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On a cool morning in late March, the actress and singer Isabela Merced was walking BonBon, her Chihuahua, on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. \u201cHe likes to be behind you,\u201d she warned after we became tangled. Her dog Pluto, whom she adopted in Australia while shooting \u201cDora and the Lost City of Gold,\u201d had stayed home that morning. Pluto was rescued with three legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe tried to jump over a fence that wasn\u2019t completely done,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
In Season 2 of the hit HBO series \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d which began on Sunday, Merced plays the new character Dina, a wry, flirty, tough-talking orphan who loves killing clickers, the most afflicted of the show\u2019s fungus-infected zombies. \u201cThat\u2019s her hobby!\u201d Merced said.<\/p>\n
Dina also has a thing for Ellie (Bella Ramsey), her killing partner. In the season\u2019s first episode, their relationship heats up with a kiss during a dance at a holiday party, as Dina\u2019s on-again-off-again boyfriend Jesse (Young Mazino) \u2014 and much of the rest of the town \u2014 watches from the sidelines. Dina seems positively gleeful to play the provocatrice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to imagine that\u2019s how I would be in the Apocalypse,\u201d Merced said of her character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Will Ellie and Dina\u2019s love last? \u201cI would love to tell you everything!\u201d she said. Because of some major plot twists, however, HBO has kept a tight rein on what it shares with journalists about the new season \u2014 and on what its stars can talk about.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love<\/em> talking,\u201d she said, \u201cSo yeah, it\u2019s been very hard for me.\u201d<\/p>\n After a run of critically applauded but less-visible roles, Merced, 23, may be at a turning point with \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d a hugely popular and award-winning series in which she plays a starring role. (Its first season became HBO\u2019s most watched debut season and garnered 24 Emmy nominations, winning eight.) Dina is central to the second season\u2019s vengeance-driven plot, her humor and sarcasm a coping mechanism in a postapocalyptic world overrun by hordes of mushroom-headed zombies.<\/p>\n Merced was staying at a nearby hotel to better facilitate a string of press engagements, and we had agreed to meet early for a meal at Great White, a popular brunch spot recommended to her by a friend. (Merced lives in the Valley.) BonBon still needed a walk, so I suggested we walk around a bit before lunch so we could talk and check out some of the local shops. Merced and BonBon both were game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n On that morning, Merced could still move through the world relatively anonymously. As of Sunday, that may have begun to change. And it may change even more this summer, with her role as the mace-wielding Hawkgirl in the James Gunn reboot movie \u201cSuperman.\u201d After 2025, a reporter may never get to spend such a leisurely morning in public with her and BonBon again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been sitting on this secret for a while,\u201d Craig Mazin, the series co-creator and showrunner, said later by phone. \u201cAnd the secret is that Isabela is a big S star, and people are about to find out.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Merced\u2019s career began in earnest when she was in grade school, she has increasingly received attention in recent years for lead roles in little-seen films, like the 2024 film \u201cTurtles All the Way Down<\/a>,\u201d and for small roles in bigger ensemble films like the 2022 \u201cFather of the Bride<\/a>\u201d remake. (Her early credits are as Isabela Moner, her birth name; she chose a stage name in 2019 that honors her maternal grandmother.)<\/p>\n She was often described as the best thing about \u201cDora,\u201d in which she played a teenage version of the intrepid young explorer. The New Yorker critic Anthony Lane called her performance with Benicio Del Toro in \u201cSicario: Day of the Soldado\u201d an \u201cabsorbing double act,\u201d likening them to John Wayne and Natalie Wood in the John Ford western \u201cThe Searchers.\u201d<\/p>\n The actress is \u201cterrific,\u201d Lane wrote, \u201cand her character\u2019s fortunes can be read in her eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As BonBon took a bathroom break just off Melrose, Merced peeked through the tinted front window of Scott Free Productions, the production company behind last year\u2019s \u201cAlien: Romulus.\u201d (We had discovered it was nearby on our phones.) In that movie, Merced found herself in a series of cramped, goo-filled spaces \u2014 \u201cI\u2019m very claustrophobic,\u201d she said. At one point, she gives birth to a mutant hell-spawn after injecting herself with juice harvested from dead face-huggers.<\/p>\n It was fun, she said: \u201cThe only time I didn\u2019t have fun was when I was, like, screaming for 12 hours straight, or giving birth to a baby alien.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Back on Melrose, we ducked into Byredo, a fancy perfume shop. \u201cI find smell to be really evocative,\u201d she said, so we sampled a bunch, beginning with one called Bibliotheque. \u201cWhat does \u2018library\u2019 smell like?\u201d Merced mused. She sniffed it, then held it out. \u201cOoh, smell this one,\u201d she said. It smelled a bit like leather, but sweet.<\/p>\n After she sampled several more and asked my opinion on each, I admitted to having a pretty lousy nose for scents. She paused. \u201cOoh, smell this one!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n By phone, Ramsey confirmed Merced\u2019s outgoing nature, citing all the times Merced had tried to convince Ramsey to go out while they were filming in Vancouver. \u201cIsabela was always trying to get me out of the house,\u201d Ramsey said. \u201cShe\u2019s so fun to be around, and she kind of forces everyone else to have fun, too.\u201d<\/p>\n We headed back to Great White, where a table was waiting; Merced Googled what to eat. \u201cIt says \u2018best banana bread ever!\u2019\u201d she read. BonBon checked out a dog at the next table.<\/p>\n \u201cI like to share food,\u201d she said. \u201cDo you like to share food?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think eating is probably the single best thing we can do as humans, especially eating together,\u201d she added. \u201cIt\u2019s like my favorite pastime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Between bites, Merced explained that when she learned that Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the show\u2019s other creator, wanted to meet her, she figured it was for a small role.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought maybe I was going to be one of the villagers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Instead, she was given the role of Dina on the spot, based largely on her performance in the \u201cSicario\u201d sequel \u2014 no audition, no chemistry read with Ramsey.<\/p>\n \u201cAuditions are cool, but they\u2019re never really real, and sometimes you just need to go by instinct,\u201d Mazin said. \u201cWe went by instinct there, and our instinct was spot on.\u201d<\/p>\n Merced is excited about the \u201copposites attract\u201d relationship between Dina and Ellie, and about playing a major L.G.B.T.Q. character drawn from a hugely popular videogame series. \u201cI\u2019ve been queer my whole life, so I never really thought about it,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I remember playing the game and seeing the scene in the dance and thinking, That\u2019s so cool.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Ramsey, who was cast in \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d at 11, Merced has spent most of her life performing: Growing up in Cleveland, she did community theater at 6; Broadway at 10, alongside Ricky Martin in \u201cEvita\u201d; and starred in the series \u201c100 Things to Do Before High School\u201d at 13.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve both grown up in the industry, and so we definitely bonded over being kids growing up on sets,\u201d Ramsey said. \u201cShe\u2019s very, very smart, very academic, so we bonded over a shared love of learning too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Merced, too, noted the sense of kinship. \u201cBella\u2019s introverted, I\u2019m extroverted, but we both have the same work ethic,\u201d Merced said. \u201cI definitely wanted Bella to be more of a diva on set, because if you\u2019re not kind of a diva, people will walk all over you. So we were advocating for each other constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Asked if she had a five-year plan, Merced said she did. \u201cI actually wrote down a list this past full moon,\u201d she said. \u201cGo to more live concerts, give more hugs, be more present, take more pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, and love more freely!\u201d she added.<\/p>\n She also looks forward, she said, to people finally getting to see \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d and is excited about her turn as Hawkgirl in \u201cSuperman.\u201d In the comics, Hawkgirl is a fierce warrior with superhuman strength, an arsenal of medieval weapons and enormous wings. Taken together with her \u201cLast of Us\u201d role, the fierceness seems to be a pattern.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny, because people see me and they\u2019re like, What a small, cute little girl!\u201d she said. \u201cBut I actually see myself as a very strong person. I see myself as an intimidating individual. So it\u2019s going to be nice for people to maybe see me the way I see myself for once.\u201d<\/p>\n Additional camera operator: Pilot Lee<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n