Melanie Lynskey responds to The Last of Us spin-off talk

Virgin Radio

12 Apr 2023, 07:19

The Last of Us star Melanie Lynskey has opened up about reports that she pitched a spin-off for her character in the show. 

The New Zealand-born actor played resistance leader Kathleen in the Sky/HBO post-apocalyptic series, which is based on the popular video game of the same name. Her character (spoiler alert) comes to a sticky end in season one, but Variety has reported that she would be up for delving into her past.

“If they wanted to go back and do an origin story, I would be there for it,” she said. “The story of how this woman got into this crazy position would be really interesting.”

However, Lynskey has now taken to Twitter to clarify things.

When a fan excitedly asked the Yellowjackets actor whether a headline which says that she “Pitches The Last Of Us Origin Season” was true, she responded: “No!! It is a very misleading headline! A sweet person on a press line asked would I do an origin story for her, and what am I going to do, say no? I said sure of course! I’d do anything Craig Mazin asked me to do, is the answer. 

“I certainly didn’t 'pitch' this idea,” she said, before adding: “how mortifying”.

Whilst it seems that we won’t be seeing the actor again in The Last of Us, she is currently playing a major part in season two of Yellowjackets. The timeline is split between the mid-90s and the present day, as the narrative follows a high school football team that crashes en route to a tournament, their attempts to stay alive into the wilderness as they descend into cannibalistic clans, and the aftermath of their actions decades later. 

When she joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch recently to talk about the return of the hit drama, she said: “I think the great thing for me is that there's so many middle-aged women in the cast. Near the end of the season, we were doing scenes, and there was me and Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis and Tawny Cypress, and Lauren Ambrose is on our show now, from Six Feet Under, and Simone Kessell, and the six of us are all in our 40s and playing these amazing roles and getting to do these scenes all together. And I just was like, ‘This is heaven, this is amazing.’”

The Last of Us airs on Sky Atlantic and NOW. Yellowjackets is on Paramount+.