The Last of Us lead Bella Ramsey speaks about this season’s heartbreaking twist
Ahead of a highly-anticipated season finale, the show’s leading star opens up about losing screen partner Pedro Pascal and growing up in the limelight.
What does it mean to be the principal actor on one of HBO’s most-watched debut series ever at just 21 years old? I’m about to find out when I go to meet Bella Ramsey during their first visit to Australia. After being escorted through a Sydney hotel, down a rabbit-warren of hallways, I enter a room and there they sit, wearing a striped T-shirt, jean shorts and sneakers. Their face is open as they rise in greeting, saying instantly how much they like Australia and that they finally understand why everyone wants to be here.
The actor is in Sydney for the season two premiere of The Last of Us, the post-apocalyptic video game-turned-television show that amassed 40 million viewers within its first two months of airing in 2023. Ramsey leads the show as Ellie, a rebellious teen born into a zombie apocalypse. But Ellie is immune to the zombies and holds the key to humanity’s salvation so must travel across America with a smuggler named Joel (Pedro Pascal) to save their lives, and the world.
The new season fast-forwards five years and we find this makeshift family settled in the town of Jackson, Wyoming – a homey fortress compared to what stirs outside the city walls. Ellie is 19, more grown up, as strong-willed and rebellious as ever, but asserting her independence from Joel, who takes on a more official parental role. Their growing estrangement is awkward and distressing to witness and for anyone who has gone through teenage years of defiance themselves – or been on the receiving end of it – the familiar pangs of abandonment are in full force.
Ramsey began acting at the age of four, joined the cast of Game of Thrones as the steadfast Lady Lyanna Mormont at 11, and has been a professional actor since their teen years. Where Ellie’s rebellion in season one is stifled by the need to survive, Ramsey’s capacity for rebellion was stifled by being at work while growing up.
“It was sort of a conscious decision I made when I was young because I saw teenagers being mean to their parents and I was around a lot of parents more than I was with teenagers, hearing about how hard it was for parents with rebellious teenagers,” they explain. “So I was like, I’m not going to do that. I’m just not gonna go through the teenage years. I really went from kid to adult.”
Think of Ellie’s angst as a delayed coming-of-age. Where most teens battle through their toughest years in early adolescence with their parents, Ellie experiences hers when just beginning to live somewhat of a “normal” life in Jackson, aged 19. It was through playing Ellie that Ramsey gleaned what that might have been like. “There is some catharsis in playing Ellie and playing that rebellious nature,” they reflect. “That’s the thing I love about acting in general, getting to experience things that I didn’t, and don’t, do.”
Part of the intrigue of starring in a zombie-apocalypse thriller like The Last of Us is the surreal nature of what Ellie must face. But not all of what she comes up against is fantasy, and for Ramsey, season two forced them to process a specific kind of grief. If you haven’t yet seen the first few episodes of the second series, which premiered last month, spoiler alert ahead. In episode two, Joel meets a brutal end in a revenge-driven plot orchestrated by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), a Firefly who has been pursuing him for five years. Her motive is vengeance: Abby is the daughter of the surgeon Joel killed at the end of season one in a bid to save Ellie’s life. Joel’s death is drawn out, violent and far more horrific than anything in the show to date. It was also filmed on the very first day Dever spent on set with Pascal and Ramsey. “I was a bit anxious to even read the script, and I cried reading it,” Ramsey recalls. “I’ve never cried reading a piece of writing before. It just felt very personal. I’m very connected to Pedro as a person, and us as Ellie and Joel, so I felt the weight of it.”
Ramsey not only lost Joel in the series, but Pascal as a scene partner in the show. The theme of loss was something they had to come to terms with. “I was a bit hysterical on his last day,” they reflect. “It does feel like grief of losing that person. Even filming the scenes where we were a bit estranged in season two felt very sad and weird.”
Both Ramsey and Pascal have been effusive about their relationship and the influence they’ve had on each other’s lives. “I really don’t think I’ve met anybody like Bella,” Pascal told Steven Yeun in Variety’s Actors on Actors series in 2023. “They brought the best out of me as a person.”
For viewers, watching their onscreen partnership end so suddenly induces a visceral sense of grief, even merely in the context of no longer getting to watch their relationship grow on screen. “The idea of not getting to work with him again in these characters is really sad,” Ramsey adds. “But it feels so nice to have that immortalised in the TV show.”
Ramsey’s sequence of emotions as Ellie witnesses Joel’s death is palpable. Even for those who anticipated this from playing the game, there is nothing that really prepares you for the way Ramsey’s performance holds you captive. It’s easy to appreciate how Ramsey was able to access that range of vulnerability once you meet them. “I just sort of do it,” they say.
“I don’t think about it too much. I guess it’s just instinctual.” There is a tangible sense of energy that almost forms a forcefield around Ramsey, and they have an earnest quality underscored by a confidence that most 21-year-olds do not yet possess.
Ramsey’s understanding of the world around them – perhaps picked up from their many years of working with adults – translates well when Ellie is grappling with romantic feelings towards her best friend, Dina (Isabela Merced). The sensation of falling in love for the first time was reflected back to Ramsey in their own life while filming The Last of Us.
“I think the feeling of falling in love is so specific and you don’t know what that is like [until you do],” they share. “I’ve had to play being in love before I had real-life experience, and I think you have an idea of what that is and what that means and what that looks like. But when it’s something you’re experiencing yourself, as a cord that’s running parallel to this experience in the show, it was easier because I had this understanding of what it actually feels like.”
Ramsey has never defined or labelled their sexuality. (They came out as non-binary in an interview with The New York Times in 2023 and later described themselves as “not one hundred per cent straight” to British Vogue.) We leave the topic of their current relationship status untouched, but since Ellie identifies as gay in the second season, talk turns to their portrayal of the character’s budding sexuality.
Similar to Ramsey, Ellie doesn’t “deep it” too much. “There’s less of an emphasis on sexuality and the expression of that,” they say. “It’s not something Ellie thinks about, I don’t think. She’s in love, she loves women, and is falling in love with a woman. She doesn’t really question it or get too existential about it.”
It’s clear from conversation with Ramsey that they seem to be guided by instinct, they don’t overthink. It doesn’t come across as impulsive or brash (as Ellie does at times). In fact, Ramsey seems to be quite the opposite. There is a sense of stability and trust in the way they are able to tap into themes that extend into their personal life. After starring in Game of Thrones, as Mildred in The Worst Witch, and in Catherine Called Birdy for director Lena Dunham, their next project is going to be a personal one.
Ramsey’s first-ever script, Toast and Jam, written in the wake of their battle with an eating disorder as a teen, has started production. “I’ve finished the script so many times and it’s sort of matured as I have,” they say. “Now it’s the beginning, which is exciting. I’m excited to learn about this side of the industry.”
Their sights are set on a future as much behind the camera as in front, and have been from early on. “Since I was even 11 on Game of Thrones, I’ve been watching directors and absorbing the things I really liked,” they say.
It’s been part of their plan all along. “I’ve been creating my directing style and crafting that in my head since I was quite young, so it’ll be exciting to get to live that out in real life.”
With a career in film, however, comes life in the spotlight. But the topic of fame is another thing they “don’t really think about”. Ramsey muses they may even be “too unaware of it” at times, riding the Tube in London and unthinkingly suggesting catch-ups with friends or family in busy parts of the city.
“I don’t understand the fact I’m famous,” they admit. “It’s weird for me to even say. To me, I feel like nothing has changed and I am just the same. I should be more aware of it because it can get a bit intense sometimes.” This is when loved ones offer a reminder. “The people around me take better care of that for me than I do for myself,” they admit.
But this laid-back attitude isn’t without gratitude for the position they’ve found themselves in. Ramsey is confident in their sense of self, despite the fame. “It’s a weird thing to navigate and a weird experience to have, but I won’t deny the privileges that come with it,” they explain. “I still do just feel like a normal, non-famous human being.”
The Last of Us season two airs weekly on Max until May 26.
This story is from the May issue of Vogue Australia. On sale now.
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