Bella Ramsey on Career Evolution and Choosing Authentic Roles

As The Last of Us Season 3 approaches, star Bella Ramsey has stated they are no longer drawn to large-scale, high-profile productions like The Last of Us or Game of Thrones.

Shifting Priorities After Major Breakthroughs

“I’m really steering away from … I mean, things like The Last of Us and Game of Thrones,” Ramsey told The Hollywood Reporter.

Ramsey described both series as “absolutely incredible experiences” and acknowledged them as vital “launchpads” for their career. Yet their perspective has evolved: they now seek creative autonomy and narrative authenticity over scale or prestige.

Choosing Projects Based on Story, Not Scale

“Now I’m in this position where I understand the privilege of being able to choose and to do the projects that interest me—even if they have no budget. I don’t care. That’s how I’ve always done it in my career,” Ramsey said.

“When I was a child, my interest was always about whether I like the story—and that’s literally been it from the beginning and continues to be. What interests me now is the same: really human stories that are well-written, that I connect to in some way or that I think are important.”

Portraying Ivy in Sunny Dancer: A New Kind of Challenge

In the same interview, Ramsey revealed that playing Ivy—a 17-year-old with cancer attending “Chemo camp”—in the upcoming film Sunny Dancer felt “actually scarier” than portraying Ellie.

“I was so terrified to play Ivy—way more than I was to play Ellie in The Last of Us—because the world of something like The Last of Us is so … how do I describe it? Ivy is just a normal person in the normal world we all live in, right? [With] Ellie, it’s post-apocalypse. You’re so grounded in the world—and it’s got such character around it and in the landscape. But Ivy felt so scary because I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m just playing a normal person.’ A normal person who has experienced a very difficult thing—but that’s also fairly common and so important to portray sensitively.”

The Power of Unadorned Humanity

Sunny Dancer is a coming-of-age comedy-romance in which Ramsey’s character discovers the camp to be “more inspiring than expected.”

Ramsey emphasized the deceptive difficulty of the role: “There isn’t a world to mask anything or to hide behind. It’s all about Ivy and the journey that she goes on.”

Release Timeline

• Sunny Dancer arrives in theaters on February 13
• The Last of Us Season 3 is scheduled to debut in 2027
• This season may serve as the series finale