American actress Kaitlyn Dever has revealed that Andrew Garfield’s candidness about the loss of his mother helped her come to terms with her own grief.
The 28-year-old Booksmart and Unbelievable star, who appeared in the second series of HBO’s The Last of Us, lost her mother to breast cancer last year, just weeks before filming began. In a recent interview with GQ Hype, Dever shared how Garfield’s emotional honesty in a 2021 interview with Stephen Colbert provided her with unexpected comfort during the most difficult time of her life.
“I would Google it and watch it often,” she admitted, referring to Garfield’s appearance on The Late Show. “Because I always felt like… the worst thing in my life that could happen was losing my best friend. And I always thought that I wouldn’t be able to go on.”
“But then I’d look at Andrew and think, ‘well, his life seems to be moving forwards’,” she said.
Dever, who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, described the devastating timing of her personal loss and the emotional toll of continuing to work so soon after. Just days after her mother’s funeral, she was on set filming a powerful scene in The Last of Us, in which her character Abby recounts the trauma of discovering her father’s body.
“I had just experienced [my loss],” she told the magazine. “Even though death is part of the human experience, we are not meant to be used to grief and watching your best friend die. So that was a crazy line to repeat over and over again because I had just seen her.
“She wasn’t alive any more and I saw her body in the hospital. And that experience is so gut-wrenching. Nothing will ever be as bad as that.”
In the HBO adaptation of the hit video game, Dever plays Abby, a key figure who confronts Pedro Pascal’s character Joel Miller, accusing him of murdering her father. The intense and emotional scene mirrored Dever’s own raw grief at the time.
Garfield, meanwhile, lost his mother, Lynn, to pancreatic cancer in 2019, just before beginning work on Tick, Tick… Boom!, a role that later earned him an Oscar nomination. Speaking to Stephen Colbert in a now widely shared interview, Garfield reflected on the nature of grief, saying: “I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all of the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her, and I told her every day – she was the best of us.”
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For Dever, those words resonated deeply. “He articulated something that I couldn’t,” she said. “It made me feel less alone.”
The Last of Us second series, which debuted in April, also features English actress Bella Ramsey in the role of Ellie, navigating the dangers of a post-apocalyptic world with the help of Joel. The show has received critical acclaim for its emotionally rich storytelling and powerful performances, with Dever’s portrayal of Abby drawing particular praise.
As Dever continues to navigate the early stages of her grief, she says she’s grateful for those, like Garfield, who use their platforms to speak openly about loss. “There’s a strange kind of strength in knowing you’re not the only one,” she added.
Dever’s tribute to her late mother and her ability to channel that pain into her work has struck a chord with fans. Her words serve as a poignant reminder of the unifying nature of grief and the solace that can come from sharing it.
