TheLastOfUs’s Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin break down the season finale, the importance of Ashley Johnson, what to expect from Season 2, and more.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of The Last of Us.]Over the course of its first season, the expert storytelling, stunning performances, and truly human moments that end in triumph or tragedy have not only made the HBO series The Last of Us an excellent representation of the popular video game its based on, but have also made it one of the best TV shows of 2023.
DRUCKMANN: We took a very high level approach and looked at the action across the board, and every piece of action, if you look at the show, has to move character in some way. If it doesn’t move character and it was only there for spectacle, then it was an easy cut for us. When you play the game and it comes to the final decision that Joel makes to shoot the doctor, you have to make that active decision, or at least be complicit in that active decision because you literally can’t get past that scene without shooting the doctor.
MAZIN: It was difficult. Calgary is but one of the places in Alberta that we filmed. We were in Edmonton, and then we were everywhere else. We were in Olds, High River, Fort Macleod, Lethbridge, Grand Prairie, Canmore. I’ve become an expert in the map of Alberta.
You gathered a range of talented directors from different artistic worlds. How did you choose which director should shoot which episode? DRUCKMANN: The short story of the origin of that little sequence is that, when we’re wrapping up the game, there were these opportunities to do other pieces of storytelling to help promote the game. We did this comic book, called American Dream, and that’s where we developed Riley, which later turned into the Left Behind additional chapter, and there was an opportunity to do an animated short.
DRUCKMANN: There was some stuff written for the mom and the dad, for the game studio, to potentially do an Anna game, the climax of which was this scene. I’m reluctant to say anything about it because, as I’ve now found out several times, stories that I think are failures and that will never see the light of day, sometimes see the light of day.
MAZIN: We were talking a lot, the three of us – Merle and Neil and I – about the nature of Marlene’s relationship with Anna. Merle had her own thoughts, and Neil had some ideas. We were just moving around and around. Where we landed, and I think it was the right choice, was to not let us in on too much of it beyond, “How long have we know each other? All our lives.” That’s what mattered. The circumstances of it were not important. It was the length of the investment.
MAZIN: Neil was never the guy who said, “No, we have to do it the way it was in the game.” I was that guy because I’m a fan. In the smartest, most generous and flexible way, Neil was always open to the process of adaptation. He understood what adaptation meant. And it wasn’t like he was suggesting, “You know, we shouldn’t do the giraffe scene,” or “We should do it differently.” It wasn’t that. It was me saying, “By the way, we’re doing that exactly the way it was in the game.
DRUCKMANN: Laura played Abbey in the second game, which is a very pivotal character in that story. People say that Merle is the only actor that played the same role in both the game and the show, which is not entirely true. Laura Bailey also played the nurse in the operating room for the first game, and now she plays that nurse again. We were like, “Okay, we’ve gotta get you in there somewhere in the season.” Maybe we’ll do something else with her in the next season.
DRUCKMANN: When we made the game, I felt we were incredibly lucky. It was like lightning in a bottle that we found Ashley Johnson. I can’t imagine that version of me being anybody else. And then, somehow we got lightning in a bottle again with Bella. We are extremely lucky to have Bella, as you can tell by this season. The only way we would ever consider recasting Bella, is if she said, “I don’t wanna work with you guys anymore.” And even then, we’re not sure that we would grant her that.
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