Bella Ramsey has stated in a recent interview that she wishes people would stop calling her a "powerful young woman," after she came out this year as non-binary.
The 19-year-old British actress has been open about her experiences on the set of HBO Max series The Last of Us, which is loosely based on the video game of the same name.
It's centered on a smuggler (played by Pedro Pascal) who is tasked with transporting a young teenage girl named Ellie (played by Ramsey) who is believed to be immune from a fungal virus that wiped out civilization several decades earlier.
While the show has been wildly successful - breaking several IMDb records, per Screen Rant - Ramsey received a ton of backlash following news that she was set to be cast as a main character.
Check out this trailer for The Last of Us:Many fans of the video game hit out at the fact that Ramsey apparently didn't look like her character in the game. In an interview with The New York Times, the actress called out the toxicity, saying that her appearance shouldn't matter at all.
"It's the first time I've ever had a negative reaction to something," she stated, adding: "There would be times I'd find it funny. Then I'd get to the end of a 10-minute scrolling session, put my phone down and realize: Maybe that was a bad idea."
"It's only recently that I've accepted I am Ellie, and I can do it, and I am a good actor," Ramsey - who portrayed Lady Mormont in Game of Thrones - said. "But this will last for a few weeks and then I'll think I'm terrible again. That's just the process."
The show's creators, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, evidently disagreed with what the haters had to say, with Druckmann telling The New York Times that he was amazed with how well Ramsey performed in her audition. "We were looking for a specific combination of contradictions: Someone that can be funny and quirky, and violent and rough. I didn't see Bella acting like Ellie - I saw Ellie," he recalled.
Since coming out as non-binary, Ramsey has revealed that she wore a chest binder "90 percent" of the time for her role as Ellie on The Last of Us. In a recent interview with GQ UK, Ramsey stated that this allowed her to focus on set without having to focus on her appearance.
She also discussed how her co-star Pedro Pascal - who also appeared in Game of Thrones - had meaningful conversations about gender and sexuality. Pascal's sister is trans, and Ramsey shared that she felt he was "super supportive" of her throughout their time filming the post-apocalyptic drama series together.
The teen - who has chosen to use she/her pronouns in recent interviews - also spoke about how she's bothered more about being called a "young woman", rather than being gendered. "This is what bothers me more than pronouns: being called a 'young woman' or a 'powerful young woman', 'young lady,' but I'm just not [that]," she said.
"Catherine Called Birdy, I was in dresses. Young Elizabeth, I was in a corset. And I felt super powerful in that. Playing these more feminine characters is a chance to be something so opposite to myself, and it's really fun," she revealed.