Ever since HBO released a teaser trailer for The Last of Us’ second season last month, I’ve been thinking about Kaitlyn Dever’s casting as Abby Anderson. As many fans of the series have noticed, Dever is significantly smaller than the game’s version of Abby. She can’t do much about her height, obviously, and while she does seem to be wearing clothes that create the illusion of a broader back and bigger muscles, she definitely doesn’t look like game Abby.
It’s hard to tell exactly how Dever’s character is built. We barely see her from the neck down, never for more than a few seconds at a time, and the scenes we see her in seem to be all over, chronologically. It’s unclear in most cases whether we’re looking at a younger, pre-tragedy version of her, or if we’re looking at her older, supposedly bigger self, but she definitely never looks like the imposing physical presence that we might have expected (or hoped) she would be.
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This week, TLOU director Neil Druckmann tried to get ahead of those criticisms, saying that Abby didn’t have to be quite as physically imposing as the show wasn’t as violent, and “it’s more about the drama”. Dever was chosen because she’s an excellent actor who connects well with the existing cast, and not for her build. Showrunner Craig Mazin added that the show is an opportunity to “delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger.”
I’m not entirely convinced by this argument. I believe Dever is a good actress, but I think maybe it just wasn’t realistic for her to ever get that bulky. Abby’s body (an infamously contentious thing, for stupid reasons) was modeled after Colleen Fotsch, a record-holding professional CrossFit athlete who has qualified for the Olympics.
While I do love to see actors taking steps towards physically inhabiting their characters, I’m pretty sure that Dever simply does not have the time or genetics to get that big. Bodies like Fotsch’s take years of intense training and careful nutritional monitoring to build, and that’s if your body can even put on that amount of muscle. I doubt it was feasible for HBO to put Dever on a multi-year, dialed-in training regimen just to get her to that level of jacked.
But then we bump up against the argument of whether Dever should have been cast at all if she isn’t able to match Abby’s physicality, which, as I’ve written, is an integral part of her personality. Abby’s muscularity is part of what holds her in opposition to Ellie, creating the tension in their twisted yin and yang – two vengeful women, two sides of the same coin, but still distinctly separate. Instead, Dever is so similar to Ellie she was a longtime fancast.
But I’m Going To Let HBO’s Adaptation Prove Itself
Obviously, I’d prefer if Abby was huge and jacked. Unfortunately, I also know that it’s not easy to find women that ripped (or capable of getting that ripped in a short time) who are also excellent actors capable of pulling off a character like Abby. The closest physical match I can think of is Katy O’Brian, the martial artist and former competitive bodybuilder who acted in Love Lies Bleeding and The Mandalorian. Hollywood isn’t exactly filled with muscle-bound thespians.
I might not be able to defend this casting choice, but I can say that we should at least reserve judgment. While I do think Abby’s size is essential to her character, we are thinking of a very specific version of her – the one that appeared in the video game. It’s important to remember that HBO’s The Last Of Us is an adaptation, not a direct live-action translation. We’ve already seen the show add characters, subplots, and entire side stories to excellent effect, and Druckmann also states in the interview that deleted material from the game will be incorporated into the show.
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It feels very much like we’re going to see a different take on Abby, which may or may not be necessitated by Dever’s lack of physical heft, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It won’t be the Abby we know and recognise, but HBO’s The Last of Us already isn’t the game we have in our heads. As an adaptation, it adds, subtracts, and subverts our expectations.
If Bella Ramsey played Ellie exactly as Laura Bailey did in the game, there wouldn’t be much point to the show at all, and Ramsey does in fact, by nature of being a different actor making a different thing, play Ellie differently. Dever will play Abby differently too, and while I’m not thrilled about it, I think we can afford HBO’s adaptation a little bit of grace by not assuming an actor’s build will make or break the show.