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Before filming the most emotional scene of The Last of Us Season 2, Emmy-nominated actress Kaitlyn Dever had her own personal tragedy to deal with, as her mother died shortly before it.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Dever opened up about the experience. She lost her mom just weeks before filming the biggest scene of the series with Pedro Pascal's Joel. Dever described the days before the shoot as “horrible.”
“I lost my mom two or three weeks before I actually shot this scene [on The Last of Us],” Dever shares, “and my mom's funeral was three days before I did my first day. So I was sort of in a fog. I was in a daze.”
Dever remembers eating donut holes and coffee during her grieving. The loss of her mother affected her acting process, which she recounted to Entertainment Weekly.
“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,” she explained. “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.”
Ultimately, she was able to “let it go” because the script in place was “so powerful,” as Dever explained.
Luckily, the cast rallied around Dever, which was different. “It made us all feel like we were a team and doing this together,” Dever said. “I've never experienced that before.”
The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin remembered the situation. They did not want to rush Dever's grieving following the loss of her mother.
“We said, ‘Take your time. Take all the time you need,'” recalled Mazin. “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.”
Once Dever got back to work, she was all in. Her scene with Joel (Pedro Pascal) featured a limited number of crew members on set. They prioritized the necessary crew members to be there, and it was otherwise closed off.
The Last of Us Season 2 was able to capture the pivotal scene between Kaitlyn Dever and Pedro Pascal's characters. Fans of the video games likely know which one is being referenced.
