'The Last of Us's Melanie Lynskey defends show and her casting as Kathleen

Every tongue that rises against Melanie Lynskey shall fall — likely at the hands of Lynskey herself. Lynskey, who plays Kathleen in HBO's The Last of Us, responded to negative comments about her character and casting on Twitter, where she discussed why she was so excited to play Kathleen.

Lynskey and her role as Kathleen received criticism from America's Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry, who posted a photo of Lynskey from an InStyle photoshoot. In a now-deleted tweet, Curry said, "Her body says life of luxury...not post-apocalyptic landlord." She compared Lynskey to Linda Hamilton from the Terminator franchise, asking, "Where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?"

Not only did Lynskey call out Curry for using a non-The Last of Us photo to prove her point, she also fired back at her scrutiny of her body. "I'm playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA," Lynskey tweeted. "I am supposed to be SMART, ma'am. I don't need to be muscly. That's what henchmen are for."

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At the time of this writing, Curry appears to have deleted her Twitter account entirely.

Not long after Lynskey responded to Curry, she published a Twitter thread diving deeper into why she enjoyed working on The Last of Us. "Other than getting to work with creative geniuses who I respect and admire (Neil [Druckmann] & Craig [Mazin]) the thing that excited me most about doing The Last of Us is that my casting suggested the possibility of a future in which people start listening to the person with the best ideas," Lynskey wrote.

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"Not the coolest or the toughest person," she continued. "The organiser. The person who knows where everything is." Kathleen is indeed the driving, organizing force behind the revolutionary movement in Kansas City. If she needs muscle, she calls on henchmen like Perry (Jeffrey Pierce). However, she's not above taking matters into her own hands, such as when she shoots a prisoner who is no longer of use to her.

Lynskey took this thread as an opportunity to address how women leaders are often unfairly picked apart — an issue that continues in portrayals of these women in media. "Women, and especially women in leadership positions, are scrutinized incessantly," Lynskey wrote. "Her voice is too shrill. Her voice is too quiet. She pays too much attention to how she looks. She doesn’t pay enough attention to how she looks. She’s too angry. She’s not angry enough."

She continued: "I was excited at the idea of playing a woman who had, in a desperate and tragic time, jumped into a role she had never planned on having and nobody else had planned on her having, and then she actually got shit done."

For her, it was imperative that Kathleen not be the typical gruff, muscle-bound leader we often expect from post-apocalyptic stories. "I wanted her to look like she should have a notepad on her at all times. I wanted her to be feminine, and soft-voiced, and all the things that we’ve been told are 'weak.' Because honestly, fuck that," she said.

"I understand that some people are mad that I'm not the typical casting for this role," Lynskey said toward the end of her thread. "That's thrilling to me. Other than the moments after action is called, when you feel like you’re actually in someone else’s body, the most exciting part of my job is subverting expectations."