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Abby, a new character introduced in
The Last of Us Part 2, does not fit the mold. Her face is anchored by a square jaw, which gives her visage a wider look — at least, compared to the heart-shaped face that defines most women in games. Perhaps most notably, Abby is
buff. Your eyes are drawn to her chest and muscular arms, which, according to
The Last of Us Part 2, she worked very hard across multiple years to beef up.
As someone who regularly boxes and plays sports, Abby’s appearance isn’t just familiar to me — it’s aspirational. It’s been baffling to see some of the popular dissenting opinion on the game, which often directed against Abby.
Part of the dislike seems unavoidable:
The Last of Us Part 2 asks you to play as a character who is fundamentally opposed to the heroes we’ve spent hours learning to love and protect. Abby is a hard sell, and that would be true no matter what she looked like.
But much of the hate visible on social media isn’t just about the story and Abby’s likability compared to Ellie and Joel, it’s fixated on Abby’s jacked-up body.
“If you think the ‘normal’ for women is having that kind of musculature and stature, just go outside, man,” one misguided viral Twitter post reads. Posts that feature Abby at all often break down into arguments as to whether or not she’s realistic, and whether or not a woman could actually look like that.
The funny thing is, like
many characters in
The Last of Us Part 2, Abby is partially based on a real person.
This, of course, doesn’t satisfy some detractors — it just changes the debate. Is there enough food for someone in the post-apocalypse to mass up like this? (Yes, the WLF is canonically depicted to have plenty of resources.) Can we really say this is a realistic body type if theoretically you have to train for ages to achieve it? (Realism has no bearing on how
common something is, just whether or not it can be true.)
Perhaps the grossest result of all of this is the insistence that Abby could only look like this
if her character was trans, as if only folks who are assigned male at birth could possibly have big muscles. That conspiracy theory has been debunked by the folks behind the game, but the fact the idea could exist at all reveals something uncomfortable about what limited types of bodies we are used to seeing in the medium.
Abby doesn’t look like most women in games; It’s true. But Abby’s appearance is only potentially jarring because video games lack range when it comes to body diversity, not because women can’t actually look like that.
We can, and we do. I’m glad Abby is here to prove it.
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https://screenrant.com/last-us-2-abby-voice-actor-body-model/
Despite playing a big role in
The Last of Us 2's story, Abby wasn't featured in much of the game's pre-release marketing. Her only appearance was in
The Last of Us 2's infamously brutal trailer at Paris Games Week 2017, criticized for its use of violence to advertise the game. The teaser showed Abby, then an unnamed character, surviving a hanging and near-disembowelment in a dark forest, with the aid of two children, one of which had her arm smashed by a man with a hammer.
The trailer's focus on Abby with little context - and no appearances from series protagonists Joel or Ellie - was a hint that she'd play a major role in the game. It turns out she's one of
The Last of Us 2's playable characters, so players see much of the game's story through her perspective. Here are the people behind Abby's appearance and voice.
Abby (full name Abigail Anderson) is portrayed by prominent voice actor Laura Bailey. Bailey is known for her work as Vex on
Dungeons & Dragons web series
Critical Role and as
Nadine Ross in Naughty Dog's own Uncharted 4 and
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, among many other video game and television credits. Bailey also provided the performance work for Abby, including facial and motion capture in
Naughty Dog's studio. Abby's face itself came from a different person at Naughty Dog:
Jocelyn Mettler, a Support Visual Effects Artist on
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, served as Abby's face model while she was at the company (though she now works for VFX studio
Beyond-FX). Following Abby's first appearance in the 2017 teaser trailer,
The Last of Us 2 Director
Neil Druckmann reportedly posted the following image on Instagram, citing CrossFit athlete Colleen Fotsch as Abby's body double.
While Abby's muscular build definitely appears to be based on a professional athlete like Fotsch, Druckmann has since removed the post from Instagram, so Fotsch's role in
The Last Of Us 2's production may not be officially confirmed.
