‘The Last of Us’ Star Bella Ramsey’s Mom Told Her She Was Going to Die on ‘Game of Thrones’
HBO‘s The Last of Us is one of the first hit TV shows of 2023. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are succeeding in satisfying both long-term fans of the original video game and non-gaming viewers with their portrayal of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) Lone Wolf and Cub-inspired trek post-apocalyptic America.
It is imperative to the plot that Ellie is kept alive at all costs, a distinction that was not given to Ramsey’s character Lady Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones. While learning that any resident of Westeros was fated for an early death is far from a surprise, Ramsey probably didn’t expect the news to be broken to her by her mother.
Bella Ramsey already has an impressive filmography at a young age
A native of Nottingham, England, Bella Ramsey gravitated toward acting as a child. Her role as Lady Lyanna was her first professional part. Ramsey’s debut was meant to amount to a single scene, but her performance was so good that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss revised their scripts to make her a part of Game of Thrones’ final two seasons.
Ramsey appeared in another HBO adaptation of a fantasy series when she joined the cast of His Dark Materials in its second season as Angelica for a six-episode run. She also starred in children-focused fare like The Worst Witch, the Netflix animated series Hilda, and its spinoff movie Hilda and the Mountain King.
Ramsey’s film career has broadly taken a backseat to her television work, but she starred in Lena Dunham’s medieval comedy Catherine Called Birdy last year. The movie was praised by critics, with Ramsey’s excellence being the main reason for the acclaim.
She learned about Lyanna’s fate from her mom
Lyanna famously died in the Battle of Winterfell at the hands of an ice giant. Instead of learning about this from a Game of Thrones producer or her agent, Ramsey revealed during her late-night debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she first heard about it from her mom.
It usually didn’t work this way for the other cast members. Typically, someone on behalf of the show would call an actor before filming to let them know their time was up. Bella Ramsey never got the phone call, leading to an excited parent alerting her of what was coming for Lyanna.
“My mum read it first in the middle of the night [because] she gets very excited about the script,” explained Ramsey. “She was reading it and let me know in the morning. She was like, ‘You die!’ and I was like “what?”, but I was happy.”
Even though Lyanna was a relatively minor character in Game of Thrones, she became a fan favorite and still gets asked questions about the show whenever she meets fans. Most of her interactions revolve around the controversial ending and how she felt about it. Ramsey claims to like it in the interview, but she mostly sidesteps these queries in other situations. “I just let them hate on it or talk about how great it was,” she says. “They mostly hate on the ending for 10 minutes, and I just sit there and say ‘Goodbye, nice to meet you,’ and then that’s it.”
Ellie is a beacon of hope in ‘The Last of Us’
The world of The Last of Us is a cruel place to be. A mass fungal infection caused by Cordyceps turns most of humanity into horribly disfigured monsters. The few left alive in this new reality are left fighting over scraps and trying to avoid dying at the hands of the infected or other people looking out for themselves at the cost of empathy. The few human communities left are quarantine zones from an oppressive government regime known as FEDRA.
There’s no reason for survivors like Joel or Tess (Anna Torv) to expect things to ever get better – until they meet Ellie. Her immunity to the fungus makes her a potential savior of the world. Joel and Tess are employed by a rebel group known as The Fireflies to escort her across the country in hopes of creating a cure that could save the world.
