Melanie Lynskey’stime on HBO’sThe Last of Ushas come to an end. The New Zealand actress played Kathleen Coghlan, an original character created for the show. Instead of encountering a group of Hunters while traveling through Pittsburgh, Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) meet Kathleen and her band of revolutionaries in Kansas City, who have become just as bad as the authoritarian military they’ve overthrown.
Kathleen’s backstory was tied with a character from the game, Henry Burrell (played by Lamar Johnson in the series, Brandon Scott in the game). Within the show’s continuity, Henry traded information about Kathleen’s brother, the previous revolutionary leader, to get medicine for his brother Sam (Keivonn Woodard in the show, Nadji Jeter in the game), leading to Kathleen hunting down both brothers for revenge.
At the episode’s climax, Kathleen and her followers corner the pair, only for a large group of Infected to come bursting out of the ground. Including a Bloater, which is one of the strongest types of Infected in the series. Speaking withEntertainment Weeklyabout filming the scene, Lynskey said that she had never been so astounded by anything in her life.
“They built that cul-de-sac. They just built it next to a studio. It’s huge and there are houses and you could walk into the houses because the set designer and the art director and production designer wanted it to be where you could use any space if you needed to. The level of detail was just crazy. You could have done a close-up on anything and it would’ve been absolutely perfect. There’s no fudging. So even just to see that was so insane.”
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The End of Kathleen
Despite her men getting decimated all around her, including her right-hand Perry (Jeffery Pierce, who played Tommy Miller in the games), Kathleen was still fixated on killing Henry for what he’s done. Only to meet her own end at the hands of a child clicker, played by a “rhythmic gymnast” from Canada named Skye Belle Cowton. Lynskey received specific instructions from showrunner and friend Craig Mazin during an ADR session about the character’s end.
“He wanted it to sound like someone was ripping your throat out. It’s so awful, but that’s how specific he is.”
The swarm of Infected was the most difficult sequence for Lynskey because of the weather. They were filming in the “dead of winter” up in Calgary, Canada, so it was very cold. Fortunately, Lynskey said, “everyone was making sure we were warm enough.” The scene was also the first time that she got to meet Pascal.
“It was my last day of work. I think he literally had been gone on a press tour for the movie that he did with Nicolas Cage [The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent]. So he wasn’t even there and I was just like, ‘Oh, this is your show. Hi!’ It was just us off doing our own thing.”
