The Last Of Us star Kaitlyn Dever has said that Andrew Garfield’s moving words about his grief after his mother’s death helped her deal with her own mother’s passing.
Dever revealed last year that her mother died after a breast cancer diagnosis, weeks before she filmed a scene for the post-apocalyptic HBO drama in which her character, Abby, speaks about the brutal death of her father.
The 28-year-old, also known for Netflix dramas Unbelievable and Apple Cider Vinegar as well as the film Booksmart (2019), told GQ Hype that she has repeatedly watched a 2021 Garfield interview with Stephen Colbert in order to learn how to cope.
She said: “I would Google it and watch it often because I always felt like… the worst thing in my life that could happen was losing my best friend.
“And I always thought that I wouldn’t be able to go on. But then I’d look at Andrew and think, ‘well, his life seems to be moving forwards’.”
In his interview with Colbert, Garfield sincerely talks about love and loss and how art can help people grieve. “I’m indebted to everyone who has brought me to this place so that I can honour [my mum] through my art, and use it as a way to heal; use it as a way to sew up the wounds,” he said.
Garfield, who was born in the US and later moved to the UK, began filming the Netflix movie Tick, Tick… Boom!, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, just after his mother Lynn died from pancreatic cancer in 2019.
He recalled to Colbert that he hoped “this grief stays with me because it’s all of the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her, and I told her every day, she was the best of us”.
Dever also spoke about filming a poignant The Last of Us scene days after her mother’s funeral. In the scene in question, her character Abby tells Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) that she found her dead father’s body shortly after he was shot, as she takes revenge against Joel for the murder.
The actor, who attended London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, said: “I had just experienced [my loss]. Even though death is part of the human experience, we are not meant to be used to grief and watching your best friend die. So that was a crazy line to repeat over and over again because I had just seen her.
“She wasn’t alive any more and I saw her body in the hospital. And that experience is so gut-wrenching. Nothing will ever be as bad as that.”
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