the Democratic National Convention in 2016.
“Some of you know me from The Hunger Games, in which I play Effie Trinket—a cruel, out-of-touch reality TV star who wears insane wigs while delivering long-winded speeches to a violent dystopia,” she said then, hitting Trump for his dramatic entrance at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that year. “So when I tuned into Cleveland last week, I was like, ‘Uh, hey, that’s my act!’”
The actress has consistently spoken out against Trump since and uses her social media platform to champion causes and encourage fans to vote. She also endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024.
Banks, who’s promoting her new series The Miniature Wife, still thinks there’s a lot that voters can learn from Effie, she said on the podcast.
“Effie, for me, is one of the characters that has the greatest arc that I’ve ever played because obviously she props up this fascist regime that she benefits from, and it’s not until she realizes who really comes to care for and see how unfair it is when they want to pull Katniss and Peta into the games again,” she explained. “I wish more of us were becoming revolutionaries.”
