Where's 'Effie' from the 'Hunger Games' now? Elizabeth Banks weighs in.

NEW YORK, NY – Effie Trinket is back. Just hours after the new trailer for the latest "Hunger Games" installment, “Sunrise on the Reaping” dropped, actress Elizabeth Banks hosted a brunch in SoHo to discuss her women’s health advocacy work with the brand Cadence OTC.

Effie’s character still resonates today because of the current state of political divides and women’s health, Banks says. 

“She has this very long arc, which is that she benefits from a fascist regime that she then props up, and it's only until she really sees how unfair that regime is that she becomes revolutionary against it,” Banks explains. 

“Sunrise on the Reaping” transports fans back into the oppressive regime of Panem for the second annual Quarter Quell and reintroduces iconic characters like Effie – one of Banks’ “favorite characters of all time” – Haymitch Abernathy, dictator President Snow and previous “Hunger Games” victors, 24 years prior to the dystopian series’ first installation. 

Banks feels an energetic “kinship” with actress Elle Fanning, who she says was “perfectly cast” to portray young Effie in the upcoming film. 

“You’re going to see (Effie’s) enthusiasm and embracing of ‘The Hunger Games,’ which is the beginning of Effie’s pull towards fascism,” Banks says. “Elle (Fanning) is going to have to show us the vulnerability to being charmed by Snow and all that he stands for.”

If Effie were alive today, Banks doesn’t think she’d fall in line with the increasingly popular trad wife aesthetic (Effie never married in the books), yet she also doesn't imagine Effie would be involved in the same advocacy work Banks prioritizes in her personal life, including uplifting contraceptive care and abortion access.

But despite her complex love for Effie, Banks' real-life advocacy couldn’t be more different from her character’s. 

Banks doesn’t shy away from talking about sex and reproductive freedom, and is working with Cadence OTC to expand access to over-the-counter emergency contraceptives. Banks is an investor in Cadence OTC.

“This sense that we [women] need to be infantilized when it comes to our own health, as if we don't know better, is historically inaccurate,” she says. “So let's take some of that power back.”

This story has been updated because it included an inaccuracy.