Nick Offerman has a confession: he doesn’t play video games.
But unlike several of his The Last of Us co-stars, who were advised to avoid the PlayStation game upon which it’s based, Offerman has a surprisingly different reason for not being a gamer.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday to promote his acclaimed January 29th episode of the HBO series, “Long, Long Time,” Offerman revealed that he has a history with games. When Kimmel asked if Offerman had played The Last of Us, the Parks and Recreation star said that an addiction to Nintendo 64 classic platformer Banjo-Kazooie actually made him quit games entirely:
“Twenty-five years ago, I played my last video game and I’m very indulgent. I lost a couple of weeks to a video game called Banjo-Kazooie. Two weeks went by and I was like, ‘oh my god, the slow dopamine drip is so delicious,’ then it’s over and you’re like ‘yes, I won!’ and immediately I’m like, ‘what have I done with my life?’ So I decided I was never going to do that again. And so thankfully, because games have gotten so good, like The Last of Us, that I think I’d be in a basement and I wouldn’t even be going to audition for shows like this.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Kimmel showed amusing clips of people reacting emotionally to “Long, Long Time.” Both Offerman and co-star Murray Bartlett have garnered significant praise for their respective roles of Bill and Frank, two partners surviving together over the years during the post-apocalypse. In fact, many of those who have seen all nine episodes of the series have said it’s the best of the bunch.
Overall, The Last of Us has already become one of HBO’s most popular shows, and its second-biggest premiere after House of the Dragon. The massive early success has led HBO to already renew the series for a second season, which will adapt The Last of Us Part II video game.
Co-created by Neil Druckmann (the original The Last of Us game) and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), The Last of Us follows Joel (The Mandalorian‘s Pedro Pascal, a hardened man who’s hired to smuggle a young teenager, Ellie (Game of Thrones’ Bella Ramsey), across a pandemic-ravaged U.S.
Despite that American setting, though, the series was actually filmed entirely in Alberta, a fact that Mazin, Pascal and Ramsey raved about to MobileSyrup in a recent interview. The series’ production designer even said he was surprised at how “clean” the province ended up being. And to promote the province, Travel Alberta has also created an interactive map to let you view exact filming locations from the series.
The Last of Us is now streaming on Crave. Banjo-Kazooie, meanwhile, is available in the Rare Replay collection on Xbox and on Nintendo Switch via a Switch Online Expansion Pack membership.
Image credit: HBO, Xbox
