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The Last of Us star Merle Dandridge has opened up about how she approached her character "in a new way" for HBO show – and explained how Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal bring a "different twinkle" to beloved protagonists Ellie and Joel.
In the 2013 game, Dandridge lends her voice to Marlene, a leader within the Fireflies, an underground terrorist organization, while Troy Baker plays her gruff-voiced pal Joel Miller. Early on in Part I, Marlene tasks Joel with smuggling Ellie (Ashley Johnson), a young girl with a potentially life-changing secret, out of their quarantine zone, across the United States. A mission that's not so easy, considering the world has been ravaged by a violent fungal infection which turns some of its host into mushroom-headed monsters. The series follows that same story, though it expands the world, and a whole bunch of characters' arcs, significantly.
"There was a lot of building on what I had done because the core knowledge of who this person stays the same, but how she works and acts and interacts with all of that might adjust a little bit, especially working opposite people looking at those characters through a new lens," Dandridge, who reprises the role of Marlene in the small screen adaptation told Collider.
"Bella and Pedro’s Ellie and Joel have a different twinkle than Ashley and Troy. It was an absolute privilege to be able to open my eyes, open my spirit, and let Marlene experience and breathe them in, in a new way. I was able to walk out scenarios in her life and her experience that had only existed in my imagination, having built the character 10 years ago, and that was a true delight."
"I had so many questions, and Craig was right there with me. He was like, 'This is what I like about this, and this is what I think we can adjust,' and he was FaceTiming with Neil, the entire time, so that we were all in this conversation, making sure we got it right."
