The Last Of Us Star Kaitlyn Dever Addresses Backlash And Discourse Around Abby

Kaitlyn Dever joins the cast of HBO's The Last of Us as Abby for its upcoming second season, and anyone who's played the game or knows the game's story understands how central Abby is to the story. When The Last of Us: Part II came out in 2020, the response to Abby was extreme, with actress Laura Bailey receiving death threats, including threats against her newborn child. Dever said in an interview that while she is aware of the stigma surrounding Abby, she remains focused on doing service to the character and making fans proud.

"Well, it's hard not to see those things on the internet. It's hard not to stop myself from looking at it every once in a while, especially going into this, for sure," she told ScreenRant. "And I want to do this character justice and make the fans proud by bringing her to life in this kind of way."

Dever went on to say she worked with showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann to make sure she was "getting to the core of" who Abby is as a person and what drives her. "Her anger and her frustration and her grief and all of that. I wanted to make sure that that was what I was focusing most of my energy on," she said when asked how much she paid attention to the online chatter about Abby.