The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey says their autism diagnosis has been “nothing but helpful”, while calling for greater accommodations for neurodivergent actors.
“It’s been nothing but helpful, honestly, it’s helpful to me every day,” they told PEDESTRIAN.TV of their diagnosis while in Sydney to promote The Last of Us season two. “It’s helped me to understand why certain things have been harder for me than they seem to be for everyone else. It helps me just have more grace for myself and be a bit kind to myself and beat myself up less.”
Ramsey, 21, shot to game after a scene-stealing turn as a young Lyanna Mormont in Game of Thrones, but it’s their work as Ellie in the apocalyptic The Last of Us — alongside Pedro Pascal — that has thrust them into the A list. While filming the first season of the HBO drama, a crew member who had an autistic daughter assumed they were autistic, leading Ramsey to seek a formal diagnosis.
“I’m still learning how to take care of that side of me and to listen to myself and my needs a little bit more, because I’m not very good at that,” Ramsey continued, who only went public with the diagnosis earlier this year. “At the moment, I’d be like, ‘Oh, this is so hard, and I’m feeling this way because I’m autistic’, and then don’t do anything about it. I don’t do anything to like, actually help myself. So I’m trying to do that at the moment, but, yeah, it’s just, it’s a really nice thing to, I think, to be able to tell people and sort of normalise that, because it’s not anything that anyone should be ashamed of. So being able to just say it out loud is a good thing.”
Although more public figures are opening up about being neurodivergent, the list of celebrities remains pretty small, with Ramsey joining a short list that includes the likes of Billie Eilish (who has Tourette syndrome) and Courtney Love (who is autistic). Just a few years ago, Heartbreak High actor Chloé Hayden made global headlines for being the first openly autistic actor to play an autistic character.
When we asked Ramsey if they’d like to see changes made to accommodate autistic cast and crew, they replied “definitely” — but shared that in their experience, being on set actually helped manage their symptoms.
“On set, funnily enough is where I thrive the most, because there’s a very clear structure and routine,” they said. “I use the Rubik’s Cube analogy. It’s like — the patterns, the algorithm is the same every time, but the specific colours and places, they all are different. It’s the same but different every day.”
Press days, on the other hand — like the one where we interviewed Ramsey — are a different beast. To give you an insight into how the sausage is made, stars from TV shows or movies will be flown around the world, where they’ll be interviewed by journalists in a room full of cameras, lights and people, for hours back to back. For neurodivergent people (including this author, hello!), the overstimulation can be a LOT.
“Press and stuff is so unnatural and not great for the neurodiverse mind,” Ramsey said. “I think if there could be less of it, or recovery days built in… I really realised how much I need that. But you don’t get it on press tours, so your body will tell you in other ways that you need to stop. That definitely happens for me during press. I go back to work after this press tour, and that for me will be a rest.”
Behind-the-scenes with Pedro Pascal on TLOU season two
The Last of Us season two, set five years after the events of season one, sees Ramsey’s Ellie and Pedro Pascal‘s Joel at odds with each other. It’s kind of like your classic father-daughter strained relationship when the daughter is in her late teens, except in this case it’s set decades after the world as we know it was destroyed by a cordyceps virus that turns people into zombies. Oh, and Pedro is harbouring the guilt of keeping a critical, life-changing secret from Ellie, his surrogate daughter who just happens to be immune to the virus.
“It’s quite sad,” Ramsey said of their on-screen distance. “It’s not a comfortable feeling having to be mad at him. It’s this coldness, it feels very icky. It’s not nice to play, especially with someone you love so much in real life.”
Luckily, that coldness didn’t translate to their off-camera friendship one bit. “Me and Pedro were exactly the same, if not more silly, because we knew each other so well,” they continued. “Season one we were getting to know each other, and by the end, we were basically inseparable. We were coming into season two with that already established. Certain scenes it’s even funnier, because seeing him mad at me… you know when your parents are mad at you, and you just nervously laugh? It was the same thing with me and him, where he’d be playing mad or upset, and it just made me laugh.”
The Last of Us season two premieres on Max in Australia on April 14, 2025. And not to worry: season three has already been confirmed!
Lead photo: HBO
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