Isabela Merced says 'experience in queer relationships' helped her Last of Us role

Editor's note: This article contains spoilers for episode 4 of The Last of Us season 2.

If season one of The Last of Us was all about Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Joel (Pedro Pascal), season two is about Ellie and Dina, the young woman Ellie meets in Jackson, Wyoming, who soon becomes her best friend and love interest.

Now, in an interview with Variety, Isabela Merced, the 23-year-old actor who plays Dina, has opened up about playing the role and how her own queerness is informing it.

Season 2 of the show sees Ellie and Dina leaving the relative safety of Jackson to go on a journey of revenge up to Seattle. While it's been clear since the beginning of the season that the two girls have a flirtation going on, it's not until this journey that they actually get together.

Along the way, they grow closer and closer until an explosive moment in the latest episode, when Ellie has been bitten by a clicker and reveals that she is immune.

Following Ellie's confession, Dina offers a confession of her own: she's pregnant.

With the truth out in the open, the two young women come together for a kiss and then have sex for the first time.

"I think everything felt so tender that day, even when we were shooting it, Bella and I were just so comfortable with each other. And also, we both have experience in queer relationships — you can just tell when a girl hasn’t kissed a girl before. You can just feel it," Merced told Variety. "So both of us were already fine and comfortable, and so we could really explore. We added some kisses that weren’t in the original script. We added some moments that weren’t there just based off of our comfortability with each other."

She also said that both she and Ramsey wanted the scene to be sexy, "emotional and charged, but also smart."

"Specifically, I wanted Dina to be the one to unzip her own pants, take Ellie's hand, and actively guide it down her body," she said. "Because even though Ellie is technically the one who's on top, I think it's showing they both have agency in this decision to take it to the next step."

Merced also spoke about how excited she is to get to play a queer role as a queer person, especially as one who "no one actually thinks" is queer.

"I just think about people from my hometown who maybe have never seen this side of me watching this and really getting to know me in a way, and understanding me, and them really seeing it on a large scale. And then picturing someone maybe who was like me: Grew up Catholic, shoved down their emotions, and maybe wants to be an actor — because you’d be surprised. There’s a lot of those specific archetypes in Ohio!"

Merced praised the game, and specifically writer Halley Gross, who was brought in to co-write the video game The Last of Us Part II, and joined the writer's room of the TV show for season 2.

"That’s what was so cool about the game and the source material: It was really ahead of its time. I mean, although we have to thank a lot of the lesbian love story to Halley Gross who was brought in for the second game and really was an advocate for Ellie and Dina’s relationship and really took lead when it came to the physicality and the romance of it — because I think Neil didn’t feel like he was the one that was capable of telling that story, or maybe even comfortable with it. So yeah, shout out Halley," she said.

Merced was already out as queer, having told The New York Times "I've been queer my whole life," in an interview from this April.

The Last of Us will continue to air new episodes on Max on Sunday nights until May 25.