Melanie Lynskey explains why The Last of Us’ Kathleen was unbelievably violent

HBO’s The Last of Us has proved to be one of the most successful video game adaptations to date. The show has introduced a lot of characters, some of whom we’ve grown to love, while some others proved to be surprisingly hateful. Melanie Lynskey‘s Kathleen was definitely one of the latter ones, with a single goal in mind. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, she explained why the character was so incredibly violent.

Lynskey reveals how showrunner Craig Mazin presented the character to her, “He told me that her brother was basically Jesus. Like, imagine growing up as the sibling of Jesus and being like, “My brother’s the greatest human being. He’s leading the world. He’s the kindest, most decent person. I don’t think I’m that great of a person. I don’t really need to be anything in particular because I have this person by my side.” And then somebody brutally kills him and it’s so unfair.”

“Who are you after that? You are forced to step into a role that you never asked for and you don’t think you’re very good at. The thing I found very interesting about her is, when she did step into the role, she didn’t have a lot of guilt about doing bad things, whereas her brother did. She found out that she was quite heartless and so she was able to be pretty effective in a way that he maybe wasn’t because she didn’t care about people. That’s a very interesting dynamic.”

“I wanted her to be kind of gentle,” she said. “I wanted her to be soft-spoken and delicate in the way she looked around. I wanted her to feel like a sweet person, and then to have a surprising capacity for violence. I thought the difference between how she carries herself and how she speaks and the things she’s doing would be interesting.”

Did you think Kathleen was scary? Talk to us in the comments below!

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