'The Last Of Us' Adds Michelle Mao As Yara & Kyriana Kratter As Lev

Casting isn't announced as it happens.

It's not in preproduction. They're filming. The casting calls went out last year. These actors have been rumored for at least a month.

Modern television making is unsustainable. 1-2 year gaps between seasons might have worked for Stranger Things but it doesn't really work for every other show.

The series is filming right now. Casting announcements often come really late for whatever reason. Sometimes they don’t come out till post production

I’m genuinely dying to see how they’re gonna explain why “Little” B is now suddenly a 15 year old teenager. I know they’ll probably gonna recast *again* but it would’ve been hilarious if they stuck with the same actor and just never aknowledged it.

For what it’s worth, it’s literally the end of pre production or the beginning of filming. Everything signaled sometime this month is when it would begin, though I’m guessing it will intensify as the conditions become more optimal with spring//summer.

That still pisses me off. Don't end a movie in the middle of an action scene, then take years to maybe make the second part. My wife and i decided to watch all the ff movies a couple years ago and that was the worst way to end that marathon.

Acting? What strange sorcery is this?

Trans people make up such a small percentage of the population that it also means there's less likelihood to be able to find strong Trans actors.

Ok but where the hell are you going to find a trans kid whos also a good actor. They aren't exactly that common

Yeah. I propose that all trans character roles be only available to real trans actors. But also all cis roles are only available to cis actors. It's only fair. And if this works, we can even take it a step further. All gay roles should be for real gay actors only and straight roles for real straight actors only. And if that works, we can keep taking it further. All doctor roles should be for real doctors, all hero roles for real heros, all alien roles for real aliens, and so on. I mean you know how hard is it for aliens to make it in the acting business? You know what? Why don't we just get rid of acting altogether? We just keep documentaries, where every role is a real person, not some fake person trying to fool everyone. There, problem solved!

They cast a woman, playing a woman that begins to identify as more masculine in the early stages of life. Complete non issue. Next Are we going to say that no gay actor can play a straight character? No straight character can play a gay character? Let the actors ACT. It’s their job to step into shoes that aren’t their own.

yeah. ultimately i dont mind the casting, but it would have been nice to cast an actual trans actor for a trans role

I mean playing a trans character is already feeding anyone to the wolves. This is not a good role to get sadly for the actress.

It’s unfortunate but the reality is there are barely enough actors to play this role let alone trans actors, and definitely not enough trans actors this age. The biggest gate in the business is talent, and everything else pretty much follows after that - including cultural representation. It’s highly imperfect but I would be absolutely enraged if they’d done something like write Lev out or diminish his role. If he’s played well and the story honours Ian Alexander’s performance, it will really have to do. He was 19 when he voiced Lev, so even there, it’s a limitation that the medium accommodates. I can understand being frustrated, though.

10-13 years old actors don't really **exist**, you have to find them and it's often their first role. See what they did for Harry Potter (movie and upcoming TV show) or Adolescence The Asian and trans criteria is of course complicating things here. Although, I'd argue the asian part could be changed as it's not essential to their characters (and it's not like it's the first time Hollywood change a character race). The trans part is however much more important.

bella ramsay was 18 playing a 14 year old (the same age lev is in part 2) during season one. I don’t think it would have been that hard to do some open casting calls (or street scouting) for younger looking 18-20 year olds who identify as nonbinary or transgender - and based on the leaked casting sheet that’s been circulating, they didn’t even attempt that and openly asked for women

The obvious line is that putting an actual high school freshman aged trans actor in a show whose cast already gets a shit ton of vitriol from chuds is a terrible terrible idea

She's absolutely not. The charachter in the show(Lev) will be trans just like in the game. Thats what that sentence is saying.

>Kratter is trans….it says that in the article. Where?

That would require reading lol

> and all signs pointed to a fairly faithful 2nd season of the TV show Ironically it isn't, in some monumentally bizarre ways. Ellie's entire characterization is all over the place in the show for the second season for example, and very much for the worse. Instead of a compelling doom-spiral of grief, anger, and vengeance it's a CW tier buddy duo road trip for a good portion interspersed with some tonally jarring violent bits that lack most of the weight they had in the game. It's like they were too afraid of trusting the audience and making Ellie seem unlikable and so most of her actions seem unintentional because of it, like she's an afterthought in a season that largely revolves around her. Dina ended up being the more compelling character because they made her seem much more competent and fleshed-out comparatively. The second game had some contentious and divisive choices that were made for its writing (personally I liked it overall), but oddly they decided take some of the things that worked best in the game and diminish them for the show.

I personally thought the second game was stronger. Had to get used to the derail and shift for a bit, but the story is more complex and highlights how what can be seen as good from one angle, can be seen as bad from another.

The character is in their early teens, I’m not really sure there was a wide pool of early teen Asian trans actors to cast from and then they have to be good enough at the actual job.

It was very close to the game. I do think some of the additions were weaker.

Exactly. The idea that only trans actors can play trans characters implies they cannot play non-trans characters which is bullshit.

I thought it was pretty faithful to the game. It’s just that the second game has a plot that’s gruelingly miserable and nothing good happens to anyone. I enjoyed the second season, and the second game but if people were expecting a fun, happy story that was never going to happen.

Haven’t played either game and I thought it was some of the worst television I’ve seen. And I loved the first season.

You absolutely need to play the second game.

Game is so so so so so so so so much better. It was kind of insulting how bad that season was in comparison. You are better off watching a “movie cut” of it if you don’t intend on playing it.

Just watch the 8 hour movie on YouTube. You’ll understand why we were upset.

The second game is my second favorite video game of all time. Season two of the show jettisoned most of what I loved about it.

Same i thought it was fantastic, haven't played the games. I think the people who played the games forget that there's a significant part of the viewership that never played. Asking who this season is for is crazy lol. There was a 30% drop from the premier to the finale, which was the gamer viewership, and the episodes still were averaging 37 million global views per episode

I remember making a comment during S2 saying it was hard to believe how pretty Dina was and how her hair looked almost too good for an apocalypse. I got like 4 DMs from randos calling me a piece of shit, sexist, homophobic, etc.. Not only are you not allowed to criticize the show- you can’t even make a general observation about the on set hairstylist lol

There's a reason why the episodes where Ellie and Dina have intimate moments are the lowest rated. I found season 2 to be lacking, but it's not hard to tell when something is receiving low ratings for actually being bad compared to homophobia. With this show it's the latter.

So you think season 1 episode 3 was one of the weakest of the series? It couldn’t possibly have been review bombed?

> Seeing how bad (subjectively) Bella was in Season 2 compared to the first season, and how people reacted to her in general I’m pretty sure most are siding with Abby now. To be fair, most of the people who played the game and didn't get caught in the weird rage around it probably come to the same conclusion because Abby is a much better character than Ellie.

Bella was a beast as Lyanna Mormont in GoT but I felt her casting as Ellie is just fine, not great but fine. But I can’t ignore that Kaitlyn might be a better casting for Ellie. The look and the voice and the physique about the same. Adult Ellie she really look the part. Superb casting on Joel though. Love Pedro in this series.

Kaitlyn Dever is such a shitty actor. She didn't even bother to buff up for the role of abby how did this 4'11 shrimp beat up joel? she looked pathetic

Kaitlyn Dever looked pathetic. she didn't even bother to buff up for the role. Not believable at all

Abby was based on Colleen Fotsch just btw.. look her up. I see people ragging on Dever for not bulking up but it is just not realistic at all for her to get even close to that physique.

Also forcing you to play as the person who just killed Joel for 20 hours is just a terrible idea no matter who it was.

bella ramsay was 19 playing a 14 year old - the same age lev is in part 2. I don’t know why everyone is fixated on age accuracy in these comments given that nearly every other actor in this show is 4-5 years older than the character they play? The casting call sheet got leaked and they didn’t even bother attempting to hire a trans actor. They put no effort into the decision and took the easy way out. Its a shame.

this isn’t true. it simply asked for AFAB - assigned female at birth. there was no mention of a trans identity listed on the call sheet