Kaitlyn Dever, who portrays Abby in The Last of Us season 2, says she wants to "do the character justice"

The Justified star spoke to ScreenRant about the challenges of playing such a divisive character

Kaitlyn Dever is due to take on the role of Abby when season 2 premiers on April 13th and took some time to discuss playing the character in an interview with ScreenRant.

When quizzed on whether she noticed the reaction of fans to her playing the character, Dever revealed that "it's hard not to see those things on the internet". Fan backlash got so extreme that whenever Dever was on set, security had to be increased that day, as revealed by Co-Star Isabela Merced, who stated that "people genuinely hate Abby, who is not a real person".

Despite these challenges, Dever has revealed that despite noticing fan backlash, her focus is purely on playing the character in the way that Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann think is best. She insisted that:

"I want to do this character justice and make the fans proud by bringing her to life in this kind of way. But my main focus was just the collaboration between Neil and Craig, and making sure I was really getting to the core of who she is and what drives her and her emotional state; her anger and her frustration and her grief and all of that. I wanted to make sure that that was what I was focusing most of my energy on"

So, while she has faced unprecedendet backlash given how polarising the character of Abby is, she is fully committed to the role, and we will get to see how that comes to life on screen when the new season releases later next month.