Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey preview The Last of Us season 2... set five years after the events of season 1

After the resounding success of the first season, The Last of Us season 2 is all set to debut Sunday, April 13, on HBO. The cast and crew addressed members of the media in person and through Zoom in a recent press conference.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey play the beloved duo of Joel and Ellie— two souls who form an unshakable bond, forged in the apocalypse. The duo grow distant in the years that follow season 1.

Ramsey joked about the rift between Joel and Ellie.

"We just had to not like each other for a bit," Ramsey said.

Pascal chimed in:

"You had to not like me, which came easy."

Bella Ramsey mentioned how any teenager changes over five years, explaining the distance between Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us Season 2. She, however, emphasized that age was just one of the factors.

"So easy. I think that obviously a lot has changed over those five years. Ellie was like 14 and now is 19. And I think in any teenager's life that's always the formative years, so... that definitely informed it. But there's obviously deeper reasons for that for their little rift. And it was kind of, I didn't enjoy the feeling of feeling estranged from Pedro within a scene. It wasn't a nice feeling."

Pedro Pascal noted how difficult it was for him to portray the gulf between his character and Ellie's, on screen:

"On a practical level, my first day on set— I feel like it was a beautiful set up by Craig and Neil— that the first thing that I got to shoot anyway was just [Bella] and I and in kind of an intimate setting. And there's like, an incredibly painful distance between the two of them in the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and f*** around and laugh and stuff like that, and that was incredibly comforting. That was like coming home," Pascal noted.

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Pedro Pascal did not enjoy the distance between Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us season 2

The star of The Mandalorian and Narcos, in addition to The Last of Us season 2, Pascal had a hard time separating reality from fiction.

"My mindset was grateful to being back, and yet, at the same time, it's this experience, more than any other I've had is hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel. In a way that isn't very healthy. And so, I kind of feel their pain and, I suppose, so I suppose I was in an unhealthy mindset," he said.

In a world where the infected roam and threats loom at every corner, the bond between Ellie and Joel is constantly put to the test. Will they grow stronger in The Last of Us season 2? The premiere date draws closer!