Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the real reason to see ‘The Last of Us’

The end of a series, especially if it has been successful, is never without controversy. Luckily for everyone, there are final decisions and, within the latest HBO Max achievement, there are two fundamental ones: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the real reason to see ‘The Last of Us’.

Despite having become the topic of conversation at the moment, the adaptation of ‘The Last of Us’ had been trying to reach the screen for years, showing that it was not exactly easy to transform the video game developed by Naughty Dog that was launched on the market in June of 2013 for PlayStation 3. Written by Neil Druckmann, the great gameplay mechanics were immersed in a meticulously narrated story about two characters, Joel and Ellie, who evolved as we progressed through the story, forcing the player to feel fully involved in its plot and managing to transcend the screen remote in hand.

As interesting as its plot was, Transferring this immersive story in which we had to take sides in a series, ignoring the viewer’s decisions, required not only a revision of its script, but also a successful casting job that would allow its future fans to adore characters they would love. they would stare for hours. And so it has been.

Pedro Pascal before Joel

José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal was born in Santiago de Chile on April 2, 1975 to brighten the world. Although the canceled ‘Wonder Woman’ (Jeffrey Reiner, 2011), the return of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ on ABC, the weak ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ (Patty Jenkins, 2020) and the terrible ‘The Bubble’ (Judd Apatow, 2022 ) are part of his career, the rest of his filmography is made up of a good handful of successes.

From ‘Homeland’ to ‘Game of Thrones’, going through ‘Narcos’ and ‘The Mandalorian’, the small screen has been the corner where Pascal has shone the mostbut we have also been able to see him in a big way in ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ (Matthew Vaughn, 2017), together with Denzel Washington in the wonderful ‘The Equalizer 2’ (Antoine Fuqua, 2018), in the hard ‘The Blues from Beale Street’ (Barry Jenkins, 2018) and alongside Nicolas Cage in ‘The unbearable weight of a huge talent’ (Tom Gormican, 2022).

Bella Ramsey before Ellie

Isabella May Ramsey was born in Nottinghamshire, England on September 30, 2003. Just 13 years later, Bella played the intrepid Lyanna Mormont in the sixth season of ‘Game of Thrones’success that allowed him to return in the seventh and eighth round of episodes of the series.

Ambassador of Greenpeace and Young Minds, and part of the Bamboozle theater company, the actress has been Mildred Hubble in ‘The Worst Witch’, the children’s series by Emma Reeves based on the novels by Jill Murphy for which she won a BAFTA in 2019. Then she played Angelica in the second season of ‘The Dark Materials’, one of the best fantasy series, and a young Jane Gray in ‘Becoming Elizabeth’, by Anya Reiss.

He premiered on the big screen in 2018, sharing credit titles with Samantha Morton and Billie Piper in ‘Two for Joy’ (Tom Beard) and appearing with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in that lapse called ‘Holmes & Watson’ (Etan Cohen). Titles like ‘Judy’ (Rupert Goold, 2019) and ‘Resistance’ (Jonathan Jakubowicz, 2020) featured her before being the protagonist of ‘The Book of Catherine’ (2022), the Lena Dunham production that slipped into the best action movies on Amazon Prime Video.

Pedro and Bella are Joel and Ellie

When the two actors were chosen to become the leads of the adaptation, they did not know each other. They never coincided in ‘Game of Thrones’ since Oberyn Martell, Pascal’s character, was never clear about moving on from the fourth season. “When I entered, Pedro already had his eyes completely out of his sockets, so we didn’t have the opportunity to work together,” recalls the actress in our interview with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey for ‘The Last Of Us’. “We didn’t meet until we met on the set of ‘The Last of Us’, but it was something we had in common and as soon as we talked about it, we connected.“.

His task was not easy at all since the relationship between Joel and Ellie is the great success of the video game to be exploited in this adaptation, an odd couple in a world devastated by a catastrophic plague who, empty after irreplaceable losses, find solace in each other. other.

And so it has been. Pedro Pascal’s humanization of Joel has been fundamental to being able to see through a protagonist who strives to hide his most compassionate side as well as his wildest.. A fight that falls apart after each interaction with Ellie, the true jewel of the series.

Criticized for her appearance by a sector of society that, somehow, has managed to continue expressing her opinion in public in 2023, Bella Ramsey has become Ellie, the character who conquered the gamers and who, now, has the serial fans crazy. An expert in stealing our attention every time she appears in other people’s plots, her interpretive power reaches unexpected heights in chapters as different from each other as 7 and 8, the episodes for which Ramsey has earned permanence in the collective imagination forever. .