Before they were ruling over House Mormont at the tender age of 11 or surviving the apocalypse with Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey was just a kid in Nottingham who loved to act. Now, at 19 years old, they’re the star of what’s already being referred to as one of the biggest shows of 2023.
Despite their age, Ramsey seems to have cracked the code on having a career that appeals to even the hardest-to-please of audiences. Maybe it was their epic death as Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones; their witty toe-to-toe repartee with
Andrew Scott as Catherine Called Birdy’s sharp-tongued titular lead; or their latest role in The Last of Us as Ellie, a foul-mouthed 14-year-old desperate to get her hands on a gun. Or, maybe it’s the fact that, like the characters they play, Ramsey is blazing the trail that feels right for them.
While Zooming in from Manchester, where they are currently shooting the second season of the BBC drama Time, Ramsey spoke candidly on everything from using music in building a friendship with Pascal to their secret obsession with Irish Spring soap.
L’OFFICIEL: How did you land the role of Ellie in The Last of Us?
BELLA RAMSEY:I got an email from my agent about the role. It’s one of the only video games that I had heard of, other than Call of Duty and Fortnite and stuff like that. Then I did a self-tape with my mum doing a questionable American accent,
and then I did a Zoom a couple of weeks later with the show’s creators [Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann] and the casting director. I was on another job when we got the phone call saying that I was going to be going to Canada for a year.
BR:When I got over there, I had a two-week quarantine, which was basically just two weeks in the house, alone with my thoughts. And my mum was there. But, other than that, it was just me being like, What am I doing here?
This is terrifying. Just the idea that we were gonna be shooting for a year, [and] not only that, but I was aware that there’d be a lot of attention on it afterwards and there’d be a lot of press and that it would make me more famous and I didn’t know if I wanted that. But I loved it the minute that we started when I got on set. I forgot about the scale of it completely and it just felt like any other job.
BR:I adore him. He’s just a very safe person. I felt instantly safe with him and was so relieved that we got along. I was so worried. I put so much pressure on our relationship because I knew that we had the rest of the year together, and then press, and then more seasons. The minute that I actually let go of that pressure, we just bonded. He’s the best. He’s so kind and generous and we had a lot of fun. We were like two little kids messing about.
L’O:I was listening to a podcast with Nico Parker [who plays Sarah] who said the way to become best friends with Pedro is to compliment him and then tell him how much you love Prince.
BR:Pretty much. His music taste is pretty—I can’t think of the word, but it’s pretty great. It’s top-tier. Music was what we bonded over. Before we were confident with each other—when we were still shy—we would play each other songs. That was our way of communicating.
L’O: I loved how, in the midst of the literal apocalypse, there’s this focus on not just queerness, but also on queer love. There’s the storyline with Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett [as Bill and Frank], and then Ellie and Riley [played by Storm Reid]. When you read the script, was that something that you connected with?
BR:I definitely connected with it and it was really exciting to me. I remember the character description that came through in the initial email about Ellie. Part of what Craig wrote in her description was that “she’s gay and she doesn’t care,” or I think the actual words were “doesn’t give a fuck what you think.” I just loved that from the get-go.
It was really nice to have two really queer episodes. Like, gay people exist, so why shouldn’t they exist in the apocalypse? I really liked that it didn’t feel tacked on. It was so integral to this story, and so organically done, that it didn’t feel like, Oh, we’re just putting in these queer people for representation. This is the story, and it’s just a story of two people loving each other, and it was really beautiful.
L’O: In the finale, Joel faces the decision between saving humanity or one girl, and he chooses to save Ellie. What would you do if you were in that situation?
BR:It’s like the trolley problem. I don’t really know what I’d do. It depends on who the person was and it depends on how messed up humanity is, but I can see why Joel did what he did. Me as Bella, I’m not mad about it or mad at him, but Ellie is mad obviously because [being the cure] was her purpose. That’s what she was. She felt like she actually mattered and, ironically, Joel took away that purpose from her because she mattered so much to him.
"Gay people exist, so why shouldn’t they exist in the apocalypse?"
BR:I’m very open to anything. I’m looking forward to seeing how Craig and Neil adapt the story of the second game into another season. What I’m actually looking forward to is fighting more, but that’s just for me, not really for Ellie.
L’O:Are intense roles something you gravitate towards?
BR: Well, they’re the ones that get sent to my agent. Maybe I just look like I have a depressed face or something. But I really like them. I like putting myself through emotional torture in a very safe environment that ends at the end of the day. I mean, it sort of ends. Part of it, I carry with me, but that’s fine. I’ll go to therapy for that at some point. I just find it so exciting to get a chance to feel things that I never would feel otherwise.
BR:This is kind of weird, but just go with it. [Laughs.] When things smell nice, it makes me very happy. I don’t know if I’ve said this in an interview before, but on The Last of Us, in Bill and Frank’s house when [Ellie] and Joel were collecting supplies, there was a box of soaps in one of the cupboards and Greg, the props master, was taking this box of soaps out and he was like, “Do you want the soap?”
I picked one up, and it was the best smell I’ve ever smelled in my entire life. It was called Irish Spring. I was obsessed, and I carried this bar of soap with me in its little cardboard box for the duration of the shoot— and after! It literally came everywhere with me because I just loved it.
It’s very calming. I’d just sniff this soap when I was feeling anxious. It was stupid, but I guess Irish Spring soap makes me happy. I still have it. I don’t carry it around with me anymore, but I still have it on my shelf. I checked on it the other day to see if it was still fragrant, and it was.
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