The Spotlight
Isabela Merced
THE ALIEN: ROMULUS STAR IS TAKING THE WORLD AND BEYOND BY STORM
WORDS HAYLEY CAMPBELL
Isabela Merced photographed exclusively for
Empire
in Los Angeles, on Friday 24 May, 2024.
Far right:
Feeling the fear as space colonist Kay in
Alien: Romulus.
SAM Mc GUIRE
IT’S A QUESTION many of us have pondered in the middle of the night, but Isabela Merced has lived it: if you had to face a xenomorph or one of the infected from The Last Of Us, which would be worse? For Merced, who plays Dina in the second season of the show and stars in Alien: Romulus, it’s the infected. “[But] it depends what state, right?” she tells Empire, having thought about this extensively —Merced is a deep researcher about all of the projects she works on and played the whole game. “There’s the dumber ones, then there’s the Clickers, then in the game you have the Stalkers… But the Bloaters are ter-ri-fy-ing! Oh my God. My heart’s racing now just thinking about it!”