♪ (HBO INTRO PLAYS) ♪ HENRY:<i> Welcome to Killer City.</i> JOEL MILLER:<i> No FEDRA?</i> HENRY:<i>
Not as of ten days ago, no.</i> JOEL:<i>
I always heard KC FEDRA was--</i> HENRY:<i> Monsters? Savages?
Yeah, you heard right.</i> <i> Raped, and tortured,
and murdered people</i> <i> for 20 years.</i> <i>Hey, you know what happens
when you do that to people?</i> <i>The moment they get a chance,
they do it right back to you.</i> ♪ ("THE LAST OF US"
THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ TROY BAKER:
Welcome to the official podcast for HBO's original series<i>
The Last of Us.</i> I'm your host, Troy Baker. And today, I'm here
with showrunners Craig Mazin... -CRAIG MAZIN: Hello.
-TROY: ...and Neil Druckmann. NEIL DRUCKMANN: Hey, Troy. TROY: Today, we're going
to be discussing episode five of the series entitled,
"Endure and Survive." ♪ (THEME MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪ TROY: We've had
different kind of openings. We've had the intellectual.
We've had the emotional. And this one is pure violence. Why was it important to put that
on display from the onset? NEIL: Well, this is
one of the things I love about this adaptation is,
you know, in the game,
we explored similar things, but we can only do it from Joel
or Ellie's perspective. So, Kansas City is Pittsburgh, but you get to see the aftermath
of FEDRA having fallen. This group of antagonists
toward Joel and Ellie
have taken it over. And you find, like, bodies that have been hanged
of the previous soldiers. And you could tell
there was this uprising. And here, we said, "Okay,
what if we could see that?" Because, again,
we're not married every moment to Joel and Ellie's perspective. Like, what if we could see it
and to tie it to character? What if we placed Henry and Sam
in that and tie it to that, which, you know, is a change
from the game? In the game, there were
travelers like Joel and Ellie, and they end up
being stuck in the city. Here, they were part
of this uprising, and they're connected
to the politics of it. And I think there's
a lot of kind of richness to talk more
about what happened here and eventually get
to the other side, the other perspective of, like, "Well, why did they have
this uprising, and who led that uprising, and what does it mean for the people
that have remained now?" TROY: So, here we get to learn
more about Henry and Sam. Sam's played wonderfully
by Keivonn Woodard, and Henry is played
by Lamar Johnson. In the game,
they are two brothers that have somehow survived. And we learn more about
what has helped that survival. The choice
that Henry specifically has made to protect his little brother. But there is something different about the version
of the characters that we see in the show, namely, with Sam,
who, like Keivonn, is deaf. -We gotta talk about it.
-(NEIL CHUCKLES) TROY: Where did that come from?
Why make that change? CRAIG: It started with a bit
of a weird worry I had. I became nervous that there was
a mode of communication between Joel and Ellie
that I didn't want to feel like I was repeating
between Henry and Sam because, as Neil points out, in the game,
you don't spend time with Henry and Sam
on their own, ever. But if they are on their own, and we knew
we wanted to do that, well, what do those discussions
sound like? And it could very easily fall
into the trap of "exasperated father figure" and "curious, concerned,
scared child figure." And so, I was looking for a way to change that mode
of communication. We'd also talked a little bit
about making Sam younger because we liked the idea
that Ellie would have somebody that could look up to her, you know, the way
that she looked up to Joel. It may have happened
because it was sort of
on my mind a little bit. So, I'd been watching this show
called<i> This Close</i> by a woman named
Shoshannah Stern and a guy named Josh Feldman, who co-created it, and wrote it,
and acted in it. And they're both deaf. And it is about two best friends
navigating the world, and what it's like
when you're both trying to find love in your own life. And Josh is gay
and plays a gay character, so there's no romance
between them. It's about their friendship
and how they navigate, but also how they navigate
the world as deaf people when they're dealing with
other people who aren't deaf. And I became friendly
with Shoshannah. So, it was just sort of, like,
banging around in my head. And then I was like, "Well..." (LAUGHTER) CRAIG: So, this was
one of those moments
where I called up Neil, and I'm like,
"I have a radical suggestion." So, I said,
"What if Sam was deaf?" It automatically brings
a certain kind of intimacy
to those scenes because they're quiet,
which I love. This is a lot of talking. This is a very verbal show,
and Ellie talks a lot. And it was interesting
to sort of see what would it be like
if it were just quieter? And also put Sam and Henry
in this bubble that had to expand
to include Joel and Ellie because it had been so quiet between the two of them
since, obviously, they use sign language. And Neil said,
"Go fuck yourself." (LAUGHTER) NEIL:
Basically, I believe I said, "You motherfucker.
I wish I had thought of that." TROY: It's a term of endearment. -(LAUGHTER)
-CRAIG: Oh! No question! It's when I-- When Neil's like,
"Oh, oh, I wish I'd done that," and then I'm like,
"Okay, we're onto something." And it was--
it was important for us-- I just want to be clear, like,
as we went through it, I had my guesses as to how
these things would work, but I actually then-- we hired Shoshannah
to review the scripts and make sure
that it worked correctly, that we weren't making mistakes. And it was the same thing I did
with<i> Chernobyl,</i> you know, showed it to people that grew up
in Soviet Ukraine and say, "How does this all look?" And it's almost like
a cultural review. And she was incredibly helpful
in that regard. And then we, um... Keivonn,
we'll just take a moment, I think, was eight.
He was incredibly young. Let's just talk about
how we even found him. We were in trouble.
I mean, we had created-- It was one thing
to say on the phone, "Hey, Neil, here's an idea.
Why don't we cast this kid?" And so, now we're like,
"Okay, here's the casting call." We said to Vickie Thomas,
our casting director, we were looking for a Black kid between the ages
of eight and eleven. We'd like him to be shorter
than Ellie, who's, I mean, Bella is not a tall person,
and he has to be deaf. And he has to be fluent
in American Sign Language, which not all deaf kids
necessarily are. Some of them have been trained
more to read lips, but most of them are. Or BASL, by the way, because there's
Black American Sign Language, which is actually different
than American Sign Language. And... guess what?
Not a ton of people. And you're like,
"Oh, this is frustrating" because I know
the problem is the pipeline. It's a pipeline problem. It's not a,
"Are there kids out there
who can do it?" problem. So, we're running out of time. The traditional methods
are not working. TROY: I would also point out
one really important component to that casting call is
they have to be able to act. CRAIG: Well, then there's that. TROY: Being able to find
someone who fits the demographic
is one thing. It's like, "We found someone!" CRAIG: Then they also have to
be able to act, and act really well. And so, after a certain point, we were, like,
really up against it. We needed to cast somebody. And I just went, "Oh, fuck it" and made, like,
a Google email for our casting and just went on Twitter. And I just said,
"Here's what we're looking for. Open to the world.
Send us stuff." And I thought we were going
to get 80 auditions. -And I think we got five.
-TROY: Wow! CRAIG:
And one of them was Keivonn. Now, Keivonn wasn't just
the best of the five. He was astonishing. I mean,
this is where you start to think maybe this is a simulation
because, I mean, I have never been
in a circumstance where a kid who has never really acted
on film before shows up, and is so naturally good at it, and is a joy to have around. He was just a dream. Still, to this day, I just--
I'm kind of puzzled by it. -NEIL: Oh, he's brilliant.
-CRAIG: He's incredible. And I cannot wait to see
more from him. I hope that when people watch
this episode here in Hollywood,
in our business, that they don't just stop
at the end of it and go, "Boy, that kid was really good
playing the character of Sam." I hope that they go,
"That kid ought to be
in a lot of things." The fact that he's deaf is a fascinating aspect
of representation that is underrepresented
on television. But, more importantly, his story in our show wasn't
about him being deaf. In fact, the biggest factor
to his character was that he had had leukemia. That was a bigger deal for Sam. And I hope that people
in Hollywood think about casting
Keivonn again, and not in stories
about being deaf but just in stories about people
because he's... Boy, is he good. -NEIL: The word I think
about is, it "enriches."
-TROY: "Enriches." NEIL: It adds this extra layer
to this tale from the game. I was rewatching it last night
in preparation for this. And when they're hiding out
in the attic, there's this moment
where Henry reveals to Sam that Edelstein is not
coming back, that in fact, he's dead. And Sam, just his instinct is,
he reaches out that he needs the comfort
of his older brother. And that scene just really
resonated with me in a way that, even when I was working
on the game, didn't. My son is now
the same age as Sam, and I've had those situations
where my son is either scared, or upset, or just distraught
in some way, and he just needs that hug. And that hug felt so real
and authentic. Man,
it hits me right to my core. TROY: Lamar Johnson,
who plays Henry, I met him, and I don't know if you--
if this resonates with you, but you feel like
you've just known him forever. Like he's a friend. CRAIG:
He's one of the nicest people. Now, this is not--
shouldn't come as a surprise -because he's Canadian.
-(LAUGHTER) TROY:
That's what it is. All right. CRAIG: Canadians are incredibly
nice people, but he... Lamar has this--
He's humanity forward, right? Like, you can just-- You feel his spirit
the moment you meet him. He's just-- There's decency.
That's what hits you first. It's just
how obviously decent he is. He is also fiercely intelligent. And he also just quickly learned
sign language. -(NEIL CHUCKLES)
-CRAIG: Our first scene
with Henry and Sam, I believe, was in their hiding space
in the attic. And I believe it was a Monday. And I'm pretty sure
that he had learned it
over the weekend. I shit you not. So, CJ Jones was working
with us on set. He was sort of the head of ASL. And I met him also
through Shoshannah. He's also deaf
and is an acting teacher. And so he served
this interesting role of being both a liaison, a communication liaison
between us and Sam, but also coaching Keivonn along, and also helping
Lamar learn sign language, and then watching. And after Jeremy Webb,
who was the director,
would say, "Cut," CJ would go over to Lamar and either congratulate him
or berate him... -(LAUGHTER)
-TROY: Depending on his... CRAIG: ...for not getting
the signs quite right or for not signing with
the proper speed or fluidity. It was really important to Lamar
that anyone watching this who was deaf and fluent in ASL,
or not deaf and fluent in ASL, would not point their finger
and go, "Nope. Fake." And he just was that smart
and that good. It was almost scary. TROY: As dads,
all three of us are dads, there's this bizarre desire
to protect our kids. And sometimes we will do that
by employing lies. CRAIG: Mm-hmm. TROY: Henry,
this is a paternal relationship, and he's being brutally honest. "We're out of food.
We need to leave." Did they kill him?
Probably, yes. As a father,
are you writing this as a truth for yourself, or are you espousing an ideal? CRAIG: My point of view is
that you can lie to keep your children comfortable
and happy to a point. But then there comes a point where you need to tell them
the truth in order to keep them safe. The reason that Henry tells Sam
the truth that, "The doctor isn't coming back.
They did probably kill him. And we have to move
because there is no more food" is because if they stay there
one more hour, they're going to get caught. And then Sam's gonna die anyway. So, it's all about,
in the moment, what will keep this kid safe? It is never, and I wish
that I had a more noble answer, it's never about feeling
obligated to be super honest
with your kid when you're
in situations of stress. Obviously, when you're not, you want to be honest
with your children. But when there's danger afoot,
you become, I think, as a parent, very utilitarian
in your approach. "What will work the best
to keep my kids safe?" And when Henry has to
tell Sam the truth, it's because he has to
tell him the truth, not because he wants to. NEIL: Because again,
and this will come back later
in the season, anything you could do to take
the pain away from your kid, -you will do that as a parent.
-TROY: Yeah. NEIL: But sometimes you gotta be
brutally honest with them in order to protect them. -It's the same exact motivation.
-CRAIG: Yeah. NEIL:
Which will ultimately get us to the most brutal repudiation
of that by Melanie Lynskey's character,
Kathleen. TROY: Well, let's rewind
a little bit in our episode to the interrogation scene
with Kathleen... (LOUD CLAP) KATHLEEN:<i>
You're informers. Inform!</i> <i> Where is Henry?</i> (SIGHS)<i> I guess they don't know.</i> <i> Kill them.</i> -(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-INFORMER:<i> He's with Edelstein.</i> TROY:
This scene is entirely new. CRAIG:
Melanie Lynskey was perfect because I could describe her
as this, like, "What if a kindergarten teacher
were in charge of the terror
of the French Revolution?" It's this kind of--
Just because you're sweet
on the outside doesn't mean you don't have
the capacity for terrible anger
and vengeance in your heart. NEIL: But the way
she justifies it is love. CRAIG: Love. I mean,
the theme of "us versus them"
is always there. This notion of tribalism
is always there. It was important for me
and for Neil to not NPC-ize these people. We didn't want them
to just be bad guys. TROY:
Can you just define a little bit
what you mean by that? CRAIG: So, NPCs are
non-player characters. If you play D&D like I do,
and I know you do, you run into those things
from time to time, and they're monsters. Bad guys. And in video games,
NPCs are the enemies
that typically aren't named. They don't have much
in the way of dialogue, and they are there for you
to kill, typically. Then the tough part is,
if I'm playing Joel or Ellie, and I need to kill these people
to get through this level, I can't connect with them
too much as a player. I need to be able to sneak up
behind them and kill them without feeling like, "Oh, God,
I just killed Linda," you know? That would be really hard
to deal with if I felt a lot for them. But when
you're making television and there isn't
the gameplay aspect, we wanted as best we could to give these people
a sense of justification. And this is, again, what happens
when regimes fall. The retaliation that comes after
can be terrifying. TROY: We have this wonderful
blending of moments now. Something that happened
in a previous episode, where we have
the truck ambush scene, where they crash
into the laundromat. And now we have the other side
of that where we're seeing the same thing happen
from a different perspective, now from Henry
and Sam's perspective. Which kind of helps inform
who these people are to Henry. And what Henry sees is
two desperately vicious people. And there's this great quote... HENRY:<i> My name's Henry.</i> <i> That's my brother, Sam.</i> <i> I'm the most wanted man
in Kansas City.</i> <i> Although right now...</i> <i>my guess is you're running
a close second.</i> NEIL: There's a change here, pretty significant
from the game, which is in the game, you're playing alongside
Henry and Sam and Ellie, and you come across
these enemies, and therefore we needed
Henry to be able to fight and kill with you. And we try to give
a certain morality in the game to Henry
that even Joel wouldn't have,
which is like-- There's a part where, like, Sam tries to steal this toy
from this toy store, and Henry says, "No, we only
take what we need and no more." And it was just a way
to kind of separate them. Here, again, because we don't
need Henry to kill, there's this beautiful choice
of, like, "I've never killed anybody." HENRY:<i> Now, I know where to go,</i> <i> but I don't know how
to make it through alive.</i> <i>Not if it's just me and Sam.</i> JOEL:<i> You seem capable enough.
You're armed.</i> HENRY:<i> You're wrong, and wrong.</i> <i>I've never killed anyone.</i> <i>And pointing an unloaded gun
at you was the closest</i> <i>I've ever come to being violent.</i> NEIL: I think it just
immediately separates him
from Joel. And you understand why Henry is
so reliant on this man that he just spotted kill
a bunch of people, it's like, "Okay, if I need someone
to protect, essentially, Sam..." His entire motivation is Sam. "...I got to team up
with this killer." TROY: "I can do this.
You can do that." Are you wanting to catch
the audience off guard? Are you wanting them
to constantly remind them that this is
something different? Or are you just in a sandbox
playing because you can? NEIL: You mean different
from the game? TROY: Yeah. NEIL: No, I don't think
we ever, like... I don't remember
any conversation like, "Oh, let's show them
how this is different." It's more like what's best
for this medium, and what's best
for where we are in the story that has already kind of evolved and kind of changed
in some ways. CRAIG: Yeah. There were areas
where we knew we wanted to hew really closely, and then there were areas
where we thought, "Okay, actually, we're going
to wander off a bit." Well, once you decide
to wander off because you think it's going
to give us an opportunity to make a better show, then you do what you always do, which is to make
the scenes interesting and to create a little bit
of a sense of mystery. I mean, who is Henry?
Why is he on the run? Why is Kathleen so interested
in hunting this guy down to the point where
even her right-hand man, played by this guy you might
know named Jeffrey Pierce, is saying, "Hey, whoa, you know,
we have other fish to fry"? Including the possibility of
something terrible underground that we are now responsible
to hold back since FEDRA's gone. And yet somehow,
Kathleen is just monomaniacally fixated
on finding Henry. What did he do? And when Henry says,
"I'm the most wanted man
in Kansas City," why? That mystery, that's just how
you keep people engaged. I don't think
we ever thought, like, -"Let's show them
how different we can be."
-(LAUGHTER) CRAIG:
I think we were always scared to either be too close
to the game or too far away from the game. And the only way to get around
the fear was to ask what would make the best story
and the best scene? NEIL: Again,
going back to, like, right, we want to show more
of these quote unquote hunters, these people that have taken
over the quarantine zone. And it's like, well,
if we just do that and it's completely removed
from our main characters, then I don't think
it would have worked. It was the tying it
to Henry and Sam, so that all these things
are interconnected, that made it all gel. TROY: It's starting to look like
these characters are all -somewhat of a night
of mirrors for Joel.
-NEIL: Mm-hmm. TROY: We have Kathleen,
who is obsessed. But we do see this mirroring
of this relationship that Joel and Ellie have
in different versions. Henry and Sam and also Kathleen
and her brother. CRAIG: Mm-hmm. NEIL: But, by the way, also
Kathleen and her entire group because I don't know
if we ever talked about it, in my mind, it's like
she's operating from a place
of like, "I have to bring this person
to justice to set the foundation of this thing
that I'm building now, where FEDRA used to be." TROY: That, to me, was
a really interesting point that, again, Jeffrey Pierce, my boy
who played Tommy in the game, now plays Perry in the show. Every time I give him
a compliment about
his performance, he's like, "You know,
the beard did 90 percent
of the work." (LAUGHTER) TROY:
He looks nothing like that. NEIL: The other 10 percent
were his muscles. TROY: I mean, he just only does
what is necessary. But there's so much happening
underneath the surface. And he still stands
in opposition. And we see this kind of--
this, um... NEIL: Well, he does
and he doesn't, right? That, to me, helps flesh out
Kathleen even further is the fact that he loves her
and looks up to her. CRAIG: They all do. I mean, he is questioning
what she's doing in regard to Henry,
but he understands it. And when he has this moment
with her, he comes to see her,
and we've seen him be nervous about her course
of action a couple of times. And she presumes
that he's there to say, "You got to pull back here.
We have other stuff to do." And she talks, finally,
about her brother and what he meant for her... KATHLEEN:<i> Michael told me
that this wasn't a room at all.</i> <i> That this was actually
just a big wooden box.</i> <i>A big wooden box that nothing
could get inside of.</i> <i> And it didn't matter
if there was lightning,</i> <i>or tornadoes, or gunfire.</i> <i> He said,
"As long as we were together</i> <i> in our perfect box,
we would be safe."</i> <i> He did that for me.</i> CRAIG: And what her brother
meant for her was safety. Her brother was her Joel.
And her Joel died. And when her Joel died,
she kind of lost it and needed to kill the people
that killed her Joel. If this sounds vaguely familiar
to anybody, there might be a reason. So, she is saying, essentially, "My brother was
rather Christlike. He told me to forgive." And she is not Christlike. She has a darkness in her. And her point of view is,
"Forgiveness is stupid. Punishment is how
we are going to win the day." And you expect Perry to say,
"Well...," and he doesn't. What he says is... PERRY:<i>
Your brother was a great man.</i> <i> We all loved him.</i> <i>But he didn't change anything.</i> <i> You did.</i> <i> We're with you.</i> CRAIG: And they are free because somebody
with darkness in her said, "We're going to do
whatever it takes." And when somebody frees you
like that, you tend to trust them,
and you tend to follow them all the way to the bitter end. NEIL: It also kind of sets
the rules for this world of like, these are
the people that survive. These are the people
that have the tools
to survive in this world. And this is why Joel lives. TROY: One of my favorite moments
in the game was when we're in the tunnels
with Henry and Sam. NEIL: We talked a lot about how
the show enriches the game. This is one of the instances
where the game enriches
the show. -CRAIG: Definitely.
-NEIL: Where there's a story, and again, this talks about
just the collaboration of how these things are built. There were
all these environments
that were built, including this, like,
underground school, and where, like, a small group,
a small tribe lived there and survived on their own. And in the game,
you have this mechanic
where you walk around, and you can find these notes
and read them. And they told you
the whole backstory
of this guy, Ish, and how he, like, started
this community, and he recruited other people. And you can find
this whole story of, like, the height of how
they survived here and their ultimate downfall. And we just couldn't tell
the story in the show. There was just no way to do it. But we wanted to honor
that this place existed, and it felt like there's a way
to reflect back on these characters
and the journey
they're going through now, especially with kids lived here. And you saw Sam sketching
and drawing stuff before, and now you could've imagined
there would have been, like, a dozen kids here,
and now they're all gone. So, I just love, again,
it's this moment that honors it. And it's like these two
almost like parallel dimension of the same story
live side by side and kind of help talk
to one another
and enrich the other. CRAIG: So much of adaptation
comes down to instinct. And reasonable people
can disagree, but I remember being so... surprised and delighted by discovering
that underground colony, the abandoned underground colony
in the tunnels. So, there was no question
that we needed to see it. It was important. The fact that Ellie
and Sam can play soccer and that Joel and Henry have
a chance to have a dad talk in this weird, brief respite
of safety and sanity was incredibly important to me.
I needed to see it. When it came to the story
of Ish, which is awesome, there's something about
the epistolary nature
of that in the game, the way that you learn about it
through letters. Communication. NEIL:
Environmental storytelling. CRAIG: It makes it better. We could absolutely do
a stand-alone Ish episode, but I think where we landed was, it's better to tip our hats
to Ish and then have people
play the game. Or if they're not gamers,
there are places on the Internet where they can go and read
every one of those letters. NEIL: No, no, no. Buy the game.
Don't listen to Craig. CRAIG: You don't need
to buy this game, guys. You don't need
to spend a dime on it. -TROY: They've done okay.
-(LAUGHTER) ELLIE WILLIAMS:<i> To the edge
of the universe and back,</i> <i> endure and survive.</i> <i> Endure and survive.</i> TROY: This is where
one of the mottos or mantras of the game
we really get to display, and it's in this moment
with the "endure and survive." CRAIG: You just did the ASL
for "endure and survive." TROY:
I hope that that catches on. And I want people--
I would love for people, for that just to become
a standard greeting
for people walking around. "Good morning to you.
Oh, good morning to you, sir." As they sign
"endure and survive." NEIL: Fun, quick tangent. When we were scouting Edmonton
for episode two, we went to, like,
a random restaurant. And there's a bunch of us there,
and the waitress comes over and is like, "Oh,
what are you guys here for?" We're like,
"Oh, we're shooting a TV show." She's like, "What show?"<i>
"The Last of Us."</i> "Oh my God, I love that game!" She pulls her sleeve, -and she has a tattoo that says,
"endure and survive."
-(LAUGHTER) NEIL: And I'm like, "Oh my God." CRAIG:
One thing I should mention,
since we've talked about how people literally tattoo
the words "endure and survive"
on their skin, is that at one point, not in the game,
but in the show, Henry sort of makes fun of it... JOEL:<i>
What's that comic book say?
Endure and survive?</i> HENRY:<i> Endure and survive.</i> <i> That shit's redundant.</i> JOEL:<i> Yeah. It's not great.</i> HENRY: (CHUCKLES)<i> No.</i> CRAIG: I just have
this instinct sometimes to kind of pop the balloon
a little bit, and I hope
that nobody that does have "endure and survive"
on their skin or-- doesn't think
that we are mocking them. It's really just a kind of
a self-deprecating moment. NEIL: I could talk a little bit
about that. Like, the whole idea
for this comic book was
very much inspired by<i> Watchmen.</i> There's a comic book inside
the story that reflects back on what's happening
in the world. So we wanted
to do something similar where there was, like,
this sci-fi comic that speaks
to the same themes of relationships, and love,
and all that. And I was like,
"It should have a catchphrase that the main hero says." And I'm like, "What could be
kinda like a cheesy catchphrase? Okay, our game is
about survival." I'm like-- And then I just went
on thesaurus.com, typed in "survival,"
and "endure" came up, and I'm like,
"endure and survive!
There it is!" TROY: "To the edge
of the universe and back, endure and survive." CRAIG: I mean,
it's very meaningful but obviously has
great thematic resonance. We're being cheeky about it,
but I just-- I don't want anybody
to think that we-- NEIL: No, no, no. You hate everybody
that got a<i> Last of Us</i> tattoo. -Let's stick with the--
-(LAUGHTER) NEIL: Let's stay honest here. CRAIG:
Since Neil and I are about
to get a<i> Last of Us</i> tattoo, I don't-- Can we talk about that
on this show? TROY: Yeah. I got two. CRAIG:
You have two of them? Neil-- So, Neil and I made a deal
early on in prep, and the deal was
if the show does well, and we sort of loosely defined
"does well," then he and I will both get
a tattoo of Ellie's switchblade. TROY: Yes. NEIL: I will say,
this is the third time
I've made this deal. I've made it
on<i> The Last of Us I,</i> -then<i> The Last of Us Part II.</i>
-CRAIG: Yeah,
I'm gonna make you-- -NEIL: And I've always
backed out of it.
-TROY: Not this time. -NEIL:
We're making it pretty public.
-CRAIG: Oh, no, no. It's-- TROY: No,
this absolutely stays in. CRAIG: It's public record.
Yeah, it's happening. TROY: One of my favorite
sequences in the game, the sniper... JOEL:<i> Stay here.</i> ELLIE:<i> What?</i> JOEL:<i> If you don't move,
he's not going to hit you.</i> <i> I'm going to go around</i> <i>and try to get in the house
through the back,</i> <i>and then I'll take him out.</i> ELLIE:<i> But if you go out there,
he's gonna kill you.</i> JOEL:<i> It's dark,
and he has shit aim.</i> <i> Nobody's gonna kill me.</i> ELLIE:<i> Then he's gonna kill us.</i> JOEL:<i> Do you trust me?</i> CRAIG: So, in the game,
the sniper is really good, and he's not alone. There are six or seven
other guys with him that you have to clear out. -NEIL: At least.
-CRAIG: Yeah, at least. So, there's quite
a good action sequence where you're sneaking
behind houses and ducking and trying to-- NEIL: It's actually-- The way
we wrote that sniper was that he would antagonize you. He yells at you to kind of
rile you up to make you angry. So when you get in that house,
you unleash on him. This was
a very different approach... JOEL:<i> Put the gun down,
slide it over to me,</i> <i> and then stay up here
for another hour.</i> <i>That's all you have to do.</i> <i> Please don't do it.</i> <i> Please.</i> (GUNSHOT) CRAIG: And this wasn't us going, "Hey, we're going
to subvert expectations." It was really more like, "Well, what if there is
a sadness to this?" Because we understood, A, we weren't going to get
the same value from presenting the action
the way that the gameplay did. That watching it on television, if there was a lot of ducking
and shooting back and ducking and shooting back, it just sort of isn't-- CRAIG AND NEIL:
It's not the show. CRAIG: But I'm obsessed
with the cul-de-sac, and I'm obsessed
with the sniper. So, then the thought was,
"Well, what if he stinks? What if
this sniper is really bad, and all Joel has to do is just
get around and get in there?" And then the next question is,
"Well, why is he bad?" And the answer is,
he's really old. He can't see. And this is sad because when you are dealing
with the citizen brigade, this is often
what you're dealing with. It's not trained
military soldiers, these are people. And this guy, one can imagine,
has seen a lot. Because let's say
he's, what, 80? That means 60 years of his life, he was living in a perfectly
normal world, and then-- TROY: The last 20 went to shit. CRAIG:
...the last 20 went to shit. And the sadness there. God only knows what amount
of grief he's gone through. When Joel walks in there, I think Joel can already see it
in the guy's eyes. He's going to commit suicide
by cop here. This guy doesn't want
to be here anymore. TROY: Got it. CRAIG:
And he's begging him not to because he doesn't want to. He doesn't want
to kill this guy. He doesn't want
to hurt this guy. But this guy's had it.
He's done. NEIL: In the game,
there's a scene where Joel-- they find this person
who had committed suicide, and Joel talks to Ellie,
and he's like-- and Ellie says, "Oh,
he took the easy way out." And Joel says, "It's not easy." TROY: Yeah. NEIL: The thing that Craig
was just talking about,
Joel recognizes that. And that's why he sees it
immediately in this man. TROY: I remember
walking onto set, and I just kept saying, "Holy shit, holy shit,
holy shit." CRAIG: I remember that day well. TROY: It's night,
we're back in Calgary, and you said, "Come here,
I want to show you this." And we walked from base camp, and all of a sudden,
we're in a neighborhood. -CRAIG: Yeah.
-TROY: You built this. CRAIG: We built this.
This was a massive undertaking. There was this large, empty lot next to the main stages
where we were shooting, CFC, Calgary Film Center, and we knew
we were going to be making this big cul-de-sac scene, and we needed
to control it completely. So we needed to be able
to do gunfire. We needed to be able
to do burns. We needed to do an explosion
of a truck. We needed hundreds of extras
running around, backlit by fire, lots of stunts, motor vehicles racing
and driving, and all of this. And it needs to be lit. There's no way to do that
practically on a regular street. It's just not going to work. We needed to build it. Also, we couldn't find a street
that was going to be perfect the way that one was. So, we turned
to our beleaguered... (CHUCKLES) ...overworked art department, led by John Paino,
our production designer, and Don Macaulay,
our art director. And just as important
as those two guys in this case was a gentleman named
Dino Centanni, who was
our head of construction. And we said, "We want to build
a pretty big street, and we want it to look
roughly like this." We had some images
for inspiration, both from the game and also from some actual
neighborhoods in Kansas City. And they didn't have
a lot of time. And they worked at light speed. They didn't just bring in
people who were really good at constructing
for film and television. They brought in actual
house builders, home builders, to get these things up. Obviously,
the interiors were not finished by any stretch
of the imagination. TROY:
But it's important to point out, when I left,
they were pouring foundation, and a month later, I came back
and that neighborhood was there. CRAIG: It was there. NEIL: The speed of how
all those sets came together
was incredible because I've never done
live action. It's the first time
I got to see it. TROY: You get to build it
in Polygon. (LAUGHTER) CRAIG: It's much easier.
Much easier. Way fewer nails. TROY: We're talking, like,
this is about an eighth
of a mile long? CRAIG: Yeah, and we used
every inch of what we had, going all the way back
to the end of the lot. First of all, the sequence originally
was going to take place
during the day, just like it does in the game. NEIL: Oh, let's talk about that. 'Cause we met, like,
with Jeremy Webb in Santa Monica
in a restaurant, and we just, like,
were brainstorming, like, "Okay, what should happen
in the sequence?
What do we want to see?" The thing that was
really exciting for me is, like, in the game, you're just Joel, so everything you're seeing
is really far. TROY: Yeah. NEIL: And Henry, Sam, Ellie are
these tiny figures running, and you're trying
to protect them. -TROY: Through your scope.
-CRAIG: Yeah. Yeah. NEIL: Here, you get
to jump in perspective, back and forth, back and forth.
So, you get to see it from afar, and then you're in it, like,
as they're running. And then,
as we're brainstorming,
Craig goes, "I got it.
It's got to be nighttime." -And I'm like--
-CRAIG: That is not what I said. -(NEIL LAUGHS)
-CRAIG: This is what I said.
I said-- TROY: You motherfucker. CRAIG: I said, "Ah, shit!" (LAUGHTER) CRAIG: Because I suddenly
realized that... So, the infected,
they are scarier in the dark. TROY: Yeah.
And fire is cooler in the dark. CRAIG: And fire is awesome
in the dark. And I said, "Oh, shit"
because I knew that the sequence
was going to be about three weeks to shoot. Everybody now has to work
at night. The nights were getting shorter, and yeah,
because it was Calgary, it also occasionally would snow
in the middle of the night. (LAUGHS) So we would lose
some time to that. But mostly, it's just
working at night is hard
on everybody. If you do it
two or three nights in a row, you get over it. Three weeks, it starts
to really get into you mentally. I mean,
even as your schedule shifts, mentally,
you start to wear down. The episode of<i> Game of Thrones,</i> you know, the famous one
in the last season, they shot, I think,
11 weeks of night. And I remember
Dan Weiss telling me that people were literally
losing their minds. Obviously, people can
successfully work at night on night shifts and things, but we shoot long hours. So we would get there, we would rehearse, rehearse,
rehearse, rehearse, wait for Eben Bolter,
our wonderful cinematographer, to say, "It is time," and then we shoot, shoot,
shoot, shoot, shoot. And this is not easy shooting. This is explosions,
fire, stunts, gunfire. Safety is
our most important priority, and it's exhausting. And yet,
everybody was there for it. I mean,
we had a gazillion stunt actors, all of whom were running
and crawling as fast as they could. -NEIL: With prosthetics.
-TROY: With prosthetics. CRAIG: With prosthetics.
It was an army. And we're also doing things
like driving a truck into cars, for real. It was the most complicated
thing I've ever done, for sure, in terms of
production difficulty. And while you're doing it, you are always aware
that you are creating what's going to work out
to be a few minutes. -TROY: Mm-hmm. Almost a year.
-CRAIG: And that's where
we have to talk about Weta. TROY: Weta FX, which of course is the digital
visual effects company. It's based in New Zealand. CRAIG:
So, backing up, Alex Wong, who is our VFX supervisor,
is, you know-- becomes, over the course
of the production, one of the most important
people on the team. NEIL: By the way, to talk about
how much he loved the material, he left ILM
to come work on this show because of how much
he loves the game. TROY: Wow. CRAIG:
And that actually carried forth to his then bringing on vendors because right now, the world is kind of
dealing with a visual effects shortage. It doesn't seem like it because
everything has visual effects, but everybody is using
more and more visual effects to help produce
and tell stories, to the point where
there aren't enough artists
on the planet to fulfill all the demand
of content, especially as content
has exploded on television. So, when you reach out
to these companies, you are not necessarily
just haggling over price. At some point, you're just like,
"Do you want to work on this?" Because they have their choice. And then there obviously are
levels of expertise within companies. One of the great things
for us is that all of these places
we talked to were like... -(GASPS)<i> ..."The Last of Us?!"</i>
-(LAUGHTER) CRAIG: I mean, huge overlap
in visual effects and gaming. And so,
we got the best of the best. And in this sequence, nobody, nobody does creature work
the way Weta does. Nobody. They are the best. And what they did here
is so phenomenal. If you study it carefully, there may be moments
where you're like, "Okay, that one's VFX,
but that one's real." But I guarantee
you won't get it all right. NEIL: It's really hard to tell. CRAIG:
It's really beautifully blended. TROY: Got it. We saw in the previous episode
that you have these-- something is looming literally
underneath the surface, both metaphorically
and literally. Can you talk about that?
Like, what is that? CRAIG: When we were talking
about this section, we definitely knew
we wanted to have this massive set piece
involving a lot of infected. So, it was a bit of a challenge.
We thought we have all the story
we want to tell in Kansas City, and we know that we have
this big thing waiting for us at the end in the cul-de-sac. But prior to that, the story is really
about Kathleen, about Henry and Sam,
about Joel and Ellie. And the threat is humans here. So, we found this-- It was really inspired by
the tunnels from the game, that the infected seem
to be underground. Well, what if we added
this additional twist, which is that FEDRA
drove them underground here? And what was interesting
about that is that we come to understand that even though
FEDRA was terrible, they were providing
this one service. And now that Kathleen
has effectively eliminated them, it's Perry who is saying, "This should probably be
something we jump on
right away." -TROY: Someone still needs
to do this job.
-CRAIG: Yeah. Someone needs to do this job.
And here's an indication we see at the end
of the fourth episode. Here's an indication that it's beginning
to already be a problem. Just the fact that it's been
two or three weeks since we overthrew FEDRA,
and we're already seeing this? That's bad news. So, we put it
in the back of your head. Then Henry makes it explicit... JOEL:<i> So, you want us
going into a tunnel?</i> HENRY:<i> Everyone thinks
that it's full of infected,</i> <i> including Kathleen,</i> <i>which means that we're not
going to be running into
any of her people.</i> <i> You see, what I know is,</i> <i> it's empty.</i> JOEL:<i> You've been down there?</i> HENRY:<i> No, but the FEDRA guy
that I worked with told me</i> <i> that it's clean.
Completely clean.</i> <i>They cleared it out. All of it.</i> ELLIE:<i> When?</i> HENRY:<i> Like, three years ago.</i> (JOEL SCOFFS) HENRY:<i> Okay,
maybe there's one or two,</i> <i> but you handle it.</i> CRAIG: We think
when they go into that tunnel, "Uh-oh!" Nope, there's nothing. And I was particularly fond
of the way that in our show, Henry is like, "Told you.
Told you. I told you." Every step of the way,
he's like, "My plan is great." And Joel's like, "Shut up." And then at the very, very end, tying into that moment
in the game when there is that crash and the infected come out
of that house, well, here we've set it up
that they're all underground. Not some of them, all of them. And we kind of imagined
the idea of, like, an ant colony where there's these tunnels
and things, and if you pop it open
in one spot, they can all just
start coming up. And it was terrifying to me. There is a moment
in<i> The Fellowship of the Ring.</i> The Fellowship is
in the mines of Moria, and seemingly thousands of,
I think they're goblins, I don't think they're orcs
at that point, I think they're goblins, anyway, come skittering down
these massive columns like spiders. And I thought it was
so beautiful when I saw it, and terrifying. So, I was thinking
a little bit about that, of just what it would be like if they just came belching forth
out of the earth. And particularly
some of the larger infected that we deal with here, like the introduction
of Señor Bloater. TROY: We've used this term, but it's probably important
to point out. What is a bloater? NEIL:
When we worked on the game, we came up with,
like, the lifeline, all these stages
of when someone's infected, what could happen to them. So, you know,
when you first get infected, there's a thing called a runner, which is just
a recently infected. In the show,
it's the one that you see,
like, tendrils coming out-- Nana in episode one. Then if you've survived
long enough, eventually the Cordyceps
grows through your face, cracks it open, takes away
your eyes, your vision, and you become
what's called a "clicker" because now these infected use
echolocation to find their way. And then we're saying,
okay, there's got to be
some people that, again, because this thing is eating
away from your inside. Eventually, when they know
they're going to die, they go to, like, underground,
like a dark place, and they settle against a wall,
they settle in the corner, and the infection just-- they become part
of the environment that grows all over the walls
and the ceiling and the ground. But there are certain people
that are just so strong and big that could survive even longer, and those are the bloaters. And that's where you're seeing
this person is so tall, and massive, and their strength. And it just becomes that much
scary again as we go forward. They're just
these new types of infected. And we're like,
"Should we do bloater,
or should we not do bloater?" -CRAIG: Right.
-NEIL: Should we do bloater,
should we not? And we had this, like,
back-and-forth for months
before we just said, -"Let's definitely do
a bloater."
-CRAIG: "Let's do a bloater." And this is sort of
one of those differences
between television and games. When the bloater comes out
in the game, you understand
you have to kill it. So, in the game,
you meet a bloater in the school gymnasium
with Bill. And the point is,
you've got to kill it. TROY: With nail bombs.
(CHUCKLES) CRAIG: Nail bombs,
and keep the shotgun ready
in case you run out. NEIL: I like to throw Molotovs,
so just-- it's on fire, and then I blast it
with the shotgun as it's coming. CRAIG: Molotovs also work
terrifically well. TROY: We don't have those things -at our disposal.
-CRAIG: We do not. And we also thought, look,
whatever this thing is, and however it got that way, there was this notion
that it might be scarier if at some point you realize
you're not killing it. No one's killing it, ever. TROY: And not only that,
but it's also going to-- we're going to see them
rip apart two of the most
fearsome people that we've seen
in this episode so far. CRAIG:
Yeah, and that was something
where I was overly ambitious. -(LAUGHTER)
-CRAIG: So, I had this thing
where I wanted the bloater to pick Perry up
and rip him in half, like at the waist, you know? And Neil was like,
"Well, okay, I mean,
is that going to be realistic?" And I'm like, "I think so." And then, like, the more
Weta tried to do it, the more you realize, like, people don't rip
along the waist. -(LAUGHTER)
-CRAIG: It's just really hard
to do. NEIL: There's a really cool
animation of it though. -Again, it's-- for that,
it's super realistic.
-CRAIG: It got close. It came close. But ultimately,
Neil prevailed and was correct in suggesting
that something that felt more grounded anatomically
would be more effective. And then, of course,
we were like, "Well, the bloater has
this head rip that is iconic, and it's great,
and it's terrifying." TROY:
We see Perry meet his fate, but also we had this standoff
moment for Kathleen, where-- Why was it important
for her to meet that end? CRAIG: Let me crib
a line from Westworld, "These violent delights
have violent ends." I think it's important to show
that when you are dead set on using violence to settle
the score and win the day, you are going to probably
get subsumed by that yourself. And the fact is,
Kathleen is a moral criminal. She's done terrible things. Does she deserve to die?
I don't really get into that. I just know that the odds
that you are going
to die by the sword go up dramatically
if you live by it. NEIL:
Well, she's also so obsessed
with this idea of justice that it could end
one of two ways. -Either she succeeds,
or she fails.
-CRAIG: Right. TROY: She could have run.
She could have gotten away. CRAIG: Well, that's the thing.
He told her to run. And she couldn't help but chase
the white whale to the very end. And this is where we, you know, in talking about
this new variant of infected, the child clicker-- NEIL: Which, by the way,
shout-out to Hyoung Nam, the original designer
of the clicker at Naughty Dog, because we were, like, debating,
like we had certain sketches,
and we're like, "Okay, we just need
to go back to the source." And we brought him
onto the show to, like,
help design this clicker. CRAIG: And so, he just
whips up a little illustration
that makes us all go, -"Oh my God!"
-TROY: Terrifying. CRAIG: And then it was
a combination of this, actually, this kid named Skye, who's this fantastic
contortionist actor. -NEIL: Oh, man, remember
those audition tapes...
-CRAIG: Oh, she was terrifying. NEIL: ...we got for all
these like contortionist kids? -CRAIG: Oh, yeah,
but she was the most terrifying.
-TROY: Nightmare fuel. -CRAIG: Like a spider girl.
-NEIL: It was so creepy. CRAIG: And she's
this beautiful little girl, but she's truly like, it's so creepy how she can
move her body like that. And so, it was a combination
of her performance, and then Weta kind of creating,
taking, drafting off of what Barry Gower had created
with prosthetics, and then making
this little girl. And I insisted that our child clicker wear
a<i> Blue's Clues</i> shirt because I'm really sick, and I just loved the contrast
of innocence and horror. But it was important
for me, also, that Kathleen is killed
by a child because what she says, it's one of my favorite lines
in the series, is when she's saying
that Henry has to die,
and so does Sam. And Henry says,
"He's just a fucking kid." And she says, "Well, kids die,
Henry. They die all the time." And she's not wrong. The thing is,
a lot of what we talk about when we're talking about
the moral conundrum
of<i> The Last of Us</i> is, "Why does my kid's life
matter more than yours? Does my kid's life matter
more than your mother's? Does my kid's life matter
more than an old man's life?" And so, the idea
that she ultimately is killed
by a kid felt sort of like a circular
completion of that story. You're not supposed
to feel good. You're not supposed to feel bad. If people struggle a little bit with how they feel
about that moment, then I think
we probably did it correctly. NEIL:
Sometimes it's a zero-sum game, which is like-- you think back
to that first episode, you know, when Joel drives by that family,
and he chooses not to help them. And maybe they died afterwards, or like, maybe that kid died
afterwards. TROY: We have this moment
after this where Ellie, and with the help of Joel,
they get to team up, and Joel is providing cover. Ellie gets Henry and Sam
out of there. They shoot. They barely escape. Kathleen and Perry
meet their ends. And then we have this moment
between Sam and Ellie, "What are you afraid of?" The use of... childlike things, which are normally
the representation of innocence, is very prominent, probably
the most by the magic slate. And I just want to talk
about that a little bit. CRAIG: It's easy to say,
"Well, if you're deaf, your older brother is going
to learn how to sign ASL." But Ellie doesn't know
sign language, other than "endure and survive"
and "awesome" and "promise,"
and... -TROY: Which she learns in this.
-CRAIG: Which she learns
in this scene. So, then the question is,
"How do you communicate?" And I love those things. -I just remember having them,
you know, the little--
-TROY: Same. And it was that thought
of like, well, in the post-apocalypse, it's the low tech, ultimately,
that is the most valuable. If you have to move
through life as a deaf kid, and there isn't technology,
and there's limited resources, you don't have
a thousand pencils, and you don't have
a thousand pads, that thing makes a lot of sense. It's just an endlessly
renewable way to communicate
with people that don't sign. So, it made sense
that he carried it with him
everywhere he went. -TROY: It's around his neck.
-CRAIG: It's around his neck. And I really like that it was
the Woody Woodpecker version. It was so great. And so, Justin Onofriechuk,
who's our prop master, this is where he would
just get so delighted, and never disappointed. He would always bring
these things, and you'd go, "It's perfect." I mean, that scene,
that conversation they have is very close
to what it is in the game. TROY:
It is important to note, though, that there is a huge revelation that happens
in the show version, which is that Sam confesses
that he's been bitten. CRAIG: Yes.
So that is a different thing. So, in the game,
they have a conversation. "What are you afraid of? Do you think
that people who are infected
are still them inside?" Ellie does not reveal
that she's immune. NEIL: And Sam doesn't reveal
that he's bitten. CRAIG: And Sam doesn't reveal
that he's bitten. Now, Sam is older in the game,
and it makes sense. In this context, we thought
that because of the nature of the relationship
between our Sam and our Ellie, which is
that he looked up to her, that it made sense
that he would trust her. And he's so scared. And then we really wanted
to show Ellie starting to believe that she could do
something special. NEIL: There's also something
about knowing what the audience is asking
right now. "Okay, so if she's immune,
couldn't she just give
her blood?" Like, I've seen since the game
came out, people ask that. -I'm like, "Let's answer it."
-CRAIG: Yeah. -NEIL: And the answer is no.
-CRAIG: No. TROY: There is this moment
where Ellie offers a solution. "I can fix this." We're starting to see
what it was like for Joel. CRAIG: Yes, exactly. TROY: "I can fix this.
I will do this." Then there's this moment
where Ellie has a crisis
of conscience. "What if it's not true?" And there's
this moment of doubt. -NEIL: But it's, again,
it's the parent lying.
-CRAIG: Yeah. TROY: The parent is lying. CRAIG: And in this case, I think
lying to herself as well because she has
the same thing that Joel has, which is this desire
to save the person you love. And we are going to get into
Ellie's past a little further as the season goes along. But we already know
from a conversation she's had with Joel
in the prior episode that when she killed
that guy in the laundromat, that was not the first person
she killed. There's something
that's happened in her past, which means there is loss. And what Bella
is showing us there is this longing for redemption. "Now that I know, I can fix it." -NEIL: There's also a naivete
that a kid would have of like...
-CRAIG: Exactly. NEIL: "We're invincible. Like, I'm not going
to experience this tragedy. We're going to get past this." CRAIG: "I didn't. So you won't." NEIL: And this is, like,
part of Ellie's journey,
is this like, one, like this violent corruption
through her interaction
with Joel, but two, a loss of innocence. Every step of the way,
there's a loss of innocence. TROY: What I witnessed was someone going from solution
to experiment to prayer. CRAIG: Yeah, that's
a great way of putting it. TROY:
And then there is the promise. CRAIG: Yeah. TROY: The promise to stay awake. When she wakes up
in the morning, man... There's still some moments
that really hit me. Sam couldn't hear. CRAIG: Exactly. Exactly. TROY: And what that says is,
it was still him inside. -CRAIG: Yep.
-TROY: And that is... What a powerful thesis. CRAIG: Everybody can kind of
create their own theory about what it must be like
in there. And it's reasonable,
I think, to say, "Well, if you've been infected
for a week, a month, five years, you're not-- you're gone." And it's also--
People would also say, "Look, physically, his ears,
the eardrums, the nerves, they don't work the way
that they do in people
who can hear. So why would they work now?" But I think it's still him. I think in that moment,
where it's just beginning, there's just confusion. It's a little bit like
being on a bad trip. You can't stop yourself. You don't know what's happening, and you're reacting
like you're in a dream. And you may even realize
in moments like, "I'm trying to hurt somebody
that I love, but I can't stop." NEIL: Which, by the way,
goes further to Henry because then he enters this almost like
a nightmare-like state, where he's behaving in a way that he can't even
control himself and then has a realization
of like, "Oh my God,
what have I done?" And like, again, the game has
an almost identical moment
for Henry. But even though the lines
of dialogue are different, but he's just saying-- in the game, he says,
"It's all your fault." Here, he's like,
"What have I done?" Same subtext of like,
"Holy shit, I can't believe
I just shot my brother..." HENRY:<i> What did I do?</i> <i> What did I do?</i> <i>What-- What-- What did I do?</i> -JOEL:<i> Henry, give me the gun.</i>
-(HENRY WHIMPERS) JOEL:<i> Give me the gun.</i> <i> Give me the gun, Henry.</i> <i> Give me the gun.</i> <i> -Henry, no!</i>
-(GUNSHOT) (THUD) CRAIG: He has every desire
to keep his brother safe here. He knows that Joel will
get the gun and shoot him, so he gets the gun first. He shoots at the ground to keep Joel from running
over there and pulling Sam away. And then there's this thing
in his mind that takes over,
that he-- and it's-- I think it's almost
a spinal reaction to say, "As a decent human being, I have to stop somebody
from killing a kid." And in this case,
the someone is his own brother,
and the kid is Ellie. So he doesn't even
understand he's done it
until after he's done it. And we had a long,
long conversation. I even wrote
other versions where... I was really nervous
about this ending. In the game, it was
so shocking and so brutal. But I also knew, like... I remember
the screen goes black, and then we move ahead,
and it's a different season. And I go,
and I'm just breathing, but I'm watching the two of them
in a different moment, a different time and place, and then I can keep
kind of going. But we don't let you keep going. We know we have to stop
this episode. And so the question is, "Should
Henry kill himself or not?" NEIL: We had a lot
of long conversations. I don't know if we should
get into the alternatives because people might
get mad at us that there were alternatives. But it's just-- it's almost
an identical process to what we went through
in the game because in the game,
initially, Henry didn't die. But again, it's like
if you're trying to reflect the worst possible outcome
for a parent, I felt like we had to take it
all the way to show, like, then you have nothing left. There's nothing left. TROY: In the show, we have
the opportunity to show the aftermath of tragedy,
which is the burial. We see the magic slate
with two words written on it. -"I'm sorry."
-NEIL: Yeah. CRAIG: And there,
you see the end of something because just a couple
of scenes earlier, Joel was saying to Henry, "It's easier for them.
They don't have anybody
relying on them." But there was somebody
relying on Ellie. But even more profound, I think, is what Joel begins
to think here, which is, "I can't go through this again. I just saw somebody
lose their kid. And that's the thing
that happened to me 20 years ago that I swore I would never
allow happen to me again. And this is a warning from above that whatever is connecting me
to this kid, I am now in the most dire
emotional danger possible." NEIL: You know, in the game,
we hinted that they buried
Henry and Sam. Here we get to see it, and there's a change that's
happening in Joel as well, which is Joel is such
a pragmatic survivor. -He wouldn't spend time
burying someone.
-CRAIG: Right. NEIL:
He's not doing it for himself. -He's doing it for Ellie.
-CRAIG: Yeah. NEIL: The father-daughter bond
is now there. And that's
to what Craig was saying, the fear that a parent has is the most intense fear
one can have. TROY: I can't think
of a better place to end it, but we will pick this
back up next week. For now, thank you both,
Craig and Neil. -CRAIG: That was great, Troy.
-NEIL: Always fun. ♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ TROY: This has been
the official podcast for HBO's<i> The Last of Us,</i> where you can
stream new episodes
every Sunday on HBO Max. Podcast episodes are available
after those episodes air, and you can find those
wherever you listen to podcasts. Please like and follow
HBO's<i> The Last of Us</i> on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook. Until next week,
keep looking for the light. NARRATOR: This is
the official companion podcast
for HBO's<i> The Last of Us,</i> hosted by Troy Baker. Our producers are Elliott Adler,
Bria Mariette, and Noah Camuso. Darby Maloney is our editor. The show is mixed
by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are
Gabrielle Lewis and Bari Finkel. Production music is courtesy
of HBO. And you can watch episodes
of<i> The Last of Us</i> on HBO Max.
