It Broke Her, Too

What Kaitlyn Dever does in The Last of Us is devastating. It's nothing compared to what was happening behind the scenes.

- By Katie Heaney

ON A RAINY MARCH morning in Studio City, Los Angeles, Kaitlyn Dever and I meet up to paint ceramic knickknacks. Dressed in jeans, an oversize sweater, and a ball cap, she approaches the task with all the gravity befitting an eldest daughter who has been a working actor since the age of 13. She carefully examines every shelf, privately weighing her options before noticing a few unexpected bongs on the top one. “What if I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, that’s what I’m going to do’?” she jokes. She ultimately chooses a doughnut-shaped box, which she opts to paint in Mardi Gras colors. “I’m the most indecisive person, especially when it comes to crafts,” she says. “But I feel like you've got to go all out here.”

A few years ago, one of her two younger sisters suggested she take up pottery as a hobby. “I spend a lot of time working and then doing things for work and then worrying about work and life stuff combined,” Dever says. “My capacity to calm down was sort of gone. She was like, ‘You can just do something for fun.’”

Directly behind our painting station is the Radford Studio Center, where for a decade Dever played the tomboyish Junior ROTC member Eve Baxter, Tim Allen's youngest daughter (and closest ally) on Last Man Standing. Dever simultaneously clocked four seasons on Justified as the drug-dealing teen Loretta McCready, and she has worked nearly nonstop since both shows wrapped, most notably opposite Beanie Feldstein in the high-school comedy Booksmart and as the star of multiple streaming series, including Unbelievable, Dopesick, and Apple Cider Vinegar. The 28-year-old has developed an impressive range, playing everything from a shy virgin to a wellness scammer to, now, on HBO's prestige drama The Last of Us, a stone-cold killer. “I'm convinced she’s our Meryl,” says Feldstein.

In assuming the famously maligned role of Abby Anderson in