Why Kaitlyn Dever as Abby didn’t need to bulk up for The Last of Us: ‘That doesn’t play as big of a role’

"We value performance over anything else," Druckmann tells Entertainment Weekly as part of an exclusive season 2 interview. "We need someone to really capture the essence of those characters…. We don't value as much, 'Do they look exactly like the character with their eyebrows or their nose or their body?' Whatever it is. It's not nowhere on the priority list, but it's below a bunch of other things that we consider."

“We would've struggled to find someone as good as Kaitlyn to play this role,” Druckmann explains. “In the game, you have to play both characters [Ellie and Abby] and we need them to play differently. We needed Ellie to feel smaller and kind of maneuver around, and Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she's almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things. That doesn't play as big of a role in this version of the story because there's not as much violent action moment to moment. It's more about the drama. I'm not saying there's no action here. It's just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”

“I personally think that there is an amazing opportunity here to delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger,” Mazin adds. “And then the question is, ‘Where does her formidable nature come from and how does it manifest?’ That's something that will be explored now and later.”