TAKE ON ME

Storm Reid Fires Back at ‘The Last of Us’ Anti-Gay Backlash

“It’s 2023,” the actress said. “If you’re concerned about who I love, then I need you to get your priorities straight.”

Storm Reid isn’t worried about anti-gay backlash to her one-episode appearance in The Last of Us Episode 7, “Left Behind.” In fact, she expected it. Like her co-star Bella Ramsey, however, she’s got a simple recommendation for anyone who doesn’t like their story arc: “If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”

“It’s 2023,” Reid told Entertainment Weekly during a recent interview about the episode. “If you’re concerned about who I love, then I need you to get your priorities straight.”

The Last of Us, HBO Max’s most recent viral drama, takes place years after a zombie apocalypse. The outbreak is not an infection, but instead a fungus that takes over a person’s body, keeping it alive for years as a host. The series finds Pedro Pascal once again playing the reluctant escort to a young person whose survival could be essential to saving the world. (Between this and The Mandalorian, he’s got a great babysitting resume!)

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Reid appears in the show’s seventh episode, “Left Behind,” which flashes back to Ellie’s FEDRA training. Reid plays Ellie’s best friend, who wound up leaving Boston to join the Fireflies—but not before an extremely memorable night out that culminates in their first kiss. Speaking with Variety, Reid said she couldn’t understand “being concerned about who people love.”

“We are telling important stories,” Reid said. “We're telling stories of people's experiences, and that's what I live for. … [W]e are telling stories of people who are taking up space in the world.”

Representation was at the heart of what first drew Reid to the role. As she told Entertainment Weekly, “I’m not only representing women. I’m representing young Black women and I'm representing young queer women that are experiencing new feelings and new relationships. … There’s just so much that goes into the complexity of what the episode is.”

During a recent interview with The Daily Beast about the episode, director Liza Johnson said that although the episode stands apart from the rest of the season tonally, it asks questions that underpin the entire season: “How do you form bonds? Who do you love? What is love? What are the shapes [love] can take?”

“I tried to lean into what was happening in each scene and [tried] to value something that I think Craig [Mazin, co-creator of The Last of Us] is really good at,” Johnson said. She added later that one of her favorite aspects of Mazin’s previous HBO series, Chernobyl, was “all the work that's between the lines.”

“With talent like Bella and Storm, it's very rich in between the lines,” Johnson said. “It turned out really special.”

Episode 7 was not the first in The Last of Us to inspire backlash. Nick Offerman, who plays a gay man putting his life back together after the apocalypse in the show’s third installment, hit back like Reid did after his episode got review-bombed on aggregator sites.

On Twitter, the actor quoted a user’s negative remark and wrote, “Buddy, your brand of ignorance and hate is exactly why we make stories like this.”

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Laura BradleySenior Entertainment Reporter

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