Internet cretins threaten voice actress over The Last of Us: Part 2 role.
Towards the end of last week voice actress Laura Bailey found herself facing death threats from scorned fans of the divisive Last of Us: Part 2 because of something her character did in the game’s story. No spoilers, of course, but to talk about this we need to allude at what happens. Laura played the character Abby and Abby did something to another character (who deserved it) and fans didn’t take kindly to it. Now these fans got really pissed off at Laura Bailey, the actress. The actress who voiced Abby. Not at the writers, the story leads, the game director. The voice actress. They sent her highly threatening messages on social media telling her they would track her down and murder her baby among other horrifying threats. Laura didn’t do those things. Laura didn’t decide that the fictional character would do what she did to another fictional character in this video game that is not real. The larger community came out in defence of Laura Bailey including her Critical Role co-stars and the director of The Last of Us: Part 2 Neil Druckmann (who wrote the story so it was all his idea) but this should not have happened in the first place.
Gaming has a hard enough time as it is legitimizing our hobby and when this kind of behaviour is the big gaming news story of the week it hurts the community. It damages our reputation of resolve and standing together because we love something. Laura Bailey did not do anything. She voiced a character. In a fictional story. If those people cannot understand that then they need serious, professional help. We can only hope that these kinds of story do not become the norm in our industry. We want to be proud of our hobby but the sexism, the abuse, the literal death threats to actors over stuff their fictional character did in a fictional story, it all holds us back. Express your opinion on whatever who want to but be reasonable and understanding of what you say and to whom and how that affects them.
