Before taking her front-row seat at Maria Grazia Chiuri’s autumn/winter 2023 Dior presentation, Bella Ramsey had been to Paris precisely once, under decidedly less glamorous circumstances. “I had to do a layover here when flying back from Canada after The Last of Us shoot,” she recalls from a suite at Le Bristol, where she’s retreated post-show for pastries before catching the Eurostar back across the Channel. “I adopted a dog in Alberta named Skipper, so had to come home via France for that reason.”
Besides helping Skipper to adjust to life back on home shores (and happily eating so much bread she’s “worried she’s made herself gluten intolerant” over 24 hours in Paris), little has changed about Ramsey’s day-to-day-life since The Last of Us became one of the most-watched series in HBO history following its premiere in January. “I guess I get recognised more consistently; it used to be once every three weeks, now it’s every time I go out,” she admits, sounding almost bemused. “I’ve tried to keep everything as normal as possible though.”
It’s a line trotted out by most stars on the rise, but with Ramsey it’s inarguably true. She is so down-to-earth, it’s disarming. Her stylist, Fabio Immediato – who also works with Pedro Pascal – is the one who told the 19-year-old via text that she had been invited to the Dior show (“very cool!”) and helped her to select a look from the house’s spring/summer 2023 collection: a corset and sweatpants printed with an archival map of Paris featuring Avenue Montaigne at its centre. “It was completely crazy – I had no idea what to expect,” Ramsay admits of stepping out at the venue. “I was going into it completely blind. The crowds when I was walking out of the car! Like, I thought I was just going to walk in, watch a show, and leave?”
Fortunately, despite the vaguely surreal nature of her first Paris Fashion Week appearance, her outfit made her feel “super comfortable”, a non-negotiable for the Nottingham native as she stares down years of press tours. “I guess it’s important for me to feel emotionally comfortable more so than physically,” she clarifies, noting that she was more than happy to slip into her Dior corset but is still a novice when it comes to facing the flashbulbs. Despite making her acting debut as Games of Thrones’s formidable Lyanna Mormont at the age of 11, she “managed to get away with not doing many promo events; I did, like, one red-carpet event at 15”.
Then came her starring role in the Lena Dunham-directed Catherine Called Birdy, which saw her nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award, and everything started to change. “If it were up to me, I would probably rock up at every event in a hoodie and the mucky trainers that I wear at home, but I realise that’s… not exactly acceptable,” she says, laughing. “I get a lot of my clothes on Depop – I really advocate buying second-hand – and my style essential is probably a pair of calf-length white socks from Nike. But I do have to make sure that I feel like myself on the red carpet. I’ve kind of been gravitating towards suits so far. I would look terrible in a dress…”
It’s easy to imagine Ellie – Ramsey’s character in The Last of Us – expressing similar sentiments if she lived in 2023 as we know it rather than an alternative dystopia where civilisation has unravelled after a devastating fungal pandemic. Ramsey spent almost the entirety of a year-long shoot in Alberta wearing the same outfit: a long-sleeved T-shirt “to cover Ellie’s bite mark”, a pair of Eddie Bauer jeans, and some red Converse. “It got to the point where coming onto set in my own clothes just felt wrong; I even bought my own pair of Eddie Bauer jeans so I could keep wearing them after we wrapped filming.”
If the wardrobe demands of The Last of Us were minimal, the psychological intensity of the shoot would have tested actors several times Ramsey’s age. The penultimate episode, in particular, is brutally violent. “It was… exhausting,” she reflects, “but those were some of my favourite days on set. That sounds really masochistic, but it’s the scenes that break me that I love the most, in a way.” As for what she thinks people will make of the series finale in March? “It’s going to divide people massively – massively.” Let the Twitter games begin.
