Actor Tati Grabrielle has been connected with Naughty Dog for years now, thanks to her appearances in the 2022 Uncharted film and the ongoing The Last of Us season 2. Her starring role in the upcoming Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophecy is her biggest collaboration with the studio yet, and she says she's been briefed by director Neil Druckmann on all the unfortunate baggage that can come from the worst parts of gaming fandom.
"Neil's been bootcamp-ing me," Gabrielle tells Entertainment Weekly. "I know Troy [Baker]'s experience, I know Ashley [Johnson]''s experience...I know Laura Bailey's experience." Bailey portrayed Abby in The Last of Us 2, and received a shocking - even by the standards of the gaming world - amount of harassment for the role.
Since the release of The Last of Us 2, Naughty Dog has become something of a lightning rod for vile commentary, and while Intergalactic hasn't inspired the same volume of harassers to action, the fact that its lead character is a woman of color has certainly brought some of the internet's troglodytes out of their caves.
"I got a lot of love," Gabrielle continues, "but there was a lot of hate over me being a woman, me being a woman of color, me having my head shaved, all these things that I didn't even actually initially see — I'm out of the social media zeitgeist for that reason — but once I did, Neil was like, 'Ignore it. No matter what, me and you, we're going to make something beautiful. We're going to make something that we're proud of.'"
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