Kaitlyn Dever was Hollywood's best-kept secret. Those days are over now
Kaitlyn Dever knows the words to the 'Bob the Builder' theme song. She's singing it — we're singing it — which isn't something I expected when preparing to talk with her again after we took a deep dive into the season finale of 'The Last of Us.' But then, even the most meticulous research had failed to turn up that Dever's father, Tim, voiced Bob the Builder, as well as another icon of children's television, Barney the Dinosaur.
'I know, right?' Dever says, laughing. 'Barney the Dinosaur. Crazy.'
Is it a reach to think that's why Dever is having such a blast right now in Australia shooting 'Godzilla x Kong: Supernova,' the latest entry in the Monsterverse franchise? After all, this isn't her first rodeo with a dinosaur — even if this time around, the creature isn't purple or huggable or even tangible, just a green-screen dream.
'I want to meet Godzilla,' Dever says. 'I just don't know if, outside my imagination, I ever will. But that's OK. My imagination is a powerful thing.'
Dever is home in L.A. for a few days, taking a break from filming, enjoying time with her dad and her younger sisters, anticipating her return for good in July when she'll have enough time for, among other things, a meal or three at the venerable Valley Mexican restaurant Casa Vega. She's experiencing serious taco withdrawal right now.
If you've had even a casual relationship with television or movies in the last 15 years, you know Kaitlyn Dever, even if you don't think you do. As a teenager, she got her start playing the gun-toting, pot-growing Loretta McCready on 'Justified' and Tim Allen's daughter on 'Last Man Standing.' She then starred opposite Beanie Feldstein in the thrilling, funny 2019 coming-of-age comedy 'Booksmart,' now part of the teen movie canon, and then gutted viewers portraying a sexual assault survivor in 'Unbelievable' and an opioid addict on 'Dopesick.' Earlier this year, she shined as a cancer-faking Australian wellness influencer in the limited series 'Apple Cider Vinegar.'
All that was a prelude to her turn as Abby Anderson on 'The Last of Us,' playing the young woman who killed Joel (Pedro Pascal) to avenge her father's death. Dever appears in only three episodes of the show's second season, and in two of them, she has just one scene. But if you measured an actor's work by the power emanating from brief screen time, Dever would be the television season's MVP.
'I remember feeling like we were capitalizing on a quasi-secret that shouldn't be a secret,' says 'The Last of Us' co-creator and showrunner Craig Mazin. 'It was the same feeling I had with Bella [Ramsey]. You can't wait to watch the reaction when everyone finally sees it.'
The second season served as a curtain-raiser for both Dever and her character, ending in a reset that will now follow Abby through the warring factions and fungal-infected hordes of postapocalyptic Seattle, bringing her back to that moment when she meets Ramsey's Ellie again.
Both Mazin and Neil Druckmann, co-creator of 'The Last of Us' game, are practically salivating at the prospect of spotlighting Abby, as it will force viewers to reckon with their reactions to her killing Joel.
'Our challenge now is to make you question whether you hate Abby at all and maybe make you start to love her and then be confused,' Mazin says. 'Where are my loyalties? What is the concept of a hero? That requires an actor who can inspire those thoughts without sweating, and we have that in Kaitlyn.'
'That's the experiment of the story,' Druckmann adds. 'What if Abby isn't so horrible? I'm thrilled to watch Kaitlyn bring her version of Abby to the screen because I think people can already see the force she brought to the show in such a short period of time.'
That Dever did all this amid the shattering grief of losing her mother, Kathy, to breast cancer is something that, 15 months later, she still can't quite fathom. Dever flew to Vancouver three days after her mom's funeral. Her first day on set was the scene in which Abby kills Joel.
'When you have a moment like that with an actor, you are immediately bound to them,' Mazin says. 'I would stand in front of a bullet for her.'
For Dever, everything about that day is a blur, and when she finally watched the episode this year, it was like seeing it for the first time.
'Grief does a really interesting thing with your brain,' she says. 'It messes with your memory.'
Truthfully, Dever, 28, didn't want to leave home after her mother's funeral. She didn't think she could do it. It took her father to remind her how excited her mom was when she won the part of Abby. 'I realized there's no part of me that couldn't not do this,' Dever says. 'I had to do it for her.'
Saying that she 'won' the role isn't entirely accurate. When Mazin and Druckmann asked her to drive to casting director Mary Vernieu's Santa Monica office in 2023, Dever went in thinking it was going to be an audition, much like the one she had with Druckmann years ago when there had been talk about turning the game into a movie.
Dever came in prepared to read. It turned out all she had to do was listen. They were pitching her, detailing their plans for the series and Abby's arc and asking her to trust them. She was so shocked that she spent most of the meeting just trying to hold it together until she could get back to her car, call her dad with the news and listen to him freak out.
'He couldn't believe it,' Dever says. 'He had played the game and loved Abby, so this was huge.' She remembers everything about that day, including the 'really big cookie' they gave her when she left. 'I think only just now have I been able to process that it actually happened,' she says, smiling.
Dever stands 5 foot 3 and bears little resemblance to the tall, muscular version of Abby seen in 'The Last of Us' game. Imposing, she is not. And that makes her work on 'The Last of Us' all the more remarkable.
'Abby is so intimidating because of her strength,' Dever says. 'And that comes from her dark and very sad past and how long she has been thinking about killing Joel. That's the energy I was hoping to put across.'
Does Dever consider herself a strong person?
'Mmm-hmm, yeah,' she answers immediately. 'When I think of strength, I think of what has brought you to this moment, how much you've been through and how have you gotten here. It's more emotional, what I consider strength.'
A few minutes later, though, we stumble upon her kryptonite. Dever has two younger sisters, Mady and Jane. She and Mady have been making music together for years and just released a six-song EP, 'I Think We're Lost,' recorded under the banner Devers. It's beautiful folk pop featuring the kind of intuitive harmonies that only siblings can pull off. But, for a while at least, you'll probably only hear it on streaming services and not in a concert setting. Dever hates performing in front of people.
'When you ask if I have strength, I don't have strength in that regard,' she says. 'It's so scary. Maybe I'm working up to it. I don't know. My sister is so confused by the nerves that I have. She doesn't share that nerve thing with me. She's like, 'You literally perform in front of people for a living.' But with acting, I'm playing a character. Onstage with music, there's nothing for me to hide behind.'
But when it comes to songwriting, Dever doesn't want to hide. The last several weeks, she has been pulling out her acoustic guitar and writing songs about her mom for an album she plans to dedicate to her. She writes during her downtime making 'Godzilla x Kong' — there's a lot of downtime on a movie like that — and has come up with seven or eight songs, each playing off core memories. Most of them are upbeat and happy because that's the kind of music that her mom listened to and loved.
'Everyone used to say that she was like a 17-year-old stuck in a 53-year-old body,' Dever says, laughing. 'She had a very youthful quality to her that was magnetic. She approached life with a lot of humor and just wanted to have a good time.'
'And I have to sometimes remember that,' Dever continues, 'because as much as I love the challenge of doing serious stuff and find playing those types of characters therapeutic, there's a place for a Godzilla movie, you know?'
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