Travel Alberta has created an interactive map to showcase where HBO’s hit The Last of Us series was shot in the province.
Powered by Google Maps, the tool features per-episode breakdowns of the post-apocalyptic drama show’s filming locations. A brief description of what the location stood in for in the series will be listed, while the map will be updated weekly after each new episode.
For example, pre-pandemic scenes in the pilot with Sarah (Nico Parker) at school were filmed at Calgary’s Western Canada High School. Meanwhile, the Home Depot that Bill (Nick Offerman) visits in the highly acclaimed third episode was actually a Lowe’s in Calgary.
Speaking to CBC News, Travel Alberta noted that it’s been a challenge to get some of this data, given that some scenes were shot on private land. But the goal is to eventually have an itinerary throughout all nine episodes that you can use to track the trajectory of the entire series.
With a reported Game of Thrones-esque budget, The Last of Us is believed to be biggest TV production in Canadian history, making it particularly notable for the province. This meant that the series shot over the course of an entire year in cities like Calgary, Edmonton, High River, Lethbridge and Canmore.
However, one of the key players behind bringing the PlayStation video game’s zombie-infested world to life feels differently.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, John Paino, production designer on The Last of Us, praised Alberta for its beauty. Over the course of a year, the series was shot all around the province, including in Edmonton, Calgary, Fort River and Canmore, so he clearly spent a lot of time there.
Co-creator Neil Druckmann on the set of The Last of Us.
To start, Paino notes that it was easy to find Western-looking towns around Alberta to stand in for Texas during the show’s pre-pandemic opening scenes. But for many of the parts of the show that required run-down areas, Paino said they ran into some challenges:
When you go to major areas, cities, states, there’s always a liminal area that used to be an army base, or maybe it was an old factory. Children of Men, they shot a lot of that in old factory areas and old shipping yards. And I thought, Oh, Canada’s got lots of that, there’ll be a bunch of places that we’re going to just run around and augment it. We couldn’t find any of that. I swear to you, we couldn’t even find an abandoned gas station. We had a slow realization that many things that we thought we would just shoot on location, we would be building. Also, the architecture just wasn’t there. If we’re careening down streets and knocking things down—I was really shocked. It’s a very clean country. There’s like no, “Oh, yeah, over there, there’s all these abandoned buildings.” No American, uh, grit. [Laughs]
Therefore, this meant that he and his team had to actually build a lot of the sets from scratch. Given that the series is believed to be the biggest TV production in Canadian history with a Game of Thrones-level budget, they certainly had the resources to do so.
Joel (Pedro Pascal), Tess (Anna Torv) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in The Last of Us.
This work includes the construction of a 20-foot (6.1-metre) wall for the quarantine zone (QZ) that’s featured in the pilot. Of the QZ, Paino said the following:
I would say that that was at least two or three acres of scenery, and that was just one backlot. Just the amounts of things we had to order! And in Calgary, you’re kind of in the middle of Canada, so there’s not a lot there. It’s kind of like if you were working in the middle of the United States; you’d go to the coasts to get things. Canada is cold and rainy and a lot of our sets are outdoors. In the QZ, there is electricity for certain times of the day because it’s a bastion of civilization, for what it’s worth. So making the hodgepodge lights and things like that, making them feel like they’ve been reworked and repaired—kind of like the chairs, that idea, that metaphor was throughout.
Overall, the interview is a really interesting read, offering a lot of insight into the kind of work that goes into creating the look and feel of a big-budget show. In particular, Paino mentions how he played some of the game for reference but looked more towards images from real-life refugee camps, slum areas and council housing in the likes of England, India and France. He also notes that there wasn’t “an extensive amount of green screen” on sets, so what you see was, often, actually hand-crafted.
Paino isn’t the only person from The Last of Us creative team who’s praised Alberta. Last month, stars Pedro Pascal (Joel) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), as well as creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, raved to MobileSyrup in an interview about the experience of filming there.
HBO has confirmed that the Succession‘s highly anticipated fourth season will premiere on March 26th.
The date was revealed alongside the first teaser for the upcoming season, which offering a glimpse at the Roy kids as they plot against Logan (Brian Cox).
Season 3 of the acclaimed black comedy-drama ran from October to December 2021. All three seasons, as well as the upcoming fourth, stream exclusively on Crave in Canada.
Google now features a little fungal easter egg to celebrate HBO’s new The Last of Us series.
When you search “The Last of Us” on Google, a little mushroom will pop up. Clicking the fungus will then cause an outgrowth to appear on your screen. Amusingly, you can keep clicking the icon and the infection will grow and spread to cover more and more of the Google page.
Of course, the easter egg is referencing the Cordyceps infection that decimates humanity in The Last of Us. Notably, Cordyceps is a real life fungus that affects insects and arthropods, but The Last of Us takes creative liberty and extends that to humans.
Based on PlayStation’s 2013 game of the same name, HBO’s The Last of Us just premiered its second of nine episodes on January 22nd. In the series, a hardened smuggler is hired to escort a teenager across a pandemic-ravaged U.S.
The Last of Us was created by Neil Druckmann (the original PlayStation game’s writer/co-director) and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones).
The series is currently streaming on Crave. For more on The Last of Us, check out our interview with Druckmann, Mazin, Pascal and Ramsey.
PlayStation has released a demo for The Last of Us Part Ito coincide with the premiere of HBO’s live-action adaptation of the game.
Now, PlayStation Plus Premium members can now download a two-hour trial of The Last of Us Part I, a remake of the original PS3 game, as part of their subscription. PlayStation Plus Premium starts at $21.99 CAD/month, while The Last of Us Part I costs $89.99.
HBO’s The Last of Us premiered on Sunday, January 15th, with the series streaming exclusively on Crave in Canada. It’s a direct adaptation of the first The Last of Us game and its Left Behind expansion — both of which are included in Part I. Neil Druckmann, the writer and co-director of the original PS3 game, serves as showrunner alongside Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin.
In The Last of Us, a weary smuggler named Joel is hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie across a zombie-infested America, facing all kinds of horrors along the way. The series stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Joel and Ellie, respectively. New episodes of the series premiere on Crave every Sunday at 9pm ET.
For more on The Last of Us, read our reviews of both the remake and the TV show and check out our interview with Druckmann, Mazin, Pascal and Ramsey. It’s also worth noting that the series was filmed in Alberta in what’s believed to be the biggest TV production in Canadian history.
HBO’s The Last of Us has been getting rave reviews for being not only one of the few quality live-action video game adaptations, but a genuinely good series in its own right. It’s even won over some cynics. By all accounts, the PlayStation game adaptation is looking to be the next tentpole HBO series alongside the likes of House of the Dragon, The White Lotus and Succession.
In many ways, then, the series serves as a showcase for the province as a whole — not just its vistas, but its talented crew members and actors. On top of that, the game has a sprawling story about a smuggler named Joel (Pedro Pascal) who must escort scrappy teen Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a zombie-infested U.S., so we get to see a variety of locations and climates.
With that in mind, here are some of the Alberta filming sites to keep an eye out for in The Last of Us:
Without getting into spoilers, the first episode of the series partially takes place years before the collapse of humanity, so we get to see a lot of normal residential areas. These scenes, which include Pascal, Nico Parker (Joel’s daughter, Sarah) and Gabriel Luna (Joel’s brother, Tommy), were filmed in Calgary.
The little Albertan town played host to The Last of Us in a big way. As co-creator and showrunner Craig Mazin told us in an interview, Canmore was chosen for being a “dead ringer” for Jackson, Wyoming, a key setting involving Joel, Ellie and Tommy.
Separately, Pascal and Ramsey also both told us how Canmore was their favourite location out of the whole shoot, with the former saying “every inch of Canmore was just this magical little town… with really great fudge.” (Alas, we didn’t have time for a follow-up question, so it’s currently unclear where, exactly, Pascal was getting his fudge.)
It remains to be seen which episode(s) will feature Canmore, but expect to see the “magical little town” pop up a bit later in the series.
Edmonton
Of course, the provincial capital also features in the show for a number of Boston locations, including the Alberta Legislature Building standing in for the city’s Capitol. You’ll first see Edmonton pretty quickly in the show — the first two episodes, specifically, in scenes with Pascal, Ramsey and Anna Torv (Joel’s friend Tess).
Fort Macleod
With a population of around 3,000, Fort Macleod is perfect for “small-town” scenes. In the case of The Last of Us, one of the key moments from the Texas-set prologue was shot here.
In our interview, Ramsey shouted out this snowy location, which was home to the production for a few days as a stand-in for Colorado.
Of course, this only touches on some of the many Alberta locations featured in The Last of Us, given that it was a major year-long production. Looking at even a few of these, though, makes it clear how much of a role the province played in bringing a beloved video game to life. In fact, Pascal even told us that he felt it was “essential” there, praising the crew and other locals.
“I feel like being there was essential to the experience — that we couldn’t have done it anywhere else,” said Pascal. “Physically, for one, but also for our crew and the warmth and the dedication and everybody really in it together and caring as much. There wasn’t a fraction of apathy in the entire experience, and honestly, it felt Canadian to me.”
The Last of Us will begin streaming exclusively on Crave in Canada on January 15th.
Nearly 10 years after release, the beloved PlayStation game The Last of Us is finally getting a live-action adaptation on January 15th.
Co-created by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and original The Last of Us writer-director Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us tells the story of a hardened smuggler who’s tasked with escorting a teenaged girl across a post-apocalyptic U.S.
The series stars Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) as Joel, Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Ellie, Gabriel Luna (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Tommy), Merle Dandridge (Greenleaf) as Marlene (reprising the role from the game) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation).
As part of the HBO catalogue, The Last of Us will be available on Crave on the 15th at 9pm ET, the same time it drops on HBO and HBO Max in the U.S. The nine-episode series will follow a weekly release format.
For me, effectively getting the same story for the fourth time in 10 years (after the original 2013 release, it’s 2014 remaster and 2022 remake) didn’t really seem appealing. Marketing hued so closely to Naughty Dog’s games — often shot-for-shot, line-by-line — that I felt pretty apathetic towards it all.
But now, after having watched the first few episodes of the show, I’m pleased to say that my fears, so far, have been squashed.
That all starts with the casting. The leads of any show are important, but especially so for a title like this that focuses so much on two characters. For the uninitiated, The Last of Us was hugely successful for its unforgettable and moving story of a broken man named Joel finding love again with a surrogate daughter, Ellie, in a post-apocalyptic world. The powerful performances of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson, coupled with co-director Neil Druckmann’s sharp writing, made you truly invest in this relationship. The central father-daughter dynamic has also helped Naughty Dog’s game stand out from the many other zombie stories out there, such as AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Thankfully, that’s all equally true for HBO’s The Last of Us. While the show features some direct crossover between the game in that Druckmann serves as co-creator, co-showrunner and co-writer (alongside Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin), it’s now Game of Thrones alums Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey who take on the lead roles. And boy, do they kill it. Pascal is perhaps known for his child-protecting starring role in The Mandalorian, in which he impressively has to lean on body language and voice while being mostly helmeted. But in The Last of Us, we really get see his full dramatic range, with the camera offering many lingering shots of this world-weary shell of a man, and Pascal conveying all of that pain masterfully through subtle glances and facial expressions.
Pedro Pascal shines as Joel.
Bella Ramsey is also a revelation. As is (sadly) often the case with online fandom, the casting of Ramsey (who uses they/them pronouns) has received pushback, particularly since they don’t quite resemble the game version of Ellie. But those who look past such superficial gripes will find an exceptional performance. It’s a role that requires finding a genuine youthful earnestness underneath an often prickly exterior, and Ramsey captures that beautifully, wide-eyed charm and all. The rest of the cast, including Gabriel Luna (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D) as Joel’s brother Tommy, Anna Torv (Fringe) as Joel’s friend Tess and Merle Dandridge as Firefly resistance leader Marlene (reprising her role from the game), is also solid. Seeing these familiar-yet-fresh interpretations of characters I’ve held dear for nearly 10 years feels quite special.
The faithfulness to the source material extends to the set design. The Last of Us‘ overgrown, pandemic-ravaged setting has always felt wonderfully distinct, and the series’ crew has done a wonderful job bringing that to life across various parts of Alberta. Through a Game of Thrones-esque budget that reportedly makes it Canada’s largest TV production to date, the Canadian province’s locales of Canmore, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, Edmonton and more truly feel ripped right out The Last of Us. The quiet moments from the game, filled with utter beauty and returning composer Gustavo Santaolalla’s engrossing, understated music, also work really well with the stunning Alberta cinematography.
Adding to all of that is the fact that Druckmann and Mazin have made the smart decision to cut back on the action that punctuated the original PlayStation title. After all, you need that more in a 15-hour action-oriented game, but far less so in an HBO series. Instead, the human-zombie altercations come more sparingly, which makes them feel more impactful and tense, especially as the show slowly reveals new creature types over time. A particular highlight are the Clickers, of which gamers no doubt have terrifying memories for their gruesome look — a fungal outgrowth on a human’s body — and echolocation-like ticks. The crew should be commended for how skillfully they brought these monsters to life.
Nico Parker as Sarah.
If I have any gripes with The Last of Us so far, it’s that it’s a bit slow to get moving. In particular, two of the early episodes are nearly an hour-and-a-half long, which can drag at times. This felt most apparent in the pilot. On the one hand, spending a bit more time in the pre-pandemic period lets us see more of the “before times” of Joel’s life with his daughter Sarah (Dumbo‘s Nico Parker) and Tommy — a smart way to make the inevitable heartbreaking collapse of humanity feel more impactful. And some of this is compelling, like a sweet moment of Tommy and Sarah ragging on Joel on his birthday for being old. This banter is something that didn’t feature much into the original game’s rather breakneck opening, and it’s so welcome here. That said, it also feels like there’s some meandering as we watch Sarah sit through class or talk to a neighbour — time that perhaps could have been better served on more family scenes.
That said, the show makes more rewarding turns from the game as it goes on. Admittedly, the first two episodes are mostly beat-for-beat the original game, plus a few rather interesting new scenes exploring the broader scientific world coming to terms with the outbreak. But Episode 3 proves to be a marked deviation from the game that Druckmann himself admits will upset some fans: a prolonged section with the crafty survivalist Bill (Parks and Recreation‘s Nick Offerman).
Nick Offerman as Bill.
In the game, the cantankerous Bill is an engaging enough companion for Joel and Ellie, but on the whole, he’s mostly just a means to an end for them to get a working vehicle. His romantic relationship with Frank is also only briefly touched upon, so it’s not nearly as effective as it could have been. The TV series, however, dramatically expands upon all of this. Here, Bill roams around his trap-filled town, which we previously only viewed from the perspective of Joel, and actually shares scenes with Frank (The White Lotus’ Murray Bartlett). Through this relationship, we get to see more layers of Bill, a character I previously never thought much about, and it’s easily one the show’s biggest strengths so far. It remains to be seen how the series might handle other narrative departures, such as Kathleen, a brand-new character played by Yellowjackets‘ Melanie Lynskey, but it’s certainly the sort of thing that most drives my interest in the show.
Of course, four episodes of a nine-episode series aren’t enough to definitively come down on The Last of Us one way or the other. But I will say that the show has, at this point, overcome my initial wariness. On the surface, there are excellent performances and immaculate set design that anyone can appreciate. And while its adaptation of story beats from the game sometimes feel more intriguing than genuinely fresh and exciting, the overall solid execution and more meaningful later creative risks are enough to grab my attention for future episodes. Whether you’re a fan of the games or a newcomer entirely, The Last of Us is absolutely worth a watch.
The Last of Us premieres in Canada exclusively on Crave on January 15th.
For more on The Last of Us, check out our interview with several of the show’s key players, including Pascal, Ramsey, Druckmann and Mazin.
In 2013, PlayStation took the entertainment world by storm with The Last of Us, a gripping action-adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic America. Developed by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us tells the harrowing and emotional story of Joel, a hardened smuggler, and Ellie, a bright-eyed teen, who slowly become close as they fight to survive in a hellish, zombie-infested world. It’s a tale that resonated deeply with people; The Last of Us went on to garner more than 200 ‘Game of the Year’ awards and spawn a similarly acclaimed sequel. Together, they’ve sold more than 37 million copies worldwide, and, for many, set the gold standard for prestige, narrative-driven gaming experiences.
Naturally, then, Sony has been looking at many ways to adapt it for a wider audience, including, at one point, a scrapped film helmed by original Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi. Some of these efforts go as far back as 2014, and during that time, Hollywood’s interest in games has only increased. Netflix alone has such series as Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Castlevania and The Cuphead Show!, and that’s to say nothing of big-screen fare like Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu and Uncharted.
What makes HBO’s The Last of Us stand out, though, is the people involved. At a time when we have the showrunner of Paramount’s Halo show declaring that he didn’t even look at the games, the key creatives behind HBO’s live-action adaptation of The Last of Us have a much more apparent love and understanding of the source material they’re adapting and the gaming medium as a whole.
First, there’s Neil Druckmann, the co-writer and co-director of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, who serves as co-creator, co-showrunner, co-writer and executive producer on the HBO series. It’s practically unheard of to have one of the driving forces behind a game be so involved with its adaptation, especially when, in Druckmann’s case, he already has his hands full serving as Naughty Dog co-president and director of a future, mysterious title. His co-showrunner, Craig Mazin, is the Emmy-winning mind behind HBO’s Chernobyl who’s also been quite candid about his affection for The Last of Us game, even recently calling it “the greatest story ever told in video games.”
For Druckmann, it’s made all the difference to have someone like Mazin — both an avid fan of the source material and a proven screenwriter who knows the ins-and-outs of Hollywood — to be such a close collaborator on the series. The pair were introduced through a mutual friend, Westworld‘s Shannon Woodward, with whom Druckmann worked on The Last of Us Part II. “I can see the love and the passion and how he wanted to do this story justice — it started there. And that would often move me, just to have a partner like that,” he tells MobileSyrup during a group interview.
From left to right: Gabriel Luna, Merle Dandridge, Pedro Pascal, Neil Druckmann, Bella Ramsey and Craig Mazin.
Of course, Mazin’s screenwriting experience was only enhanced by having Druckmann himself around to ensure authenticity towards the games. In between commitments at Naughty Dog’s Santa Monica, California-based studio, Druckmann spent a fair amount of time in Alberta, where The Last of Us was filmed between June 2021 and 2022. With a rumoured budget of at least $100 million — a sum that rivals what HBO spent on several of Game of Thrones’ individual seasons — The Last of Us is believed to be the most expensive TV production in Canadian history.
According to Druckmann, HBO enlisted a top-notch crew of Canadian talent, including “some of the best prosthetic people, some of the best set designers, costume designers,” to work on The Last of Us. While he’s quick to praise the crew now, he acknowledges that his reaction to their work has regularly left him speechless.
“Most importantly, we needed to feel the movement of Joel and Ellie through space and time” — Mazin
“I often don’t have the right words to describe that feeling,” he says of what it was like to see his creations come to life. “To have our prop master come to me and be like, ‘What do you think of this?’ and they hand me Ellie’s switchblade, and I’m looking at it like, ‘oh my God, I’m holding Ellie’s switchblade, don’t freak out, just be serious and give him some notes!’”
That feeling only got “bigger and bigger” as he went from props to the actual Alberta sets.
“I’m standing inside Joel’s house, and I’m having to take a Zoom call with people back at Naughty Dog. And I’m like, ‘look at the sheets, look at the posters, look at their wallpaper… look how they’re studying this thing that you’ve all built and how they’re honouring it!’” I would often just pause in the middle of a set and just look around and be like, ‘appreciate this — this thing that we’ve made over here as a video game is inspiring all these other artists and craftsmen to just build this really beautiful other version of the story that can stand on its own just as strongly.’”
Mazin adds that it was “fantastic” to shoot in Alberta, pointing out that it was a prime location to adapt The Last of Us‘ story, which is broken up into four chapters based on each season.
“Most importantly, we needed to feel the movement of Joel and Ellie through space and time. Space means diversity of environment and time means seasons — it means weather. We needed snow, we got snow! We needed it to be cold, it was cold! But we also had the Canadian Rockies. We had Canmore, which is a town that’s a dead ringer for Jackson, Wyoming [one of the game’s settings]. We needed people on horseback, no problem. We needed some of the best stunt people in the world — they were there […] While we were bringing crew in from Vancouver as well, there was an enormous amount of fantastic people working in Alberta.”
Mazin says the production took the cast and crew all around the province, including Grand Prairie and Lethbridge. “We’ve been everywhere, and it was a delight. And I miss Calgary and I miss all the folks there. It was an incredible experience to shoot there.”
The cast’s experiences
Joel and Ellie encounter a Clicker.
Of course, the other half of the equation is who’s in front of the camera, and The Last of Us also has some pretty notable talent in that regard. Fittingly for a big HBO production, The Last of Us‘ two leads are Game of Thrones alums Pedro Pascal (Joel) and Bella Ramsey (Ellie). Pascal, of course, plays a spiritually similar role in The Mandalorian, the titular protector of the infant colloquially known as “Baby Yoda.” Meanwhile, Game of Thrones saw Ramsey — who uses they/them pronouns — portray Lyanna Mormont, a fierce and quick-witted teen not unlike Ellie.
Over the course of his prolific career, Pascal, in particular, has been a part of many big and beloved franchises, including the aforementioned Star Wars and Game of Thrones, as well as DC’s Wonder Woman 1984 and Netflix’s Narcos. Even still, he notes that filming The Last of Us in Alberta was special. Last year, he raved about Banff on The Late Late Show with James Corden, and he was equally effusive when asked about the rest of the province.
“I feel like being there was essential to the experience — that we couldn’t have done it anywhere else” — Pascal
In his typical gentlemanly demeanour, though, he’s quick to let Ramsey answer first.
“My favourite place that we went to was Canmore for sure,” they say, eliciting an excited response — “I was gonna say Canmore!” — from Pascal.
“Yeah, it was great!” adds Ramsey, to which Pascal smiles and nods in agreement. “We went to Waterton as well. High River, Fort Macleod….”
While Pascal notes that they went “all over Alberta,” he keeps coming back to Canmore. “Every inch of Canmore was just this magical little town… with really great fudge.”
“I never tried the fudge! Oh man,” laments Ramsey, leading Pascal to laugh and say “you should!”
Jackson community is coming to life in Canmore. The town is gaining details characteristic of The Last of Us universe.
— The Last of Us HBO – Jan 15 (@TheLastofUsNews) November 9, 2021
Evidently, the lighthearted rapport between the two is infectious, and it should help convey the tight bond between their characters on the screen.
Ramsey also noted how “wonderful” the Canadian crew had been. “They were so consistently passionate throughout the whole year. There was never a moment where it felt like no one wanted to be there. Even on the really hard, long nights we spent shooting, everyone was so pleased to be there and passionate about the work we were collectively creating.”
“I feel like being there was essential to the experience — that we couldn’t have done it anywhere else,” adds Pascal. “Physically, for one, but also for our crew and the warmth and the dedication and everybody really in it together and caring as much. There wasn’t a fraction of apathy in the entire experience, and honestly, it felt Canadian to me.”
Canadian connections aside, part of the wider appeal of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation for gamers is how Druckmann and Mazin have updated the story. While it’s an overall faithful recreation of the first The Last of Us game, the pair have also added material to expand upon what was originally there. One of the biggest examples of this comes in the pilot during extended pre-pandemic scenes with Joel’s daughter Sarah (Nico Parker, Dumbo) and younger brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).
Luna as Tommy.
For Luna, this presented a rich opportunity to flesh out the games, which he’d played and enjoyed even before being cast in the HBO series.
“What was wonderful is that we got to show the family together before the world ends. Even if it’s just a couple of brief scenes, you get to just see them be together, see them joke, see them read each other as brothers do,” he says. “It was really, really great to do that — to start to just build the tissue of a very small, tight knit family that we intend for you to fall in love with very quickly so you can feel the pain with us when they get ripped apart.”
Tommy is an interesting character in that he’s a major part of Joel’s life both before and after the outbreak. That makes the role significant in and of itself, and Luna says he only felt closer to it due to his own experiences. That started with bonding with Pascal about their shared Hispanic backgrounds and upbringings in Texas, but he says he also related to Tommy due to his own family.
“You just have a really superb script that depicts this brotherly connection, this relationship, this somewhat paternal relationship that Joel has not only to his daughter Sarah, but also to his younger brother, Tommy, which I can absolutely identify with, as an older brother myself. My father has been gone since before I was born. My mother was a 15-year-old widow when she had me. And so she very much sometimes is more like a sibling than she is a mother in that we’re so kind of close in age,” he says.
“Then I feel that I have to assume the role of patriarch and take care of my younger brother and younger sisters as a father would have. My mother raised my brother and was a single mother. And so there’s that element, too — that Joel feels that he’s the guy, he’s the boss, he’s the father figure, not only to his daughter, but to [Tommy] also. So you try to explore all that.”
Marlene (Dandridge) and Kim (Natasha Mumba).
Merle Dandridge (Greenleaf) also has her own close connection to The Last of Us. While original game actors Troy Baker (Joel), Ashley Johnson (Ellie) and Jeffrey Pierce (Tommy) all return to play different characters in the show, Dandridge actually reprises her role of Marlene, the leader of a resistance group known as the Fireflies. Her character is how Joel becomes introduced to Ellie, and she plays a pivotal role throughout the story.
“At times, it still moves me to tears, as weird as that sounds, because I never expected that people would, again, put so much of themselves and honour it to this degree” — Druckmann
Naturally, this gives Dandridge a unique perspective among the cast, especially since acting in the original game meant having to imagine nearly everything while being in a largely empty motion-capture studio. While she says her background in theatre made such mo-cap work “a natural fit,” she was still in awe when she got to actually step foot in a physical recreation of the world of The Last of Us.
“To get up there in Alberta on the set and to tangibly be able to touch everything and feel the weight and hear the water drip and the texture of the sets and accuracy and beauty of the costumes — it was, at many times, deeply overwhelming. I know [Mazin] would always think of me as his litmus test and put me in front of things and I would have a visceral emotional reaction every single time! And, often, dissolve into a puddle of tears because one, as an artist, I’m an open spirit, but I was, fundamentally, deeply moved by the clear love that all of the artists and designers had in every single detail of the show. So for me to know and love and have so much sentimentality for this and see it elucidated was highly emotional and joyful.”
Even after years of developing the series, Druckmann says he still gets a similar feeling.
“At times, it still moves me to tears, as weird as that sounds, because I never expected that people would, again, put so much of themselves and honour it to this degree. And I love taking everything back to the Naughty Dog team and just showing them the stuff. I’m like, ‘the love that you’ve given this thing is now translated over here.’ And often, they’re moved to tears when I show them this. It’s a really hard thing for me to articulate, but it’s pretty surreal.”
The Last of Us will begin streaming in Canada exclusively on Crave on January 15th.
HBO has decided to cancel Westworld after its recently released fourth season.
It’s a shocking move from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, as Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan said as recently as last month that plans were underway to produce a fifth and final season. It’s unclear if and when we’ll ever see what they had planned to wrap up the series, which was set in a futuristic world and explored the ramifications of artificial intelligence.
Following its October 2016 premiere, Westworld has garnered significant acclaim and 54 Emmy nominations, making it a tentpole for HBO. In Canada, the series streams on Crave and is one of the service’s marquee titles.
Warner Bros. Discovery did not provide a reason for the cancellation, simply saying in a statement that it’s “tremendously grateful” to Joy, Nolan and the other people involved in the creation of the series.
However, the expensive series’ initially strong ratings and reception have dropped as the seasons went along, and Warner Bros. Discovery has been enacting significant cost-cutting measures as of late. In an effort to save over $3 billion USD (about $4.04 billion CAD), CEO David Zaslav laid off 14 percent of the HBO Max workforce in the summer while cancelling the near-finished Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt, among other projects. Most recently, Warner Bros-Discovery chose to not move forward with a reboot of Degrassi, leaving that Canadian series’ future uncertain.
