PopHorror Let's Get Scared
HBO’s The Last of Us Season 2 has been quite the roller coaster so far. From the devastating death of Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian 2019) to the folks of Jackson, Wyoming defending their community against an army of the infected, there’s been no shortage of action, drama and loss.
At the heart of it all is Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey, Game of Thrones 2016), who has a lot on her plate, to say the least. She must grapple with the murder of her father figure after spending years keeping him at arm’s length, decode her feelings for Dina (Isabela Merced, Transformers: The Last Knight 2017) and face the ghosts her past, including her ex-girlfriend Kat (Noah Lamanna, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2023), who is also a resident of Jackson.
In the game version of The Last of Us, Kat is never seen beyond a few drawings of Ellie’s. The show, on the other hand, brings this character to life in the premiere episode of Season 2, which sees Kat join Ellie, Dina and a few others on a patrol of their community’s surrounding lands. It’s a brief but impactful scene, with Kat exuding frustration toward Ellie for not taking the mission more seriously. Kat’s demeanor begs many questions about her past with Ellie. Was the relationship serious? How did it end? Are there still feelings?
Following their debut in The Last of Us, PopHorror spoke with Noah Lamanna about the thrilling experience of being on the set of The Last of Us (and whether or not Pedro Pascal is as amazing as he seems), their vast background in entertainment, which ranges from puppetry to drag, upcoming projects, including an appearance on Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia, and more.
PopHorror: Prior to landing the role of Kat, were you a fan of The Last of Us?
Noah Lamanna: Yeah, I absolutely was. I watched the whole first season and was eagerly awaiting the second season myself. I don’t game, but I was very much a fan of the show.
PopHorror: How did you come to land the role of Kat?
Noah Lamanna: It was honestly a pretty quick process. I did a tape and a couple of days later, I got a call. It was a whirlwind, for sure.
PopHorror: What was your time on set like working with the cast?
Noah Lamanna: It was awesome. Everyone is really lovely, really welcoming. It’s a very warm set. Everybody makes you feel very welcome, so it was really great being there. Working with [co-creator] Craig [Mazin] is really a dream because it helps you trust your own work. You know that someone with a track record like Craig has is not gonna let you look bad. So if he says, “We got the take,” you can rest assured we probably got the take. That felt really great. And I got to ride around in the mountains and hang out in the snowy wilderness. It was a dream.
PopHorror: Where is the show filmed?
Noah Lamanna: We filmed in a few different places. Most of the season this year was filmed in BC, whereas last season was all filmed in Alberta. But all of that stuff where it’s really, really snowy in the first episode, that’s all in Kananaskis.
PopHorror: Can you talk about your process of getting into the role of Kat? She has limited screen time, but we get a lot of insight into both Kat and Ellie’s past.
Noah Lamanna: It was really fun to sort of play in both worlds. Obviously, when we start out in the first episode, there is a lot that is unsaid and there’s a lot of pieces that you, as the audience, are left to put together about what happened between them, what the relationship was and why the vibe is off now. So a lot of my process was filling in those questions for myself. It was really fun to play in both of those spaces at the beginning where we’re sort of tense and having a real power struggle. And then later in the season, we will get to see a bit of a different side of that relationship. It was really cool to be able to touch a little bit on that arc.
PopHorror: What was the fan response after that first episode aired? Can viewers expect much more of Kat?
Noah Lamanna: Not all of it is out yet, so yes. I mostly try to stay away from the comment section. But I definitely did see after the first episode, I think a lot of people were very excited to see that character get some screen time because in the game, she’s really just mentioned and there’s a photograph of her that appears. But there is no actual character that exists in the game play. So I think a lot of people who were fans of the game were excited to see that character come off the page and come to life a little bit. And I know there are some fans who are hoping that storyline will get expanded a bit.
PopHorror: I can’t wait to see what happens! I’m a little behind on the show, the last episode I watched was the death of Joel…
Noah Lamanna: Are you okay?!
PopHorror: I did not expect that. At all. I never played the game, so I had no idea that was going to happen.
Noah Lamanna: I knew the basic plot points. I knew what happened in that episode, but nothing could’ve prepared me to actually watch it. I was so shaken afterward. I was just staring blankly at a wall and chaotically voice-noting the rest of the cast being like, “Are you guys okay? Are you traumatized after doing that?”
PopHorror: But I have to ask you on behalf of every person in the world…is Pedro Pascal as lovely as he seems from social media?
Noah Lamanna: I’m thrilled to be able to report that yes, he is. From me to the people, I can confirm that Pedro Pascal is everything that you want him to be.
PopHorror: Love to hear it! Now, I’d love to hear more about your background. I understand that it’s pretty multifaceted. You’ve been involved in theater, drag, puppetry. Can you talk about your early days in entertainment and how it’s evolved over the years?
Noah Lamanna: I started dancing very young and singing. I started out in musical theater and then just sort of built on and on more dance disciplines as the years went on, and I did a lot of community theater as a kid and a teenager. And then I went to school for musical theater. That avenue of the industry, that was very short-lived for me. I kind of looked around and said, “I don’t think I can hack it in this specific world.” It’s so high stakes, it’s so intense. You’ve gotta be at an extremely high level of every discipline and just have an incredibly thick skin beyond what you already have to have in other parts of the industry. So yeah, it was a lot and I politely bowed out.
Through the years after that, I did a lot of indie, experimental theater that incorporated a lot of music and movement elements, so I was able to weave my musical theater training into other aspects of my career in different ways, which was really cool. It took me to a lot of different places in the entertainment industry. I worked as a professional puppeteer for a few years.
I started drag kind of on a whim. I went to an open makeup tutorial session and somebody there was like, “Oh, we have this amateur drag competition. You should come and compete.” And I was like, “You know what? Okay, fuck it, I will.” And so I went and ended up winning that competition. It was so sudden. I was like, “Oh, I do drag now.” It was so clear that this is a really important, creative medium for me. It still kind of is the most rewarding medium, I think, because you’re crafting the entire thing from scratch, from the conception, the seed of the idea. Then you’re in charge of the vision, you’re in charge of getting the whole wardrobe together, choreographing the whole thing, directing it and then performing it. It’s like poetry. Each drag performance is like birthing a poem or a song. So that was very creatively fulfilling for me. But I kind of fell off before the pandemic and then after that, I just didn’t pick it back up. If I do again, I think it will be in the context of a one person drag show. My drag is very theatrical and political, which does not make me a good party queen at all. [laughs]
PopHorror: Did you have a drag name?
Noah Lamanna: Yeah, it’s DADDY, all caps. But I do think if we were coming back for a second coming, I would reinvent myself. Who knows?
PopHorror: Do you watch RuPaul’s Drag Race? [Check out our interview with Season 17 contestant Lydia B Kollins here]
Noah Lamanna: I’ve fallen off the last few seasons, but historically, yes.
PopHorror: I understand you’re also an up-and-coming director and are in pre-production for your first short film. Is there anything you can share about that?
Noah Lamanna: It’s my first shot at producing something that I’ve written myself. It’s something that I’ve had in the back of my mind to do for a long time, but never really got up the gumption. I think something just shifted this year and I said, “Okay, we’ve been sitting on this script. Now is the time.” It’s a whole new can of worms, it’s a whole new set of challenges and lessons. I’m just at the very beginning of it, so I’m sure I will learn a great deal as I move through the process.
PopHorror: Would you say that any of your other endeavors, whether it be acting or theater or drag, have influenced this project or are helping you in any way?
Noah Lamanna: Certainly working on camera does because the more time you spend on one side of the camera, the more time you spend seeing what’s happening on the other side of the camera. So if you’re paying attention, you’re learning as you’re working. So hopefully I’ve picked up some pearls of wisdom while I’ve been working on camera.
PopHorror: And then next month, you’ll appear on Ginny & Georgia. What we can expect from your character of Tris?
Noah Lamanna: The character is a stoner, a skateboarder, a tutor, and I think that’s interesting. We usually don’t see those elements living in the same character. You usually get your slack-off stoners or you get your Type A tutors, and I think Tris is right in the middle. They’re very cool, but also studious. They’re very well-rounded as a person. It feels like a fresh take on a type of character that I haven’t seen much of on TV, and certainly it’s a new energy for Ginny & Georgia, where everyone is really going through it all of the time. Tris just comes in as a bit of a breath of fresh air and lets everybody chill for a second.
PopHorror: Would you say the characters that you portray are similar to how you are in real life, or are you getting to play individuals who are completely different?
Noah Lamanna: I’m always pulling parts of myself into the character, or rather pulling parts of the character out of myself. I wouldn’t say I really ever play characters that I have no point of reference for. I always find a point of reference. I think they all kind of live as different iterations of different aspects of your own personality.
PopHorror: What does it mean to be part of back-to-back shows that are spotlighting not only LGBT characters, but also actors?
Noah Lamanna: It’s great! It’s great and I can’t wait to see and be part of more.
PopHorror: Is there anything else upcoming for you?
Noah Lamanna: I have a role in a horror comedy, a Canadian film. It’s called Turn It Up. It actually got into the Frontières at Cannes, which is really cool. I haven’t seen it yet, but I can’t wait to see it. Even when I read the script, the tone of it is so specific and so dead on. It’s so unique and I can’t wait to see it come to life.
PopHorror: Are you a fan of horror? If so, what’s your favorite movie, series, etc.?
Noah Lamanna: I did a stage production of Let the Right One In, which was really cool and a very fun opportunity to do horror on stage, which almost nobody does for good reason because it’s very difficult to land. But I think that show definitely does land it. So it feels like maybe a cop out answer, but Let the Right One In is definitely high on the list. I loved the movie when it came out, which was long before I did the show. And then I watched it again when I was reading for the play and I was just like, “Wow.” I rediscovered how brilliant the film is. It just achieves so much by doing so little. It’s very simple, there’s not a lot of effects, but it’s so compelling. It almost isn’t really a horror film. It’s like a coming-of-age story, a love story, and one of the people in it happens to be a vampire. I loved Assassination Nation. And there’s this film The Other Lamb, it’s like a cult horror film. Raffey Cassidy (The Killing of a Sacred Deer 2017) is in it. I saw it at TIFF a number of years ago. It’s just very visually compelling. I love a textured, spooky atmosphere, and that movie really delivers that.
PopHorror: Can you talk more about being part of Let the Right One In on stage?
Noah Lamanna: It was all very bloody. It was very thrilling to work with so much blood. [laughs]
PopHorror: Sounds like Sweeney Todd!
Noah Lamanna: There was actually a night where, the next day, they were like, “Hey, just a quick thing. You did spit blood onto one of the audience members and we did have to issue them a refund because it got on their expensive designer bag. Maybe just back up a little bit or spray the blood in a different direction in the future.”
PopHorror: That was probably feedback you never received on any other project.
Noah Lamanna: It’s a very specific direction. Don’t spit blood on the audience! But that’s how you know you’re in a fun project.
Thanks for speaking with us, Noah! Catch The Last of Us on HBO each Sunday at 9 p.m. EST.
Photos from The Last of Us by HBO / Liane Hentscher.
Seated photo by Jaqueline Silva.
