In HBO’s hit series The Last of Us, it’s the end of the world as most of humanity knows it, but Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey feel just fine. Long gone are the traces of the hardened survivor Joel (Pascal) and the teenage spitfire Ellie (Ramsey), who must endure the collapse of modern civilization due to a deadly mutable fungus that turns people into zombie-like creatures. Well, sort of. Comfortably sat within the confines of a secluded lounge at the Directors Guild of America, the pair are swapping inside jokes and bursting with laughter. While Pascal trades in Joel’s stoicism for passion, Ramsey can’t quite shake the penchant for Ellie’s habitual cussing.
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For what they don’t share with their characters in terms of post-apocalyptic misery, they speak with similar thoughtfulness as they describe the vulnerabilities of Joel and Ellie’s partnership, and of their experience working on the widely popular video game adaptation created by Neil Druckmann (who also created the game) and Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin. While the world at large knows them as the onscreen daddy-daughter duo, it’s clear that their bond has also transcended offscreen into something special, and the pair are thick as thieves.
Despite The Last of Us being a wildly popular video game series, you’ve never played it. And yet, here you both are on the TV series. What made you say yes?
BELLA RAMSEY: Well, they offered it to me, so I said yes because I wanted to do it.
PEDRO PASCAL: I didn’t know what the game was, but HBO had sent the scripts over, and I was put through a process of auditioning. Not a terribly arduous one, but one that had to be related to having read the scripts. I realized in reading episodes 1 and 2, that once Joel met Ellie, it was a part that you undeniably had to chase and play.
I was blown away by the world of it. And though I wasn’t familiar with the game, I was familiar with Bella, and with Craig Mazin, and I wanted to do it. It intercepted me in a very specific way. I had a plan for the next couple of years, and within a 24-hour period, this project intercepted everything because of how special I thought it was. And then I found out that it was this big f*king popular game that people lose their minds over.
RAMSEY: Yeah, that was exactly it. It was a lot.
Describe your first meeting with one another. How did you approach having to build this relationship of faux father and daughter in a way?
PASCAL: I think it’s surreal [looking back at it], the amount of pressure we felt that was not imposed upon us at all. If anything, I feel like it was inappropriate that they hadn’t asked us to do more. What I mean is I met you simply because you were coming to get your hair cut in the trailer and not because you were coming to meet me or that Joel and Ellie were going to meet.
RAMSEY: Right. It was a byproduct. You were on your lunch break.
PASCAL: It was this byproduct because we were shooting the first episode, and then you had arrived, and you were — everyone was — put in quarantine and borders were still closed. And there were very important protocols being abided by, and that could be a big part of it. But there was an artful part of not really trying to force anything to happen and the feeling of the confidence of casting, which I found to be utterly delusional [laughs]. I was like, “How could you know that you’d have a hit casting me with Bella?” Like, how did they know? Somehow, they did. And I think through a form of real decency [and eagerness] to start, we cared very much how the other felt. And that gradually brought us to a bond that is very deep. Plus, Bella is a Libra, and I am an Aries, so that means polar opposites just attract, we complement one another.
RAMSEY: There was no bonding. It was very much showing up on set as just who you are.
PASCAL: We didn’t have a choice. And I feel like we did — in an unspoken way — by taking one another’s cues and not putting pressure on one another, and yet still hoping that she approved of me or vice versa.
RAMSEY: Exactly. It was like, here, meet the person you’re going to spend the rest of the year with. And that’s cool, and I think it worked out. I think our relationship grew and developed as Joel and Ellie’s did. No, actually, Joel and Ellie initially were very estranged and had a lot of anger and resentment towards one another. We didn’t have that. We were just shy of each other. And now that I think about it, us being trapped in the car together for episode 3 did a lot for us.
PASCAL: Yeah, that and the walking. [There is] so much walking.
RAMSEY: So much walking. Do you remember you wanted to rename the show, Come Walk With Us?
PASCAL: Just Walk With Us. Because we were on that trail [in episode 3], and we had to go back to the beginning of it every single time. It was a long-written scene, and the sun was blazing.
Craig Mazin’s screenplays are unique and so meticulous that he even includes a character’s inner thoughts as dialogue on the page. As actors, what was your experience like working with such highly-detailed material as opposed to something a little less structured?
RAMSEY: [The process] was so easy, and I think we were very supported by them and held by the writing and the detail. There wasn’t a moment that I was unsure of who the character was. And yeah, he writes character thoughts in the stage directions, which I loved. They were the best scripts I’ve ever read. Craig hates praise, he hates being told that he’s good, but he’s a genius.
PASCAL: [Incredulously] He loves it! He absolutely, period-ly loves it.
RAMSEY: I strongly disagree.
PASCAL: He needs it.
RAMSEY: He needs it, but he hates it.
PASCAL: Don’t let him trick you into thinking he hates it. He loves it. And we all f*king love it and hate it. The interesting thing — and I think probably the thing that got the most pushback from me — were things in terms of points of confusion and where there is such a reliable portrait on the page. He is, I think, unwilling to confess to how specific it is to him as far as the page is concerned. And so, in moments of pushback, he’s very patient, and I found a very unexpected way of discovering that he was right.
Was there a particular scene that you had to work through together?
PASCAL: There’s plenty of instances that felt awkward to me, where a character moves from one moment to another as far as the language was concerned. And then once I questioned it, and then by questioning it, was invited into a collaborative conversation about it, I was made to think about it a little bit longer instead of just having a response. Thinking about it a little longer, I was like, “Holy f*k. He’s right.” You know what I mean? Craig would say, “This is how it should be, and it does make sense.” And I’d eventually [realize], “Yeah, it makes perfect sense.” Bastard [laughs].
What aspects of yourselves do you see in Joel and Ellie?
PASCAL: We’re both assholes [laughs].
RAMSEY: Well, there’s lots of similarities for me. I feel Ellie came very naturally to me, and I didn’t have to really try very hard. My American personality is Ellie because I learned the American accent through Ellie’s dialogue. So now, whenever I speak in an American accent, for whatever reason, I become Ellie. I swear in an American accent, too. In my own [British] accent, it just sounds wrong, the words don’t come out properly, and it trips me out. But I’ll happily call you a motherf*king asshole or dumbass [laughs].
PASCAL: Wait, is this the first time you’ve ever done an American accent for a job?
RAMSEY: Properly, yeah. I did one job where I had one but barely spoke with an accent. So, this is the first proper time.
PASCAL: Wow. Who do you think you are, nailing everything?
How did you both get through some of these harrowing emotional scenes together?
RAMSEY: I would repeat the things that Pedro would say to me back to him. All the wisdom that he’s given me, I just spew it back to him, and he’d be like, “Wow.” And I’ll be like, “Well, you told me first. It has all come from you.”
PASCAL: We definitely complimented each other’s mood systems. And granted, we can lean into this kind of conversation, but we’re f*king angels by comparison, I think [laughs]. But in a place of sensitive awareness, if she was feeling incompetent or I was feeling incompetent — because that’s what it ultimately comes from, your fear — whenever we were afraid, we couldn’t be afraid together.
RAMSEY: No.
PASCAL: We couldn’t be afraid at the same time. We were afraid together the entire time. But we couldn’t…
RAMSEY: …be occupied by fear.
PASCAL: If Bella was afraid, I had to see that from the outside and know that she had nothing to fear. And it was very mutual.
RAMSEY: I remember [when we filmed scenes] in the car in the studio, there was so much going on outside of the car. I remember us being like, “It’s just the two of us. Just forget about everybody else, this is just our own world.”
Bella, you’ve said before that you almost rejected the role because of the potential levels of fame and attention it could bring. In the aftermath of the show, how are you dealing with that?
PASCAL: Your instincts were right.
RAMSEY: Yeah, I know, right? It’s been a mixture of things. I keep thinking that I’ve adjusted, and then something new will happen and I’ll have realized I’m not adjusted at all. There’s been a lot of really lovely positive reactions, and most people that come and say hi are very sweet. But I think when it’s just happening so much, it can get tiring, and you can slip into feeling like more of an object than a person. That’s one of the biggest things. It’s scary sometimes. And also, what I find hard is the knowledge that [fame] is never going to be less than this now. I can’t reverse it.
PASCAL: You’ve crossed a threshold.
RAMSEY: Yeah. And there’s no way back, even if I quit acting, which I’m not going to do, but even that won’t cure it because I’ve already crossed the threshold. I’m learning to accept it in terms of traveling, which I enjoy particularly, and doing lots of press. But recently, I’ve been like, “Well, this is it. This is my life now.” And I just have to get on with it and deal with it and accept it. And this acceptance does a lot for me rather than trying to fight it.
Pedro, your popularity has soared in the last few years. Has your perception of fame changed?
PASCAL: I don’t have a problem with it. But there’s a routine function, I think, that you don’t realize how precious it is to pull up and put gas in your car before you’ve showered or had coffee or anything like that. And then somebody’s taping you with their phone, and that’s the kind of object feeling. There are different moments of the day that feel more vulnerable than others when your central nervous system simply isn’t prepared for an interruption of that kind, and that can have an accumulative effect for sure. So, it’s just something I’ve remained really curious about because it does feel… I think that it’s something that if you don’t water the garden, it won’t grow. You know what I mean? So, in my mind, I’m like, “Don’t give it [any attention].” Maybe I’m lying to myself a little bit, or it’s just not that big of a deal. So, I don’t worry about it. It’ll pass.
What have you both learned about yourselves while making this series? Heading into Season 2, is the pressure still there?
RAMSEY: I think, in a way, it’s diminished. But also, it’s there even more so than before because it’s been so successful. So, there’s the pressure of doing it again, but better. But I think if we think about that too much, there’s nothing you can do. You just have to do it, right? There’s no way of sitting down and like, “Right, how do I make this better?” You just go and do it. But because I don’t have to write or produce it, I can just turn up on the day and hope for the best.
PASCAL: I know it’s a challenge, but one that we’ll be able to beat. This isn’t HBO’s first rodeo, and Craig, Neil, Bella, everyone… there’s a benefit in having two previous experiences, one being Narcos and the other being The Mandalorian, where we were underway on the second season before the first had premiered, so that it couldn’t affect things and it didn’t change the course of the show. So, with The Last of Us, it’s a little scary. Because we are going into Season 2 with the way that it’s already been received, so it has already started with a certain amount of pressure. It would actually be weird if we didn’t feel it. But, in terms of how beloved the game is, we’re in good hands.
What are you looking forward to in Season 2?
RAMSEY: I’m looking forward to just being back, and I’ve heard bits about how the story’s developing, and I know quite a bit about the second video game. I’ve watched a lot of it. So, I’m just excited to experience more things and for it to get a bit deeper and more intense.
PASCAL: I’m really excited that there’s a likelihood that the dynamic between the two of them has really changed and that the texture of that is something that goes even further in the playing.