Something happens to Isabela Merced when she hears the word “party.” The Alien: Romulus and Madame Web star describes it as a chemical reaction. “I need to make it happen,” she tells Entertainment Weekly. “It doesn’t matter in what capacity, there needs to be a party.”

Someone made the fortunate decision to utter the P word while filming The Last of Us season 2, which will debut Merced as Dina, a new love interest for Bella Ramsey’s Ellie. The actress — or “our little ray of sunshine,” as co-showrunner Craig Mazin refers to her — was on break from shooting episode 3 with her cast and crew in the middle of a muddy field…or was it episode 4? Or was it overlapping material for both of those episodes? Yes, it was the latter.

“I have an ADHD side,” the 23-year-old Peruvian-American star jokes of her thought process. “I think in tree branches as opposed to linearly.” The one thing she remembers most is the smell. “It was manure,” she says. “They were already harvesting and doing the farming things that they do in rural Canada. We were just playing music and dancing [in between takes]. Music was a huge part of our experience.”

The cast would sit around in between takes and perform for one another. Gabriel Luna, who plays Tommy, would strum on the guitar. Merced would sing. “Playlists,” she says, “are my love language.” And she would sometimes perform songs from the one she created for Dina, which Merced describes as “alt rock, alt indie, the occasional ’80s song…then some zombie wordplay.” (“I feel like Dina would do that ironically, make a playlist full of zombie songs in an apocalypse,” she cracks.)

Isabela Merced poses for photos shot by Steven Simione. Steven Simione

When the crew gravitated toward craft services, somebody suggested they all blow off steam after filming some pretty grueling material. (No spoilers!) That’s when Merced mentioned a midway-through-production party. “It caught on fire,” she recalls. “People started throwing ideas out there.” All that was needed was Mazin’s approval. 

“Generally when Isabela comes up with an idea, my response is, ‘Okay,’” he tells EW separately. “Then she came up with the name, ‘The Middle of Us,’ and I was like, ‘Okay now I actually have to call people and make it happen.’ That’s too f—ing good.” 

Production hosted The Middle of Us soirée at a nearby arcade, an appropriate spot for the team behind a video game adaptation. On top of games, a member of the crew served as the official DJ — and he was so successful that he later DJed the wrap party. “Honestly, shoutout HBO,” Merced remarks, “because that big daddy came through and paid for that.” 

Merced is like the social battery of any given group, as her colleagues can attest. When aura levels collectively deplete, bring in this 5-foot-1 reveler for a recharge. That energy is present when EW catches up with her first via Zoom in late May, just as she’s about to embark on an international tour to promote the show’s second season, and again a week later in Los Angeles, where she juggles shooting promos for her other high-profile project this year, Superman (in theaters July 11). Even in a room filled with super stars like David Corenswet (Hollywood’s new Man of Steel), Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Nathan Fillion, Beck Bennett, and more, people are visibly enthused to see her. 

But before both The Last of Us and Superman officially take off, Merced has one goal in mind: “I’m just being an absolute idiot right now publicly,” she says. Recently, she hit up an amusement park to ride roller coasters; she found herself at a beach rave just the other day; and at the Austin-based SXSW Film Festival, she and her Last of Us colleagues met Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster and Elmo, who gave them mushroom cookies. “I’m just trying to do as much as I can in public and be a menace to society before anyone will recognize me,” she says. 

Isabela Merced as Kay in ‘Alien: Romulus.’. Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

This energy is contagious. It’s no wonder creators seem so drawn to Merced, including Mazin, his The Last of Us showrunning counterpart Neil Druckmann, and Superman helmer James Gunn. “Isabela is among the hardest working young actors in Hollywood right now,” Fede Álvarez, her director on Alien: Romulus, writes to EW over email. “Isabela has a big heart and an untamable spirit,” he adds.

Merced’s future The Last of Us character was already on Álvarez’s mind when he wrote the script for Romulus, an experience that coincided with his play-through of The Last of Us Part II. That 2020-released video game, on which season 2 of the HBO drama is now based, ended up influencing Merced’s Alien character, Kay, who joins a young space crew on a mission-gone-wrong that results in face-huggers and xenomorphs.

The Dina of the game is pregnant, an element Álvarez would apply to Kay. “True story,” he divulged on Twitter/X last August. When Mazin and Druckmann then officially cast Merced as Dina in their series, Álvarez admits, “It was a strange but exciting coincidence…I guess whatever I saw in her that reminded me of Dina, the showrunners saw it, too.”

Merced’s journey with Dina began with “an ominous phone call” — or perhaps it was an email, she says. (Right. Memory isn’t linear, it’s branches on a tree.) Mazin and Druckmann wanted to meet with her, so she decided to play the video games blindly without knowing the character she’d audition for. Part II, much like season 2 of the show, is set five years after the events of the original story, which saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie trek across a pandemic-scarred America, dodging the mutated infected and hostile survivors along the way. Dina is a resident of the Jackson community where the pair now reside, led by Joel’s sister-in-law Maria (Rutina Wesley). 

The experience was fruitful, showing Merced an “unbiased view of Dina,” she says, without the outside influence of knowing which character she was up for. The showrunners finally mentioned Dina by name in their first actual meeting with Merced, but she remained skeptical of getting the part. Merced had gone through this process before. “Sure, yeah, yeah…You’re going to make me audition 20 times still,” she thought in the moment.

Isabela Merced as Dina, Bella Ramsey as Ellie in ‘The Last of Us’ season 2. Liane Hentscher/HBO

But her energy, as with many filmmakers before, connected with Mazin and Druckmann. A few more meetings later, and the official offer came through. Merced was shocked, particularly because she hadn’t spent much time with Ramsey before she got to set. Day 1 for Merced was her first day actually acting with her costar. It was a scene from episode 1 where Dina shows up to fetch Ellie from her room in the garage attached to Joel’s house in Jackson.

“Whatever you see there, it was just what was,” Merced recalls of her first moments in character with Ramsey. “We didn’t work on it or do any special sessions.” 

It’s a risk the showrunners had taken before. Ramsey and Pascal never auditioned together prior to landing the roles. Mazin and Druckmann just have a sense about these things, and after an Emmys-scoring freshman season, their instincts seem spot on. They approached the adaptation valuing spirit more so than any strict one-to-one recreation of the game. That also extends to specific story choices.

“Dina in the game doesn’t really have a lot of backstory,” Merced points out. She does point to a scene in which the character explores an abandoned synagogue with Ellie, prompting her to open up more about her Jewish heritage and stories from her past. “It’s devastating and it’s also inspiring, like, ‘My people survived, so I can survive this.’ It’s really beautiful,” Merced remarks of that moment. “We get to expand upon her story a little bit more in this season.”

It’s unclear if her Dina will be Jewish and recreate the synagogue scene from the game, or if the team found a different way to explore the character. Merced isn’t quite sure what she can say on that front: “I will say, though, I really appreciated that sequence in the game because it revealed so much and it made her multi-dimensional and layered and vulnerable. I think the creators, Neil and Craig, will be giving us more of that. I just can’t say how.”

Merced doesn’t want to ignore Shannon Woodward’s contributions to Dina, either. She first met the Westworld alum, who originated the character in The Last of Us Part II, on stage at the Game Awards last December — an annual event that honors excellence in the gaming industry. Woodward’s performance, Merced says, gave her “all the material I needed. I did not neglect a single bit of what she brought to Dina in the process of finding the live-action [version].”

Isabela Merced’s Dina in ‘The Last of Us’ season 2. Liane Hentscher/HBO 

Merced was actually able to meet up with Woodward at world premiere of The Last of Us season 2 in Los Angeles. The actress notes Woodward gave her a “stamp of approval,” which she says was “freaking awesome.”

“On top of that,” Merced continues, “I think I brought maybe a vulnerability that you can’t really feel in a video game, and an openness. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t just the best friend, that she had a little bit more depth. I think Craig did a great job with the writing, but then all I had to do was make sure my heart was open.”

She now hopes the hearts of the audience will remain open when the series premieres. At the same time, she’s fully aware of the society in which we all live. The Last of Us season 1, for example, remained true to the games by introducing prominent LGBTQ+ characters, including Ramsey as Ellie, Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett as Bill and Frank, and Storm Reid as Ellie’s first love, Riley. Ultimately, all the success the show received, including Emmy wins for Offerman and Reid, and nominations for Ramsey and Bartlett, overpowered the homophobic reactions from the public, but they were still there. Now in season 2, the love story between Ellie and Merced’s Dina becomes a prominent aspect of the show moving forward. 

“I mean, it’s kind of my truth, so I don’t see it as a thing even,” Merced, who hasn’t discussed her own sexuality publicly but deplores labels, begins. “The game was made so long ago. Gays have existed since the beginning of time, they were always there. I don’t really see what the problem is. I don’t see what we’re trying to say or complain about. Not only that, it’s just a beautiful story. If anything isn’t successful, I promise you it’s because of the quality of the work, not because of themes. Any theme can be done properly if it’s done by a good artist and executed with care and consideration. I guess everything in this story ends with tragedy. However, in my opinion, this is a successful sapphic story. It’s beautiful and we win in the end. There’s a lot of winning for this sapphic couple. I’m just really, really excited for people to see that.”

As for the inevitable remarks that season 2 will likely trigger from the bigoted peanut gallery, “I’m kind of looking forward to the backlash,” Merced adds. “I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not scared because the gays have existed since the beginning of time. The thing is, if you have the gays, you have the world as well. If you have their support, you are fine.”

The audience reaction to her other big project is another beast entirely. Superman marks the first event film of the new DC universe. Led by Corenswet’s Clark Kent/Kal-El, Brosnahan’s Lois Lane, and Hoult’s Lex Luthor, the movie, depending on whether audiences like it, will set the stage for many other superhero movies to come. Merced’s presence points to that larger world at play.

Isabela Merced as Hawkgirl in ‘Superman’. DC/YouTube

After Dina, she will debut in Superman as Hawkgirl, specifically the Kendra Saunders iteration of the winged, mace-wielding hero. The film’s story centers around the journey of Kal-El as he struggles to reconcile his Kryptonian heritage with his upbringing in small-town Smallville, but the events involve Merced’s Kendra, who enters the fray with Fillion’s bowl cut-sporting Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, as well as Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, who uses tech to fight crime. 

She particularly found a kindred spirit in Fillion, whom she describes as “a grown kid” and big nerd, like herself. “He gave me a lot of fidget toys [on set], so we got along really well,” she says.

Merced is overly cautious about revealing anything that might be perceived as a spoiler. That response comes from personal experience. During a table read with the Superman cast, she sat at her designated spot in front of a place card with her name on it. “I wasn’t even looking at anything else,” she recalls. “I just saw my name and then I saw ‘Hawkgirl, Isabela.’ I was like, ‘F— yeah! I’m going to share this, put it on my [Instagram] Story.’”

She just didn’t connect the dots that the card included a bit more than just her name and character. “I get four calls,” she continues. “I was watching a movie, I think, so I didn’t answer. I was just like, ‘It’s my time.’ Then I finally look at my phone and they’re like, ‘You just revealed the Superman S!’ I go back to my story and I’m like, ‘This wasn’t a stock image?!’ I was drawing that [S] since middle school.” Cue the Arrested Development narration: It was not a stock image. “It was only up for one hour…I was in trouble,” she says. “But yeah, it’s fine. Innocent mistake.” 

Merced got a taste of what it was like to become a big-screen superhero with Madame Web. Brief scenes had the actress suit up in spandex as Anya Corazon, a character destined to become the web-slinging hero Araña and later Spider-Girl in Marvel comics. But the poor box-office reception and critical reviews squashed any future Merced might’ve had to see that arc flourish in movie form.

“I got a taste of the super suit, which was not fun,” she admits. “The tightness and the way you had to make everything look cool, but also aggressive, but also smooth, but also in a tight suit, but also you’re wearing a harness…It’s a lot.”

On Superman, though, virtually everyone was in a super suit. “We all were going through it together,” she says. “We’d use fans on each other to make sure we weren’t hot on the summer days where we’d be in harnesses in the middle of in Cleveland.” Merced had one of the more harness-heavy roles out of her colleagues, sans perhaps Corenswet. “Every scene I’m flying, pretty much,” she notes. “But it’s cool because I’m an adrenaline seeker. I like being dropped from really high heights. It’s actually one of my favorite things.”

Isabela Merced poses for photographer Steven Simione. Steven Simione

Gunn, who also co-heads DC Studios with long-time collaborator Peter Safran, made clear his intent to cast actors who can play their roles across the entire scope of the film and TV slate, both in animated and live-action form. Merced doesn’t want to have any expectations for how long this particular party will go. Again, she’s been through this before, most recently with Madame Web.

“This industry loves to make plans and not follow through,” Merced says. But very much like her personality, she’s up for anything. “If it’s an animated series…I love voiceover,” she remarks. “It’s so much fun and easy and quick and rewarding. Then my little cousins and my little nieces will get to watch it, and they love that stuff.”

She does, too. Merced mentions how she grew up watching the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons, which heavily featured Hawkgirl as a character. As an adult, she ran into Maria Canals-Barrera, who voiced Hawkgirl on those series, at an event. “She was so kind and a fan of mine. I was like, ‘What the hell?!'” Merced comments on that exchange.

Beyond animation, she’s eyeing a Broadway return, years after kickstarting her career on the stage at the age of 10 with Ricky Martin in Evita. “Not a revival. I want to do an original [show],” Merced says. She loves musicals in particular, as evidenced by the six times she watched Wicked in theaters and then however many times more when the film got a home release. “And then on top of that, I want to do a stoner comedy with two female leads,” Merced continues. “I love stoner comedies. However, I just don’t see a lot of women leading them. And I love weed. I would be great for this. And I literally love Broad City. To me, that’s a stoner show.”

Following the tree-branching train of thought, she also wouldn’t be mad to keep making Dora the Explorer movies, after starring as the live-action version of the Nickelodeon cartoon character for 2019’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold. That “randomness,” she says, of being an actor who does so many different things is what she values most. “Michael Peña going from Narcos to Dora, as well. He has range. He does everything,” she says of her former costar. “I don’t think you have to be boxed in, and I hope I’m never boxed in.”

Something tells us that’d be pretty hard for anyone to do.