Melanie Lynskey won’t be body-shamed — particularly not about her latest HBO hit.
The “Last of Us” actor addressed a since-deleted tweet Wednesday from “America’s Next Top Model” alum Adrianne Curry, who shared a photo of Lynskey and said: “her body says life of luxury...not post apocolyptic warlord. where is linda hamilton when you need her?”
Fans of the original 2013 video game have likely noticed that Lynskey’s character, Kathleen — who heads a revolutionary movement in the battle against the FEDRA military regime — is an original figure specifically created for HBO’s popular TV adaptation.
Lynskey thus had no time for Curry’s comparison to Linda Hamilton’s trim “Terminator” protagonist.
“Firstly- this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us,” Lynskey tweeted with a screenshot of Curry’s deleted criticism. “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA.”
“I am supposed to be SMART, ma’m,” she added. “I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”
Curry claimed in a follow-up tweet that Lynskey “cropped out what I said about her perfect hour glass frame being the most desirable to men,” and called Lynskey’s screenshot “manipulative.” She also tweeted: “actors cant allow people to not like their characters? I am DONE.”
Lynskey later offered a series of tweets about the struggles faced by women in male-dominated industries, in what may have been a response to Curry’s initial criticism.
“Women, and especially women in leadership positions, are scrutinized incessantly,” Lynskey wrote in one of the tweets.
“I was excited at the idea of playing a woman who had, in a desperate and tragic time, jumped into a role she had never planned on having and nobody else had planned on her having, and then she actually got shit done,” she wrote in another.
Neil Druckmann’s award-winning game earned widespread praise and became one of the best-selling console efforts of all time. Its premise, of a man and a young girl navigating the U.S. after an outbreak has turned people into zombies, was certainly up showrunner Craig Mazin’s alley.
“Druckmann is without question the finest storyteller working in the video game medium, and ‘The Last of Us’ is his magnum opus,” Mazin told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020. “Getting a chance to adapt this breathtaking work of art has been a dream of mine for years.”
That dream ultimately garnered 7.5 million viewers for Sunday’s episode, the fourth of the series, per the Los Angeles Times. This was not only 17% higher than the viewership for the third episode, but a stunning 60% higher than the series premiere in January. For Lynskey, subverting expectations is what it’s all about.
“I understand that some people are mad that I’m not the typical casting for this role,” she tweeted Wednesday. “That’s thrilling to me. Other than the moments after action is called, when you feel like you’re actually in someone else’s body, the most exciting part of my job is subverting expectations.”