The day HBO confirmed that there would be a second season of The Last of Us, viewers familiar with the video games on which the series is based automatically had a question: What actress could take on such an important role for this fictional universe as Abby? And, according to the American media, they could have found the right person: Kaitlyn Dever.
The actress from Arizona is no stranger, especially since in 2019 she found two jobs that made her one of the young promises of Hollywood: the teenage comedy Super Nerds by Olivia Wilde, which was one of the films adored by critics American that year, and the miniseries Believe Me, where she shared the spotlight with Toni Collette and Merritt Wever as the rape victim whom the police did not believe.
Since then, she has chained one project after another, including Dear Evan Hansen, the adaptation of the Broadway musical, Trip to Paradise where she played the daughter of Julia Roberts and George Clooney or, above all, Dopesick, another miniseries in which she exhibited her great dramatic skills as an opiate addict due to the immoral practices of the pharmaceutical industry (to be exact, the Sackler family that owns Purdue Pharma, which marketed oxycontin). Her performance earned her her first and only Emmy nomination.
In fact, Kaitlyn Dever is the actress who must have auditioned the most in recent years and, among all the projects in which she competed for a role, she even read the role of Ellie that finally fell to Bella Ramsey, an actress familiar to the HBO executives after having been Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. It was logical that Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, the creators of The Last of Us, did not opt for her: she is now 26 years old compared to Ramsey's 20, and Ellie asked for a very young actress, since the character is 14 years at the beginning of the story.
And why is Abby's character so important? In the video game sequel, she becomes almost as important as Ellie. Abby, technically called Abigail Anderson, is a young woman in her twenties who, along with her father, had been part of the Fireflies, the militias that rebel against the PHAEDRA, and who later must learn to live alone.
Her father, in fact, was Jerry, the doctor who was going to operate on Ellie at the end of the first season. Therefore, the viewer can understand where the conflict derives and what her relationship may be with Bella Ramsey's character and Pedro Pascal's Joel.
The second season of The Last of Us has not yet begun filming as a result of the writers' and actors' strikes that paralyzed Hollywood from May to November. HBO's initial plan is to begin production of the new episodes in early 2024 to premiere the season in early 2025.
