Kaitlyn Dever dealt with a family tragedy shortly before she filmed Joel’s death scene for Sunday night’s episode of “The Last of Us.”
“To be as honest as possible. I will just say that my days leading up to this scene were horrible,” the 28-year-old actress, who plays Abby in the HBO series, said in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“I lost my mom two or three weeks before I actually shot this scene, and my mom’s funeral was three days before I did my first day,” Dever recalled. “So I was sort of in a fog. I was in a daze.”
Dever’s mom, Kathy, died in February 2024 after a 14-year battle with breast cancer.
The Emmy nominee confirmed to EW that her first scene for Season 2 was when Abby brutally murders Joel (Pedro Pascal) as revenge for him killing her father in Season 1.
Series co-creator Craig Mazin explained in the interview how they catered to Dever as she was grieving her mom.
“We said, ‘Take your time. Take all the time you need,’” said Mazin, 54. “While I care extraordinarily about the show, it’s a TV show. I’m not going to disrupt someone’s grieving process for their own parent, especially [with] a show that’s partly about the grieving process.”
After the show changed the shoot schedule as a courtesy to Dever, the actress had “minimal” requests that Mazin said were “were easy to honor” when it came time to film the Abby and Joel scene.
“Because of my life circumstances, I wasn’t actually able to do my normal routine as an actor, which was really interesting because I was kind of worried about it,” Dever told EW. “Usually if I have a monologue like that, I’m memorizing it three weeks before I do it.”
“I had a different approach, and I think that it really served the character in a lot of ways,” she continued. “I was able to sort of… I don’t know, just really let it go and not think about it too much because the words on the page are so powerful anyway.”
Dever recalled that the cast gathered in between takes to receive notes as a group, instead of individually, from director Mark Mylod, who won an Emmy for helming Logan’s (Brian Cox) death episode on “Succession.”
“It made us all feel like we were a team and doing this together,” Dever said. “I’ve never experienced that before.”
Dever shared the news of her mom’s death with a heartbreaking Instagram tribute on Feb. 21, 2024.
“My mama. My life. My everything. I don’t even have the words” she wrote. “Nothing I’ll ever say will amount to the gifts you have given me in my life, the boundless joy you brought, the deep, endless, unconditional love you gave me and our family.”
The “Dopesick” actress continued, “Your love was like sunshine, warmed me when I needed it the most and made me smile when I was ever sad. You were everyone’s favorite. You are my favorite. The sweetest in the world. I will be broken forever without you and I don’t know how I’ll go on.”
“The Last of Us” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.