Kaitlyn Dever joined the cast of The Last of Us Season 2 as Abby. Her performance in the season’s second episode was well-received. Dever, who lost her mother to breast cancer days before shooting began, has now opened up about her emotional state.

Kaitlyn Dever shot for The Last of Us Season 2 days after her mother’s passing

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Kaitlyn revealed that the gut-wrenching scene from episode 2 had several elements to navigate. She shared, “I will just say that my days leading up to this scene were horrible. 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. So I was sort of in a fog. I was in a daze.”

 
Showrunner Craig Mazin opened up about giving Dever the space to grieve. “We said, ‘Take your time. Take all the time you need.’ 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,” he shared. 

See Also: The Last Of Us Season 2 Review: A Darker, Emotionally Loaded Chapter

Pedro Pascal wasn’t in a healthy mindset going into The Last of Us Season 2

During a virtual press conference attended by Filmfare, Pedro Pascal opened up about his character Joel’s relationship with Bella Ramsey’s Ellie in Season 2. He said, “There’s an incredibly painful distance between the two of them in the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and around and laughing and stuff like that.”

“My mindset was that I’m grateful to be back, and yet, at the same time, this experience, more than any other I’ve had, is hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel, in a way that isn’t very healthy. And I feel their pain, so I suppose I was in an unhealthy mindset,” he added.

The Last of Us Season 2 is currently streaming on JioHotstar.

See Also: The Last of Us Season 2’s Horrifying New Villain, Explained