The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey has come out as gender fluid.
Ahead of the series’ debut, she sat down with The New York Times for an interview published online Wednesday and was candid about how she identifies.
“I guess my gender has always been very fluid,” Ramsey said. “Someone would call me ‘she’ or ‘her’ and I wouldn’t think about it, but I knew that if someone called me ‘he’ it was a bit exciting.”
The interview also comes ahead of the Critics Choice Awards, airing Sunday, in which Ramsey is nominated for best young actor/actress for the film Catherine Called Birdy. She explained to the Times how pleased she was to be nominated in a non-gender-specific category.
As for pronouns, Ramsey said she would check “nonbinary” if it’s an option on a form. “I’m very much just a person,” she added. “Being gendered isn’t something that I particularly like, but in terms of pronouns, I really couldn’t care less.”
Before landing the role of Ellie Williams in the upcoming HBO action-drama, Ramsey played Lyanna Mormont in seasons six through eight of Game of Thrones.
The Last of Us, an adaptation of the popular video game, takes place 20 years after modern civilization was destroyed. The series, created by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, follows a hard-case survivor, Joel (Pedro Pascal), who is hired to smuggle a 14-year-old girl, Ellie, across a postapocalyptic, zombie-filled former United States.
When it came to casting Ramsey for the role, Mazin previously told The Hollywood Reporter that he was all in after watching her tape. “Bella felt so real,” Druckmann added. “It was like Ellie realized in live action. It didn’t feel like watching an actor.”
