It was the most shocking TV character death since Ned Stark lost his head in the first season of “Game of Thrones.” In the second episode of the second season of HBO’s “The Last of Us,” Pedro Pascal’s beloved everyman Joel is brutally murdered by a new character, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Viewers had fallen in love with Joel, a rugged survivor of the fungal apocalypse that turns humans into ghastly zombie-like creatures, and his fatherly bond with Bella Ramsey’s Ellie, the snarky 14-year-old orphan who is immune to the cordyceps virus. Their hard-won relationship was the emotional center of the high-concept sci-fi series based on Naughty Dog’s video game of the same name. It’s what kept a significant portion of the audience coming back, week after week.
So for that core connection to disappear so suddenly this season was devastating — at least for those of us who aren’t gamers and weren’t aware of the dark turn to come. “I’ve been off social media, but I’ve heard through friends that people were hit very hard,” Ramsey said during a recent Zoom interview. “I had people sending me videos of them just, like, sobbing. I imagine if I was watching the show and didn’t know what was going to happen, it would absolutely crush me and destroy me.”
Pascal’s departure was tough for Ramsey, too. The two had become close friends while making the series. And even though Ramsey (who uses they/them pronouns) knew about Joel’s death before Season 1 even began, reading the scene made them cry — which no script had ever done before. Joel’s absence also altered the series’ DNA, promoting Ramsey to sole lead. For the 21-year-old British actor, the new position was scary.
“I was tense a lot of the time because I did feel the pressure of it — the physical and mental effects of literally being there every day for six, seven months, however long we shot for,” Ramsey said, calling from a park in Glasgow, where they’re shooting the British indie “Sunny Dancer,” and going unnoticed under a baseball cap by passers-by. “Season 1, it was just so consistently me and Pedro.”
But coming a decade after their breakout role at age 11 as the fierce House Stark ally Lady Mormont in “Game of Thrones,” the timing of the challenge felt right. Ramsey earned their first Emmy nomination, for lead actress in a drama, for Season 1 and feels Ellie in their bones now. They were ready to assume the weight of not only more screen time but also more mature storylines.
In the latest season, Ellie, now 19, embarks on a mission to avenge Joel’s murder by killing Abby (whose father, a doctor hoping to make a cure for the fungal virus by using Ellie, was shot dead by Joel in Season 1). She also falls in love with Dina (Isabela Merced), who is pregnant. “I loved it. I love the responsibility,” Ramsey said. “I just felt very grateful that I could be setting the tone every day and have the support from the crew and the stamina to do it all. That’s something I realized during Season 2 — how far you can push your body and how capable you actually are.”
Season 2 jumps ahead five years. Did you approach the season differently as an older character?
To be honest, I approached it exactly the same. I mean, she’s obviously changed a lot, but all the ways that she’s changed are embedded into the scripts. So I sort of have an easy job because of how brilliant the writing is. I guess the difference this year was that Ellie’s more physically fit and strong and capable, so there was the physical training that I did. I’d say, if anything, she was trying to emulate Joel a little more this season.
In what way?
I think that she sort of becomes him. Her heart has gotten a bit harder. She’s more of a hardened survivor like Joel was, and there’s been a lot of trauma for her — for her whole life and over the time jump. She’s had to grow up and establish herself as an adult in the community, aside from Joel. And I feel like she takes a [protective] position of being more Joel-like with Dina.
That goal that she had throughout Season 2 to find and kill Abby — I don’t think that that’s gone away.
You knew about Joel’s fate, but there’s a difference between knowing it and then experiencing his horrific death scene. How was the mood on set that day? Did you prepare differently?
It was this thing that was looming, even during Season 1. I really thought about it in the lead-up, almost every day. But then on the actual day, I switched off my thinking about it. I was just like, La de da de da. It’s a normal day, nothing’s happening, so that in the moment when I saw [him being murdered], it felt like it was happening for the first time, that I’d never thought about it before because Ellie hadn’t thought about it before.
After Joel died, did it feel as if you were going back to a different job, though he returns in flashbacks, notably in Episode 6?
Yeah, it did. [Pedro had] not been there for a while and then he came back for these beautiful three, four weeks that we had together, and I realized how much I missed him. That whole episode — obviously, there’s a lot of emotional and heavy moments, but it felt like a relief, for Ellie but mainly for me, because all the episodes before had been so physical and all on me. And so then this was just like, “Oh, back to the duo.” I really loved having him back.
Episode 6 has the porch scene [where Joel tearfully confesses to Ellie that he killed Abby’s father to save her life, which then eliminated the possibility of a cure]. It’s so moving. Can you talk about shooting it?
That porch scene was the most emotionally raw and intimate scene that I’ve ever been a part of. In the experience of actually filming it, it did feel like it was just me and Pedro, Ellie and Joel, on the porch together. The studio didn’t exist, the crew didn’t exist, the cameras didn’t exist. Those moments are quite rare. You always have some awareness of, like, the camera or the boom operator or something. But there was some magic that happened during that scene where it was just me and him on that porch, in that space having that conversation. It felt very sacred and magical.
When he says to Ellie that he saved her “because I love you,” it killed me.
Those tears were real ones that we’re both crying. We pushed and pushed and pushed. The notes that we’d get [from showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann] were just like, “Go further and see how much you can push the emotion.” Obviously this is the conversation that Ellie has been waiting to have with Joel for, like, five years and didn’t think that she ever would. It’s such a buildup.
Ellie was robbed of her first love in Season 1, when Riley (Storm Reid) dies, but this season she forms a relationship with Dina that begins with awkward “You don’t like me” “Wait, you like me?” exchanges. It’s very realistic to what teenagers do.
And also it’s quite specific. Sometimes the queer experience — you develop later in terms of falling in love for the first time and having your first kiss. I think often that happens later for queer people because there’s this journey of discovery. For Ellie, it’s also that she’s in the apocalypse. [Laughs] But it was a really beautiful thread through the whole of Season 2, developing that relationship. It was fun to play Ellie in a more nervous, vulnerable, shy state, but she’s also trying to be, like, cool and impressive, you know what I mean?
There’s a callback to the Riley episode this season when Ellie performs an acoustic version of the A-ha song “Take on Me” for Dina. Did you learn to play guitar for that scene?
I did know how to play, but I had lessons specifically to learn that song, because the version that’s in the video game is just so beautiful and I wanted to do that justice. I did sing before. I’m so shy of that kind of singing where it’s so raw and exposing. But that’s what Ellie was also feeling in the scene, so it kind of worked. That was a scary day for me.
You said you had sung before the show?
I grew up doing amateur theater groups, doing musicals and stuff. I was in a cathedral choir when I was maybe 10 or something. I did that for quite a few years and that’s where my voice comfortably sits, more choral and operatic-like singing, where there’s less vulnerability in the voice, for me. But then when you’re singing, just you and a guitar, that’s scary. I’m making music now with producers, and just from working on that quietly in the back- ground, I’m so much more comfortable in my voice. We shot “Take on Me” over a year ago, and I think if I were to shoot that now, my vocal tone, the way that it would come out, would be very different. But I think it’s so good that it was how it was — more shy and unsure.
Speaking of scary, when you’re shooting, do any of the scenes with the infected scare you? I’m sure you get used to seeing the actors wandering around the set in their prosthetics. But still…They terrify me and trigger some weird primal disgust.
That’s probably healthy. [Laughs] I think I’m quite desensitized to everything, like you said. But this season, you know the cordyceps room I go into [in Episode 5] and [there are infected people] in the wall? That was the scariest that I’ve ever found a set. It was just everywhere and it made you feel a bit sick and uneasy. And the fact that it’s sort of beautiful makes it worse. I was very disturbed in that room. [Laughs]
You’re talking about the spore zone in the basement, where the people are in limbo, halfway to becoming infected?
Yeah. They’re trapped. Do they have a consciousness? Are they aware of the fact that they’re trapped? That’s so scary. I kill one of them, right? I put one of them out of its misery. In Season 1, there’s a bit where I cut one of their throats, but that felt way more sinister. Season 2, it was more like, I feel really sorry for you and I just need to put you out of your misery. It’s horrible.
The season ends on a cliff-hanger, with Jesse (Young Mazino), the father of Dina’s baby, dead and Ellie and Abby facing off. Ellie’s revenge scheme hasn’t worked and it hasn’t healed the wound of losing Joel. So where does she go from here?
Yes, it doesn’t heal the wound, but that vengeance doesn’t go away. That goal that she had throughout Season 2 to find and kill Abby — I don’t think that that’s gone away, is what I’ll say. So this journey continues. If anything, she’ll get herself even more tangled in the dark mess that she finds herself in.
And she is becoming a parent.
Yeah! Becoming a dad. [Smiles]
You’re talking to me during a break in your shooting schedule. What do you do when you’re not working?
I love sports, playing football. I play in a couple of [amateur] five-a-side groups. I write. That’s sort of work, but work that I’m creating for myself. I’m writing a series and I’ve written a film that I’m developing at the moment. The film I would direct, and the series I think I would be in. I definitely won’t only write stuff I want to be in. Every new actor I meet, I’m like, “Oh, I have to write something for you because you’re so brilliant and I’m so inspired by you.” I find writing for other people way more exciting than writing for myself.
You mentioned that you’ve been singing since about the age of 10. You started “Game of Thrones” when you were 11, so you’ve been working for more than a decade now. You’ve had some time to adjust to being famous, but I imagine you’re much more well-known now. Were you able to fade into the crowd until “The Last of Us”?
I’d say I’m still pretty good at fading into a crowd. I’d say I just feel normal. Everything’s changed in a way, but nothing has. Career-wise, doors have unlocked for me, which has been really lovely. But in my personal life… I think being recognized sometimes, when people like talking about you, even though it’s not in a negative way, it triggers the sort of same thing about people talking about you at school. Even though it’s not negative, I think that’s sometimes the feeling. Sometimes it’s more uncomfortable than other times. But generally, I think I just try not to deep it too much.
I have to ask: Is it true that Craig often recites your Lady Mormont speech to you on the set? “We are not a large house, but we are a proud one…”
He does, yeah. He does that with me quite frequently, out of nowhere. He’ll go, “Your son was butchered at the Red Wedding, Lord Manderly, and you refused the call.” I think he knows the lines better than I do now.
Well, it was 10 years ago.
Ten years — that’s crazy. I keep saying, this feels like my 10-year anniversary this year, and I’m working on small-budget independent films, which is sort of the antithesis of “The Last of Us.” Obviously, the work that I’ve been doing [on that show] has been inspiring, but I’m re-inspired in a brand-new way again with these small movies. I’m having the best time at the moment. Ten-year anniversary, here we go!
A version of this story first ran in the Drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
