The Last Of Us Casts A Cis Actor To Play Its Trans Lead

I was about to sign off for the day. My Friday was almost over and I was gonna go to the gym with a cool head and get some gains. Now, I have to end my week writing about the Last of Us HBO show, which historically puts me in a bad mood. And guess what, today’s news is also annoying to me because the show has finally cast actors for the roles of Lev and Yara, the Seraphite brother and sister Abby meets in her side of The Last of Us Part II’s story, and the choice that was made doesn’t give me any confidence in the upcoming third season.

Kyriana Kratter (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) and Michelle Mao (Bridgerton) will play Lev and Yara respectively when the third season premieres on HBO Max. The cause for concern here is that Lev is a trans boy in The Last of Us Part II; Kratter, meanwhile, is cis. According to Deadline, the producers of the show felt she “best embodied the character,” who will still be a transgender boy in the series.

The prospect of cis actors playing trans characters has a thorny history. Actors like Hilary Swank and Eddie Redmayne have won awards for playing trans characters, an act which is often seen as brave for cis actors to undertake. These actors can give great performances embodying characters from a different lived experience, but ultimately this means that a trans actor was denied the job. Kratter may give a splendid performance as Lev in The Last of Us, but the casting of a cis actor as a trans character in a trans-inclusive story, especially when the original game went out of its way to cast a trans actor in Ian Alexander, is a real fucking shame.

As fans of the game will know, Lev’s gender identity plays a crucial role in his story in The Last of Us Part II, which makes this seem like such an obvious misfire on the part of the show’s producers. Showrunner Craig Mazin continuously disappoints me in his constant misunderstanding of the source material, however, so this is just par for the course. Neil Druckmann, the director of the games, is not involved with the third season.