Sometimes being an actor is a thankless job. Imagine, for example, having to get extra security on a set because people just don’t like the character you’re playing—not even you or how you’re playing them—in The Last of Us.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us.
Unfortunately, that bizarre scenario appears to be reality for Kaitlyn Dever of The Last of Us. Dever is playing a character named Abby, and in the source material for the popular video game adaptation, Abby brutally kills fan-favorite Joel.
The actress who played Abby in the game, Laura Bailey, faced a wave of bizarre hatred and death threats after her character beat Joel to death in The Last of Us Part II, which came out in 2020. She was threatened, and her infant son was threatened. It was a truly shameful episode in video game history.
Bailey spoke about it in the Last of Us Part II behind-the-scenes documentary. “It was rough,” she said, wiping away tears. “More than anything, it just kinda like taught me to keep a distance.” She also shared screenshots of the abuse people had sent her, and the messages are truly disturbing to look at.
Now there are fears the same thing could happen to Dever. And according to her Last of Us co-star Isabela Merced, Dever has extra security on set precisely because of the unhinged behavior of certain fans.
Merced told Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast, “There are people that actually genuinely hate Abby, who is not a real person. Just a reminder, not a real person. And so Kaitlyn had to be extra secured by security when it came to the filming of this.”
Merced sounds infuriated at the situation, and why shouldn’t she be? It just sounds so ridiculous that anyone in the world could be so entitled as to send an actor death threats over something their character did. And yet, that’s the situation Laura Bailey ended up in. Fingers crossed that it won’t ever happen again.
Published: Aug 19, 2024 01:43 pm