The Last Of Us star dishes on hit show's ‘hot' new sex scene
Late in this week's episode of the HBO hit, the two young women finally open up to one another, revealing their deepest secrets and true feelings for one another. It's a veritable emotional rollercoaster for the characters that naturally crescendos with a steamy scene that The Last Of Us star Isabela Merced thinks is a 'long time coming.'
WARNING: Spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2 Episode 4 below.
This week's episode of The Last of Us finally sees Ellie and Dina hooking up after a near brush with death. The two girls finally arrive in Seattle, where they initially hole up for the day in an abandoned music shop in what we'd recognise — but they don't — as a queer neighbourhood. It's here that Bella Ramsey gets to play out the iconic 'Take on Me' scene from The Last of Us II video game as Dina watches on, totally enthralled.
Later in the episode, Ellie and Dina begin exploring the city in their quest to track down Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and her cohorts. After running into a W.L.F. team, they run into the underground tunnels for safety. Unfortunately, that area is overrun by Infected. As Ellie and Dina make their escape, Ellie puts herself in harm's way to help save Dina. In doing so, though, she gets bitten. Dina immediately assumes the worst, that she will now have to kill the friend she secretly loves before that friend turns.
There's a tense showdown wherein Ellie pleads for her life by admitting she's immune, offering to sleep on the other side of the theatre they're sheltering in. After hours pass and it's clear Ellie is fine, Dina accepts the miracle that's been given her. She admits her secret, that she's pregnant, and then kisses Ellie. The two immediately have sex in a sequence that is sweet, scintillating, and brimming with real romantic passion.
'I definitely was super excited for that scene,' Isabela Merced told DECIDER earlier this week. 'I feel like it's so necessary and it's so hot and really feels placed correctly in the sequence.'
'On top of that, it looks really spur of the moment and passionate and random, but every single movement from the jacket to the belt to the 'this' and 'that' was really calculated and it was very choreographed.'
Merced explained that she and Ramsey wanted to ensure 'every movement was authentic to the characters themselves.' They didn't want anything to feel out of place. Moreover, Merced revealed they worked hard to add 'physical consent as opposed to just verbal' in the scene.
'I think at one point I nod. At one time I move Ellie's hand down. Like it's very calculated and thought-through,' she said.
Merced also explained that part of what takes so long for Dina to admit her feelings is the fact that she doesn't know about bisexuality. 'I think she's under the impression — the imposed impression — that she is straight,' Merced said, referring to Dina's later memory of her own mother denying her feelings for both boys and girls.
'I don't think it's a manipulative thing. I think it's just spur of the moment, heated, and inevitable in a way,' she said. 'You know, I think they keep finding themselves drawn to each other in a really beautiful, romantic sense.'
Merced also confirmed that Dina's been aching to kiss Ellie again since New Year's. 'No, yeah, the tension's been there for sure,' she said. 'Yeah, I really think that was a long time coming.'
Ellie and Dina might be officially a couple now, but there's a war brewing in Seattle, and Abby is still out there. Will their romance be a positive for them on the mission? Or will it make any inevitable violence all the more tragic?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
7 hours ago
- Perth Now
Bella Ramsey wants to play Spider-Man
Bella Ramsey wants to play Spider-Man. The 21-year-old star was asked if they would be interested in joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe like their The Last of Us co-star Pedro Pascal, who recently starred in The Fantastic Four: First Steps and admitted Spider-Man or a completely new superhero would be something they would consider. When asked by Variety: 'You didn't call [Pascal] and say you wanted to be in the next MCU movie?', Bella replied: 'I don't know about that. I could be Spider-Man. Tom Holland did a great job though. So maybe they do need to make a new [superhero] for me.' Bella also admitted they have only ever watched one superhero movie, an Andrew Garfield Spider-Man film. They said: 'It was the first time I watched a Marvel film, and that was two months, three months ago. Incredible. I loved it.' Meanwhile, Bella also wants to work on a 'heist movie' with Pascal, following their work together on The Last of Us. Bella said: 'I think maybe like a heist movie where we're robbing a bank together.' And Bella admitted they are constantly asked questions about their former co-star, saying: 'It's, 'How is Pedro Pascal? Is he as nice as he seems?' That's mostly what people ask me, and the answer is, 'Yes'.'
Perth Now
15 hours ago
- Perth Now
Sarah Jessica Parker dips into her Sex and the City ‘archive' wardrobe for parties
Sarah Jessica Parker dips into her Sex and the City 'archive' wardrobe when she dresses for parties. The actress, 60, played Carrie Bradshaw on the hit HBO show on and off since 1998 and has now admitted she has occasionally worn clothing from the character's iconic collection which she has amassed while playing the relationship columnist. She told People about dong it when she attended a birthday party in England: 'I just did it.' But she stressed it was 'one of the few occasions I've ever pulled from the archive for personal use'. She also emphasised she is 'very thoughtful' when making such decisions, and considers the appropriateness and safety of the occasion to ensure the preservation of the garments. Sarah's connection to Carrie's wardrobe goes beyond occasional personal use. She has retained all of the original costumes, including clothes and furniture, from the Sex and the City and And Just Like That... series. In a December 2021 interview with Vogue, the actress explained she had kept every single item, packed according to season, episode and scene. She expressed interest in one day showcasing the collection in a public exhibit, stating: 'If it's the right place that can do right by what it meant, that it's really about (designers) Molly (Rogers), Danny (Santiago), and Patricia (Field), and maybe it's a bigger conversation that includes something else from cinema too – that's about costumes and stories and women on film.' Her sentiment was echoed during a question and answer session hosted by Threads at il Buco al Mare in Amagansett, New York, on 11 August. The fashion legacy of Sex and the City and its spinoffs has been a defining element since the series' original run from 1998 to 2004, its two follow-up films, and most recently the revival series And Just Like That..., which concluded its latest season on 14 August. Throughout all the projects, fashion has played a significant role for Sarah, as well as her co-stars Kristin Davis (who plays Charlotte York), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), and Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes.) In the series finale of And Just Like That..., costume designers Molly and Danny styled Carrie's final outfit, a voluminous cranberry Molly Goddard crinoline skirt paired with a pink sequined L'Wren Scott cardigan, a vintage plaid coat from London's Portobello Market, a Vivienne Westwood purse, fuchsia heels from the SJP Collection, and a velvet-pink vintage hat. The ensemble served as a maturer homage to Carrie's original pink tutu from the Sex and the City opening sequence.
ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
Films and video games have age classifications. Should books?
When looking for their next book recommendations, Sylvana, 19, and Ellie, 12, don't tend to browse their local library or bookstore. "If I want to get a certain book, I … just look it up on TikTok," Sylvana says. "I'll be like, 'Oh, what's the best book to read?' "We have found a lot of books that we have gotten into from, like, YouTube," Ellie says. However, Sylvana says the recommendations on these platforms aren't always spot on. "I know my little sister, she was reading some books that she shouldn't have been." The growing influence of BookTok, BookTube, and Bookstagram has a researcher concerned about the content young people are engaging with, and they are calling for an industry-wide book rating classification system. "It really is about, 'Don't judge a book by its cover,'" says Emma Hussey, a digital criminologist and child safeguarding expert at the Australian Catholic University's Institute of Child Protection Studies. "Just because there are cartoons on the front, [it] doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be developmentally appropriate for a 12 to 17-year-old," she says. Dr Hussey's latest research looked at 20 books that are popular on BookTok, analysing them for domestic violence behaviours, other violence, including torture, murder and destruction of property, and sexually explicit scenes. "Of those books, 65 per cent of them had these domestic violence adjacent behaviours on the page," she says. "The themes that we were seeing were things like manipulation, intimidation, physical restraint, dubious consent, stalking. "At one point, there was a GPS tracker used … we know that technology-facilitated domestic violence is on the increase. "I think, more so than not, you'll find degradation and put-downs littered throughout also." The algorithm on these platforms is another concern for Dr Hussey, as she says it is often based on popularity rather than reader safety, so it will sometimes push adult fiction towards young adult, or YA, readers. Young adult fiction is a category of its own in publishing and is generally aimed at readers between the ages of 12 and 18. "I know that there's a system that authors use to know whether their books are marketed to a younger young adult audience or an older young adult audience [but] that's not made explicit or clear in bookstores or libraries," Dr Hussey says. Children's book specialist Tracy Glover, a bookseller in Adelaide, says she has noticed a shift in the reading habits of young people since the rise of social media. "The … students from the local schools, often when they come in, they come in with a specific request," Ms Glover says. "It might be something they've talked about or someone's mentioned at school; it might be something that's very current on Netflix or TikTok. In saying this, Ms Glover also believes the young adult collection is clearly labelled, at least in the store she works in, which helps guide young people to age-appropriate texts. "We have a fairly clear boundary just by geographically where the [young adult] books are." Additionally, Ms Glover says her bookstore, like many, has age recommendations on a lot of its YA fiction. These recommendations are guided by staff discretion and databases such as Common Sense Media, which are designed with young people's reading and safety in mind. "It's very rare that we have to say to a reader, 'We're just not sure that's going to be suitable for your age level,' but if we felt strongly enough, we would just give that warning," she says. "The 12 to 14-year-olds, we're very mindful with what they choose and what we would recommend for them. As someone who spends a lot of time in bookstores, Faith, 21, says it's easy to identify which areas are dedicated to YA fiction, and she is concerned about the impact age classifications could have on information. "Hard ratings like, 'You can't read this until you're 'X' age,' I think that's limiting people being able to share ideas with each other," she says. As far as what a classification system might look like in practice, Dr Hussey says we don't have to look far to find models that already exist. "We have implemented these sorts of classification systems across streaming websites, across movies that you purchase in store, so it's not a new system," she says. "It's just about bringing that to this new medium that we've not previously considered before." Young adult author Will Kostakis says the way we experience books is fundamentally different from other media, so taking a classification system built for films or video games and applying it to books wouldn't work. "The thing about books is you can actually go into the emotions of an action — you have a character's thoughts throughout," he says. "You would have the character reckoning with consequences afterwards, thinking about it, living in it. Owen, 18, agrees that books sit in a category of their own. "Movies are a bit different because, obviously, you're watching it play out; reading, it's your imagination and you can just close the book if it's too much for you." The idea of classification also raises questions around censorship. "I think it stretches to a level of potential censorship, whether it be unintentional or not," Owen says. "With films, you have to pay to get it tested and see whether or not it's appropriate or not. "I think for like young independent authors, that might stop them from being able to publish their books … I don't think that's a great thing either." Mr Kostakis shares similar concerns, particularly around who determines how texts are classified. "Would it be parents? Would it be politicians? Would it be booksellers? Would it be, you know, publishers?" he says. "The thing is, publishers and booksellers already choose and engaged parents already choose — they are talking to their kids. "We already have rules in place to protect kids, but that can be exploited, and so when we talk about classifications, I'm always worried about not just the next step, but the step four points down the road. Dr Hussey insists this isn't about sanitising literature, but more about increasing awareness. "This is not about banning," she says. "Censorship is about the denial of access, the stopping of access. "This [classification system] does not push or advocate for the removal of access to content. "It's more about giving respect to young adult readers, flagging content that may not be developmentally appropriate for them at that stage, or they may not be ready for." Ms Glover believes more focus should instead be placed on educating readers. "There has to be some responsibility taken from the reader themselves and then from their support system," she says. Mr Kostakis agrees and says we should expect more from our readers. "I grew up in the era of Twilight, all the teen girls in my life weren't like, 'Wow, I can't wait for a 108-year-old who's posing as a teenager to sweep me off my feet,'" he says. "They are getting the feels and all of the tropes and being like, 'Cool. This is a bit romantic. This is a bit spicy,' but I don't think they're looking at these books as manuals on how to live their romantic lives." For Ben, 20, any form of age classification implies that some topics are inherently inappropriate for kids, which he disagrees with. Instead, he thinks young people should be able to access books that reflect the realities of their day-to-day. "When I was like 15, 16, there [weren't] any books that I felt like the content would be super different from what you just experienced in like your daily life. "You're becoming an adult, so you should be exposed to like everything."
