In a new interview with EW, Druckmann and Mazin addressed the choice to not include a more muscular Abby on the show. In short, they cast Dever in the role because she’s a great actor.

“We value performance over anything else,” Druckmann explained. “We need someone to really capture the essence of those characters…. We don’t value as much, ‘Do they look exactly like the character with their eyebrows or their nose or their body?’ Whatever it is. It’s not nowhere on the priority list, but it’s below a bunch of other things that we consider.”

Druckmann also went into detail about how they approached writing the character for television versus the video game. Not having to consider gameplay when it came to casting Abby on the show meant that her physique wasn’t as important a factor this time around.

“In the game, you have to play both characters [Ellie and Abby] and we need them to play differently,” Druckmann explained. “We needed Ellie to feel smaller and kind of maneuver around, and Abby was meant to play more like Joel in that she’s almost like a brute in the way she can physically manhandle certain things. That doesn’t play as big of a role in this version of the story because there’s not as much violent action moment to moment. It’s more about the drama. I’m not saying there’s no action here. It’s just, again, different priorities and how you approach it.”

But there’s more to the change than a simple “games and television are different media” explanation, according to Mazin. He sees Dever’s version of the character as a fresh way to tell the story from the game.

“I personally think that there is an amazing opportunity here to delve into someone who is perhaps physically more vulnerable than the Abby in the game, but whose spirit is stronger,” Mazin said. “And then the question is, ‘Where does her formidable nature come from and how does it manifest?’ That’s something that will be explored now and later.”