Bella Ramsey and 'The Last of Us' team talks Season 2's new characters and Joel in therapy

Something I also love about this first episode is kind of that playfulness that Ellie still has

Can you talk about how it's translated to these, you know, these big patrol moments and, like, being an older person in this community

Yeah, I mean, Ellie's still Ellie at the end of the day. Whether she's 14 or 19, she'll still whip out a pun

So that was really fun. And I think that she does have a way of bringing, like, a sarcasm and dry humor to every awful situation

and I think that that is only amplified by her new relationship and friendship with Dina

because she also brings so much joy and levity to this season

and I think the two of them together, sort of Dina allows Ellie to be funny

and Ellie allows Dina to be funny. They really play off each other well in terms of that

which is really nice. Ellie sort of met her match in Dina. Say the thing you're afraid to say

Say it out loud, no matter what it is, no matter how bad

What did you do? This was an idea that Craig had on season one

You know we had some conversations around what would be useful jobs in the apocalypse or in the post I should say And therapist seems like a natural one everybody went through a ton of trauma Everybody had people die around them Even in this world we could all use therapy

Definitely in that world, you should all use therapy. There was this idea of a scene that Joel would go and trade something for a therapist

It just didn't quite fit in season one. So when we came back around for season two, we were like

okay, well now we have a chance not only to have that scene

but to integrate that character a bit more fully into that story

And as people will come to understand, Gail plays a pivotal role in Joel and Ellie's journey

Then we got Catherine O'Hara, and it really started getting great. I love that character

I would like to write just a Gail show. That would be great. She understands that there are things that we're so afraid

to put literally into the air as words that we cannot get past them

And we will fight tooth and nail as people to hide that from everyone as long as we can, even at the cost of eating us up

And that is exactly what's happening with Joel. We know what that is

We know what he doesn't want to say. And that makes, I think, that moment even more interesting to us as viewers

Can you tell me a little bit more about you know bringing Isabella and Young like into the fold and into the company Yeah they sorted in so well I was so excited to have them on set and to get to know them and work with them They both bring such opposing energies in a way

I feel like I'm somewhere between the two of them. Young is so chill and mellow and introverted

And Isabella is extremely extroverted and the life of the party and loud and energetic and wonderful

and I'm sort of in the middle, just sort of kind of introverted and extroverted at the same time

And so it was really nice. I feel like we really, like, balanced out set

and balanced each other out. It was really cool. The scenes that we all got to do together were really special

and they both did such an amazing job. I can't imagine how intimidating it must have been

coming into the world of the show. Like, it was intimidating for me and Pedro in season one

before we even really knew the scale of The Last of Us, but for them knowing the scale of season one

coming into season two and just like almost being like the new kids in in this already established

thing they they did a remarkable job i'm so excited for people to see their performances

i would say i just did a lot of research on the game and the show and from there i really took

notes on shannon woodworth's performance and also infused some of my own personality and that was

kind of the right little cocktail of of things yeah same i i looked into the original character played by Stephen Chang and then kind of reverse engineered with my own ideas of what could happen what could have happened

how he got to Jackson, what kind of state of mind he was in and why he became a pillar of

his community and what his motivations were. Meeting Tati, he plays Nora, like I got to meet

different people and everybody's great like everybody kind of fits right in in the pocket

that we're in um everybody was sweet and sort of like game to come and play you know because we like

to play on sale like we we get to the work and we get down and dirty we roll our sleeves up

and we get in there and they were ready to jump in and do that the fun came in between takes and

before we started you know intimacy coordinator coordinated a meeting with ezra agmundesi who

plays Benjamin, his mother and his sister. And so it's like, what are we going to do

So we both got him gifts. We showered him with gifts. That's what you do

Yeah, we try to buy his love. And he would sing these little songs from YouTube about trucks and cars and different

kinds of cars. So I would learn these songs from him and play them on the guitar. All the new ones came in with a true love and kind of a fandom of the show

And we all just brought this incredible energy and youth to it

And they're all incredible