HBO The Last of Us May 2023 Panel Interview

let us meet the crew and cast of Last of Us executive producer Carolyn Strauss [Applause] the co-creator of the original video game and the co-creator of this very show Neil druckman [Applause] the other co-creator Craig Mason I don't know if she blew you away but she blew me away and Game of Thrones our own Bella Ramsey [Applause] okay so I love this a fashion outlet recently referred to him as having heading his own School of how to dress like an internet zaddy would you like to know who I'm talking about Pedro please come out he's in the bathroom what he's in the bathroom oh he's in the bathroom that's Pedro and there's Pedro Give It Up to Pedro come back terrible you missed that you okay I'm gonna do it again and you got to give him just wait till you see what he's wearing okay um he plays Tommy Miller say hello to Gabriel Luna [Applause] um yeah is Pedro there is Pedro there now [Applause] wearing look at him [Applause] they really show up late because I was getting a drink he just woke up clearly that's embarrassing hi amazing all right we don't have much time and we have a lot to cover so I was hoping we could start off with a quick yes no session I'm going to ask you three questions um I want you to raise your hand for yes keep it down for no and um Neil I need you to stay out of this for obvious reasons okay the first question before any of this started had you heard of The Last of Us video game you're fired play too oh so okay okay um hat what do you mean before any of this started before you even got this job had you use your microphone microphone oh yeah oh my God such a great insight into how this whole show went I uh I did not raise the last time this panel I hadn't heard of it okay and then any of you had you ever played a video game any video games any video game you had any video game any video game any ever any videos like Wii Sports count yeah yes Mrs Pac-Man yeah that's what mine was Pac-Man yeah okay and then before this had you ever spent a full weekend in the basement on a headset with other people while playing a video game does it have to be a basement no is it ground floor okay just like it could be anywhere like oh you did that oh you did that Gabriel yes yes of course all right okay good all right so that okay now we know where we're standing all right I'm going to start with you guys um can you give us the origin story and please Carolyn jump in here too how did this all how did this all begin when what jumped from video to great show oh it started with Shannon Woodward who was who plays Dina in this second game and she's a mutual friend of uh mine and Craig's uh and she thought we would make good friends so she uh introduced us to each other hold on a second she tried to get Neil to call me back for like a year and he would not call me so I was jilted for a year just trying to be his friend look I'm an introvert it was hard but then I saw the show Chernobyl uh and it was pretty incredible and I'm like wait that's the same guy that emailed me a year ago I should probably have lunch with him so I could just gush about the show and really that was the only intent was to meet Craig and gush about the show uh and then we met for lunch outside of naughty dog and we're just chatting for a while I'm discussing about Chernobyl and how he did it and how what was it like to make it at HBO and turned out he was a big fan of The Last of Us so then we started chatting about the last of us and in the conversation I just saw the love he had for the material in a way that I've never felt with another person outside of naughty dog you see you should have called me back is the point I know I know should have caught me I'm terrible no but he was at least I showed up to this pen all the time yeah [Laughter] Pedro's gonna pull the fire alarm again uh so then I asked Craig as just as a hypothetical if we wanted to make this as an HBO show what would that look like how could we get that done and he was like oh it's very simple we go across the street and we meet with the heads of HBO and I tell them I wanted that to be my next show and we get it done and was it a week two weeks later that's practically what happened but right before that we met uh we had lunch with Carolyn and we talked about it and she bought into the show and she did this thing that now everybody does that you did to me earlier today which like I'm not a gamer don't be offended I'm like it's okay you don't have to be a gamer to enjoy this story and that is so true Carolyn as you're into the project was there ever a moment where you guys were all together you maybe started wringing your hands over the idea that we were just coming off of this really depressing pandemic and did you kind of Wonder is this the right subject matter to deliver folks uh we were already In Too Deep by then we just had to keep going oh yeah I mean I think it it it was we'd already started you know prior to the pandemic so I guess it was an unhappy accident I mean we also yeah honestly the show has a lot of depressing things in it yeah to be fair not just a pandemic yeah um it's got something for everyone really it does um so I I our feeling was what's one more horrible thing but is it more depressing than Chernobyl I'm not sure I don't think so we were on the upswing yeah yeah we've been getting less depressing as we go exactly Pedro internet zaddy internet zaddy that's how we're going to start you missed it I did this whole thing about you being an internet zaddy because of the way you look and then you walked out in that outfit so it's so awesome um how you were so knee-deep in this big hit with the Mandalorian how did you get into this and how are you able to do it all brother great you know this was something that kind of intercepted plans for me in that um I got a call and they said uh some guy named Craig Mason wants you to read these scripts and um I uh I knew who he was I knew Chernobyl I read the first Crypt I was hoping they were telling the truth in that he wanted to talk with me we spoke that day um and then then all four uh Craig Neil Carolyn and I got on a zoom call I was in London at the time and this all happened within a 24-hour period they're out of their minds they cast that quickly um I don't know who they think they are but um it it was a very unique experience for me and one that intercepted I I had um I was like five minutes away from saying yes to uh a job that would have determined the next couple of years for me and um and in fact if it hadn't have been Craig I wouldn't have I would have refused to even entertain the thought of changing course simply because I didn't have the energy psychologically too and um but it was Craig and and and I read the script and then I met him and within 24 hours everything changed and then I found out what the Last of Us was and uh and uh very very quickly my nephews let me know and then the world let me know what did you say to take it over the day I didn't have to I mean a lot of times when you go through these processes you will send a script to somebody who is very much in demand the way picture was and and their agent will say oh my God uh you can't wait to read it he can't wait and then a year goes by you know and you you just don't know and in this this time we thought that he was unavailable and then we got a call like well maybe he's not so we were like yes I mean yeah so we sent the script off and then like right away and I knew that he was in London and it was just like right away yes let's get on the zoom let's talk and so we got on a zoom together and it was you know love at first sight and kind of just he he gets he gets in your heart oh God he gets in there you know ah it's really annoying and he doesn't leave he stays he stays with you um and we just like it was like a thing it was one of those weird things where like even through Zoom somehow you could feel it and um and when it's right it's right that's why it didn't take us any time at all when it's that's the thing Neil and I sat down it was right and then we met him it was right we saw these guys and their auditions and we were like done that's it we don't we don't dither when it's right it's right I mean part of the part of the job is knowing when it's right Bella wonderful Bella what was before we get into this wonderful perfect Bella Bella what was your life like after Game of Thrones I mean could you get a restaurant table anywhere I mean what was it like after Game of Thrones yes um it was very much the same other than that I got recognized every so often kind of a lot when it first came out but then like like died off as I looked a bit older although arguably I still look basically the same um but it wasn't yeah I mean I was introduced to the like I said my life did change because I was introduced to the film and TV world I didn't like I have no parents in the industry I had like no links to it whatsoever so I had no idea what to get myself into um and now like I never want to leave so I guess that is what changed so YouTube had you and and Pedro had to get close quit quit can you tell me what was your first impression of Pedro well I first was introduced to Pedro on like a HR Zoom before we it was the mandated one yeah and you were like you were like walking around your house with like your phone and the doorbell was ringing and it was just chaos and I was like this is what the next year is going to be and it was I remember now oh it was so it was completely you see we're framing it as if it's in character but it was not in character I'm not a late person I'm not a late person no no I don't sleep very well and I slept in this morning and was super late to the HR Zoom call for the executives of HBO and the whole show and everything it was a very it was very uncharacteristic of me but yeah now I remember and I was like and the battery was running out and like I couldn't it was I didn't I didn't know the apartment that I was in and I was looking around for a plug so that I could situate and listen to the very serious um conversation you have to bond quit did you find ways to bond or was the story such that you obviously were kind of at bad ends at the beginning so your relationship grew what was it like working together at the very beginning I mean I think that we didn't want the other to I don't know we're decent people and so we wanted the other people the the other to feel comfortable and and I was hoping that they would like me and I'm sure Bella was scared you know wanted me to to like them back and and and and we started in a in a kind of place of generosity and kindness although shy and then we didn't have a [ __ ] choice we were with each other every single day I think we you're right we're very shy of each other and like Joel and Ellie were very reluctant of each other so that sort of sort of worked out well for us yeah and scheduled it was scheduled well for us yeah because the more comfortable we got with one another um even though our first steps were complete kind and um curious but they didn't put any pressure on us to to get to know each other in any certain way or or or or um insist on some kind of chemistry which is what you're ultimately scared this mysterious word chemistry you know when really it's just like be generous with one another and listen to one another and and care about one another and and um uh and that's that was just sort of a human logic that we had and we didn't really know if it would translate I guess that was that would be the fear it was pretty amazing to watch the two of them take care of each other and the the process was such we had such a long time of shooting we had 200 shooting days 118 I think finally somebody cares about me and um so they had all this time and in a weird way I kind of didn't want them to just be immediately in love with each other and laughing because they needed to learn about each other in front of the camera and they did but I have to say that when I wasn't kind of expecting when we got to the end was how close we all were how much it hurt like you get to a place where it's love you actually you love people and the two of them loved each other and and and what you see on screen particularly as you get to the end of the series is real that's not chemistry that's real and that was just incredible for me to watch it's beautiful Mr Luna it's true it's true it's true thank you for that polite clap I appreciate that right after I opened my heart to you all [Applause] now that was correct that was nice thank you Gabriel they just watched the first 80 minutes which pretty much go from zero to sixty very quickly um you're obviously there it seems like everything happened at night can you recall that shoot and was that the very first thing that you worked on uh it was mostly night shoots it was about a month of night shoots and uh but it was Alberta summertime nights which is like four and a half hours so it was a lot of just hanging out before work and then Sun's going down let's get to it and and uh and and then we're just on a rail with cassenia here our wonderful DP take us take about [Music] [Applause] we were uh yeah we were off and running every night so yeah we're pretty much up against it and and I mean it was so tight the script so tight the story I mean I was very familiar with the story having played it and and um was experiencing this weird like weird Deja Vu surreal I've been immersed again into the game but this time I'm I can touch everything and feel it all and it's all real so um but yeah yeah it was it was yeah a lot of weird nights so you guys have been faithful obviously to the game but then we got to episode three and then there was this pivot can you talk about why you made that pivot well it was something that Neil and I talked about as we were going through before we wrote any scripts we we just broke the whole story of the of the game apart into episodes and talked about how we wanted to adapt it and one of the things that's amazing about Neil and I think this makes him unique among people that create Source material is he understands that adaptation is not just something you do just because it's essential but the adaptation in the correct way is is important and so there are times where you want to just kind of go in a different way and the one of the things that Neil would say all the time is that there was this very freeing aspect of Storytelling in this medium because we could shift perspective in the game you're stuck you are Joel or later on the game your Ellie but you're either one and you're never anybody else so to to that extent bill had to be somebody that you meet as Joel and you experience as Joel and who serves the story of Joel and Ellie we didn't have that and we had an interest in showing how time had passed from the beginning of the outbreak to where we were in the show but I didn't really want to just do some random kind of years the way the world went I always like to look inside of relationships and there was an opportunity to take a kernel of a story that was in the game and just it expand it and turn it on its ear and make it the centerpiece that is sort of like the the donut hole and then you have the story of Joel and Ellie here then there's this we go away from them we tell this other story and then when we come back to Joel and Ellie we can see how that story has fed into Joel and his the way he thinks about Ellie and what he when he chooses to do next and it was just a a wonderful time making that episode we have a clip from episode three do you guys know what episode we're talking about Murray Bartlett Craig he's so wonderful he's actually not he's a dick and he's not a good actor we have to rely on Nick Offerman to basically sell this entire thing so we leaned on Nick from hey hey hey hey hey I've been set up thank you look see he's not dying he's fine hello very important [Music] [Applause] Murray you missed the quiz earlier so let me start with did you know of The Last of Us video game before this started and how did they come about casting you tell us your origin story okay um I am not a gamer I'm embarrassed to say I wish I'd played the game um no offense there it is I'm sorry uh but I have friends who are Gamers who loved the game so I I heard of it and then when the audition came up my friends were super excited because um people who love the game love the game um and then I got the the sides the you know the the script Pages for the audition and just was blown away I didn't have I don't think at that point I had the full script but I had these three scenes I think that were pieces from different parts of the episode and already I could see this incredible relationship these sort of vignettes of this relationship that said so much of the relationship that passed through time and I was just I was blown away by it so I was like I want this job uh also because I was a huge fan of of uh Chernobyl um which I think is you know one of the the best pieces of television uh so I was I was super excited to to be part of this game that people loved so deeply and to work with this uh this uh man who had created Chernobyl who I loved so deeply from afar um and then yeah I just auditioned uh and he doesn't do that anymore he just you know that shit's over um that's not quite true yeah um but uh yeah I I just hoped and prayed that they would uh let me be part of it Carolyn can you talk here about why why Murray why Nick Offerman why they why they were the two most perfect guys well I think there's something you know first of all when we were you know when we do these auditions you see like reams of it used to be in person but tapes you know people people and then also boom this one stood out you know Murray State it was like that's the guy I mean it was just so plainly obvious that he embodied all the sort of openness and heart and and and um just had a lilt to his performance that was so beautiful and then Nick was somebody I think that we're all really big fans of and and seemed to really be of I think we all felt was a really interesting and surprising um choice for this role and and they both did such a beautiful job and created such incredible chemistry on screen Murray I mean obviously we know Nick is a funny man between scenes was he a funny man or did he keep it straight how was he do you keep it down low I mean he's always funny right like he's just always got a twinkle in his eye that giggle that you hear in the show is a Nick Offerman giggle you know like it's oh my God someone asked me to do it before and I was like I don't I can't you know I don't want to like ruin it you just like nailed it no we we had a lot of fun Nick is such a good person and um uh just yeah just such a gentleman like through and through he's like an old school guy that just bro cares about all the things that you want someone to care about and um yeah it was it was a a joy working with Nick and but and and yeah very very funny in between takes not like you know he was doing a stand-up routine but just that twinkle in the eye like very dry sense of humor um which was a lovely sort of um contrast to some of the scenes that we were doing Craig where did the strawberries come from when they went and ate the strawberries geez I don't know sometimes I think about these things and I'm like ah if I think about it too much then I'll ruin my own brain or something I don't know where it comes from I I think well I I think that there was this theme that Frank was about life and about nurturing and tending and caring for things he says it showing paying attention to things is how we show love and so what would a gift be you know and the idea of gifting him something that seemed small and simple to us now almost negligent but to them then and knowing that bill was you know uh you know an Epicurean and would love something like that it just I don't but I don't know I don't know I don't know now I'm thinking about it stop it okay this uh this episode meant a lot to me I mean I I read it on the way to Alberta on the plane and I remember saying to you uh at one point during the shoot I was like episode what was episode four at the time we ended up combining one and two but I was like episode four might be the one we submit to the Vietnamese because I mean I know no none of the central characters in it but it was just so beautiful and the uh they're in a lot of it and so you know I'm reading it and then and then when I watch it in person um there was there you know they do the scene where you know walks in the sun you're a sophisticated guy who knows to pair the uh the Beaujolais with the rabbit and and uh and so my cousin my cousin AJ I'm gonna tell you a personal story my cousin Adrian past 2018. he and my other cousin Steven always had a joke there were in in Sanford and Son Fred one time Fred Sanford is trying to take up some girls back to the house and he promises some Beaujolais so every time my cousins would be you know they'd be drinking like what you having oh man I'm having that yeah and then and I saw it in the episode and it I mean I was already balling my my freaking eyes out because of what these guys are doing but then this hits and it just like hit me so hard and the uh but every you know everything about it it was it was so brilliantly raw and it was an opportunity for us to go into this little side chamber of the story that you don't see in the game and and was handling a really really brilliant way so um thank you for you too for executing it thank you for Craig and everybody for writing it it was really beautiful episode um Pedro's in it Pedro's in it a lot both he and Anna are are heavily featured in the episode Pedro and I have been waiting to work together for so long and we got we didn't get enough scenes but we at least we got to have like a shot at one intersection that's true like one day it wasn't a lunch but it was something yeah there was a moment there I was wondering if you were going to have Pedro go into the bedroom and find them did you go back and forth on that yeah people asking no God no I would never know that Neil and I uh that never even occurred to us that would just be horrible although now I realize then that we showed a lot of horrible things so I now I know why people would think that we would have but it didn't occur to me at the time we're very careful about the horrible things we show you oh my God the pool into the window is that was yeah that was um it's the end of song honestly that song Just guts me every time I hear it it's beautiful all right so let's jump into the horrible things um um the making of your Undead now obviously they are not Undead okay they're infected I'm so sorry I didn't play the game either what do we call them that's right okay they're infected so how much what was it like figuring out exactly how your infected people look to make them stand out from every other sub-human creepy zombie creature that we've seen on television yeah the the great thing about being part of this show as as someone that worked on the video game is how much love Craig and the cast and the but especially the crew they studied the game meticulously and what we did on the game was you know we knew we wanted to make it's a we're in the zombie genre but we wanted to differentiate ourselves and it started from watching planet Earth and watching this this quarter steps this fungal infection that takes over insects and it turns into this really beautiful thing uh and we had this guy that works at hyung Nam who started designing or infected for us and he did this like kind of Photoshop bash where he took of fungal growth and put it on this person and then he kept iterating on it then he designed what turned out to be the clicker the stuff that you see in episode two and that became like the core look of the infected and we developed it fully for the game and one of the things that when we worked on the show were like let's make it that like there's no need to reinvent it this is often the thing that uh happens in adaptation things can reinvent them just for the sake of making it different and there's certain things that need it to be changed and certain things that Craig and I knew from the get-go like the clickers that need to be exactly like the game or as close as we could come to it yeah and we had um an amazing crew working on that um Barry Gower and his team out of the UK um who worked with us on Chernobyl and worked with Carolyn on Game of Thrones and created the White Walkers and all this amazing stuff we went to Barry because we wanted as much as we could to be practical we love to see things on the day there it helps everybody it helps these guys react better to to the performances of the bad guys and it also helps us understand a little bit it just makes everything feel realer as you're shooting and then we worked with our visual effects teams um who were led by Alex Wong and a lot of creature work from WETA to take the creatures that we had designed to be real and then scan them and then tweak and add and change so what you see sometimes are purely prosthetic sometimes it's entirely digital and often it's a blend of the two and when people ask like was it real was it this it's yes it's the answer it's all of it but all carefully mixed together but we don't get there without the work that we did practically Bella and these folks who were dressed up as infected did it help you sometime were there moments where you wanted to bust out laughing because it was so crazy what was that like it was never funny never it was sometimes it was sweet because they couldn't see and you had to sort of gently take them by and they would gently take your hand and you could move them into their first position um uh for the for the take that is pretty funny though yeah I mean that actually is funny it was funny actually it was it was funny but it was disgusting and and and and and scary and which is perfect because there isn't a lot I think with so much that we see if especially if it's genre related um it's all visual effects and there's so much that you have to kind of create for yourself and in this circumstance there was little left to the imagination as much as their the detail work that was done in post that but still there was enough for us to really immerse you into the story definitely like on the in the museum when we're like on the ground with the clicker on top of us like it was terrifying yeah yeah we had a terrible time yeah I I met that guy in at the Alberta screening and and he's really tall guy yeah Sam yeah so Talent so like their movements and their they they put a hundred percent effort into every single take like even in the rehearsals there was no like they they must have been exhausted like all the effects in the clickers are on energy drinks all the time like they were playing just so much into and was so invested and so passionate that was after like whatever six hours in the chair just to get made up I mean it's a brutal job but yeah I mean it's Sam the guy who's one of those clickers he he's just a fan of the game I mean he he's a dancer I think by training that had always loved the game and would do his clicker impression for friends as a goof and then sent us a tape and we're like then that's this guy's a clicker it's amazing it's an actual clicker and it was that was something to see come to life did you guys have to really edit yourself in terms of how many times we would see the um the infected because obviously there's a lot of questions about why aren't they in every episode why aren't they out here yeah why do I hate the infected so much um we did edit ourselves um part of it was um knowing that too much of a good thing is bad and it is better to leave them wanting more this is the thing about creatures and monsters it's you you should want more of them if you get enough of them it's too much as far as I'm concerned it should always be lingering as this threat if you keep seeing them then it's like it's the time for the well here come the clickers and we don't want that um but that said we were also learning it was our first season um game for instance Game of Thrones when you look at the the white walkers and the whites in the first season of Game of Thrones and then you compare them to where they were and by the time you get to Heart home it's like night and day so it's part of it is learning part of its budget right um and and not to say that I mean HBO gave us a tremendous amount of resources um but a lot of the resources that we were spending were on also building environments making Boston look all blown up and you know shot to hell and creating a quarantine Zone and all these also because the nature of the story that Neil told in the game was Progressive you go from Boston to Wyoming uh we would just build these massive places and then leave you don't you're not supposed to do that that's terrible it's something it's something that you would see for the entire season of a show and I remember seeing the quarantine and was like these are two episodes yeah and then what is happening yeah and in the first step it was part of two episodes and then the in fact the day of the infection that was a real town yeah that with all of the extras did we already talk about this was I late no I mean yes you were but no we didn't it was a real town with when when we're in the truck and we eventually got to drive through this was an existing town that that that that we took over and filled with um extras and locals well it was real and to the point you go and touch the building and literally every facade on the street has been replaced with the foam a foam facade to make it look like but no that's due to Texas or whatever every every every every building I touched was foam really when I got up to the front of it oh I mean it's a real town it's there it's a building touch buildings were not yes Australians are real buildings they were real dude these movies are from two [Music] yeah because you guys nailed that architecture it could be Kyle Texas it could be beautiful oh yeah familiar with the area and it's just like I was like this looks this is crazy I mean we're in Alberta it looks just a second it was fun they call Alberta the Texas of Canada I mean it's it is it's sort of the middle of the country and it's you're a Cowboys they're cowboys and there's oil yeah it's pretty similar it was definitely foam when we re recreated that entire thing yes in olds yeah 90 minutes north of Calgary when we had shot originally a little bit of foam I'm not saying there was no foam used there was fun I have to convince no no we would never Murray we wouldn't put you in your phone don't worry about it thank you are you kidding me all right before we go I have to try to ask get anything out of you from season two can you say when you expect to start production we are months not years away from starting there you go can you say will you start days after we last left them months can you talk about the time frame it's a good question we could but we're not gonna um only because we it's fun to keep sort of the mystery it's fun to to wonder um I will say that our process of adaptation is going to be and has been so far exactly the same so that means we are going to certainly be drawing very heavily from The Source material and people can draw the conclusions that they would like um ladies and Gentlemen The Last of Us thank you so much thank you guys thank you

Channel: Mark Ian

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Id: Yi9XN-PJdzM

Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023