The Last of Us start Melanie Lynskey is not a fan of zombies but ‘couldn’t turn down’ the role of rebel leader Kathleen

Now in-demand Melanie Lynskey has revealed her early career struggles and why she joined the cast of The Last of Us, despite hating zombie movies.

Melanie Lynskey happily slipped into Australia unnoticed to spend Christmas with her family in Geelong.

The Kiwi-born actress fell in love with Melbourne while filming the 2017 miniseries, Sunshine with Anthony LaPaglia, enthusing “it has the best food of anywhere in the world” and hopes to one day return to shoot another project.

Unfortunately for her — and us — who knows when that day will come because she suddenly finds herself being inundated with scripts.

“I feel I’m at a point where there’s just not enough time in my year to be able to do these great parts that I’m being asked to do,” she smiles.

“I cannot believe I’m in this position. I was a working actor for so long. I auditioned. I struggled. I had times without money. I had times without jobs as I really tried to build a career that I was proud of.

“I just never imagined that I would be in a position where I was getting offered things and that they would all be interesting.”

One role she simply couldn’t turn down was as the ruthless rebel leader, Kathleen, in The Last of Us.

Actor Melanie Lynskey in a scene from The Last of Us. Picture: HBO Max/Binge

Based on the video game of the same name, The Last of Us was adapted for HBO by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin. It follows a pair of jaded outsiders (Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey) travelling across America after it has been ravaged by a pandemic turning people into flesh-eating monsters.

“Usually, the last thing I will choose to watch is like an apocalyptic zombie drama,” she admits.

“I just chicken out of it because…I need to really feel the human emotion. I don’t get scared very easily either. But this show has so much humanity and you care [about the characters].

“Look at episode three, I know everybody’s talking about it because it was amazing. It’s a beautiful piece of television and Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman were just so beautiful.”

Like Lynskey, Bartlett — after years of hard slog — has become the toast of Tinseltown after White Lotus. For Lynskey it was her scene-stealing role as a housewife with a dark secret in YellowJackets that got everyone talking.

“I think maybe Murray is in a little bit of a better position just because he’s so special,” she says of their shared recent success.

“The world is just getting to see the depths of him and everything he can do. And in that episode, he just got to do so much.”

The Last of Us episode Lynskey refers to, took viewers away from the horror of the zombie-ravaged world and into a survivalist’s bunker where the gentle romance between two loners–Frank (Offerman) and Bill (Bartlett) – slowly unfolds.

Melanie Lynskey with her husband Jason Ritter. Picture: AFP

Stories like this – along with the urging of her husband, Parenthood star Jason Ritter – are what made Lynskey want to do The Last of Us.

“My husband loves video games and it’s his favourite of all time,” she says.

“So, when I got offered it, he was like: ‘Oh, who are you playing?’ And I said: ‘Kathleen’ and he was going crazy trying to remember who she was until I [eventually] said: ‘Oh, by the way, Craig said he wrote Kathleen for the show’.”

While Kathleen initially appears to be a calculating ringleader, over her two-episode arc we learn why she does the things she does.

“Craig is just such a great writer and I feel like he laid the story out in such a careful way where you’re just like, Wait, she’s the bad guy. Wait, he’s the bad guy. Wait, is no one the bad guy? You just don’t know how to feel,” she reflects.

That complexity is something that Lynskey has brought to every character she has played since making her screen debut at age 16 alongside Kate Winslett in Heavenly Creatures.

Both young actresses received critical acclaim, but it was initially only Winslett who was flooded with Hollywood offers, clocking up a string of box office successes in films like The Holiday and Titanic.

In the meantime, Lynskey has worked mostly in Indie films and TV. And while Lynskey is arguably the best performer in every project she has done, it took YellowJackets for her to finally get the credit she was due.

“I think honestly, when I was 22, if I could have had a crystal ball and seen this moment in my life, I would have been stunned,” she exclaims.

“First of all, that, you know, I’m a person who looks 45. Never say never, I don’t know what I’m going to do in the future but, as of now, I haven’t like done anything to my face.

“I’m a normal size. And I think if I could have seen this image of myself, and the fact that I’ve been on magazine covers, I just would have been like, what is this an alternate reality that felt so far from the world I was living in the ‘90s in the early 2000s? I just thought I had like a limited amount of time.”

Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey (lef) in the movie Heavenly Creatures.

In the decades since Heavenly Creatures, both Winslet and Lynskey have consistently challenged Hollywood beauty conventions. Winslett famously told her Mare of Easttown directors to put her “bulgy bit of belly” back into a sex scene. While Lynskey refused to bow to pressure to shed weight for YellowJackets.

Admitting that she “doesn’t have a huge well of self-confidence” and has struggled with eating disorders, Lynskey is now actively trying to be more body proud.

“I’m a healthy person. I live healthily. But this is my body,” she says.

“At a certain point, you just have to love who you are. People come in different shapes and sizes. It’s not that crazy of a concept. But it feels so radical to just be like, you know what, this is my comfort point. To look anything different to this would mean like doing something very, very extreme that I’m not willing to do.

“I don’t want my daughter to see that my sole focus is on trying to be thin. I want her to see that I exercise, and I eat healthily. And then sometimes I’ll have a piece of cake.”

Melanie Lynskey in a scene from The Last of Us. Picture: HBO Max/Binge

Lynskey laughs that her three-year-old daughter is constantly telling her she’s “the most beautiful person she has ever seen.”

“And I don’t want to give her any suggestion that I might not feel that way.”

Likewise, she’s conscious of setting a good example on screen.

“I just feel like for women to be able to watch television and be like: ‘Oh, wow, her face is moving and oh she has a bit of a tummy but she’s having sex with two men and they both seem to dig her, so maybe I don’t need to do anything different to be loved or to be beautiful.

“To me that feels so much more powerful than my own inner voice that is telling me that that I need to be different, which is still here because I’m a woman in the world.”

* The Last of Us, new episode streaming Saturday, 1pm AEDT, Binge.

Originally published as The Last of Us start Melanie Lynskey is not a fan of zombies but ‘couldn’t turn down’ the role of rebel leader Kathleen