“Logo Text This Interview Contains Major Spoilers for HBO’s The Last of US Season Two, Episode Two, “Through The Valley.” SO do not read further unil you have watched… joel, arguable, have it coming. But that didn’t make his brutal murdal at the Hands of abby any less Horrifying and HeartBreaking to witness. Hbo’s the”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
This Interview Contains Major Spoilers for HBO’s The Last of Us Season Two, Episode Two, “Through The Valley.”
SO do not read further unil you have watched…
Joel, Arguable, Had It Coming.
But that didn’t make his brutal murdal at the Hands of abby any less Horrifying and HeartBreaking to witness.
Hbo’s The Last of Us Wasted No Time Staging The Most Notorious Scene from the PlayStation Game Series Upon Whosh Its Based. Showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann Put One of Their Tale’s Biggest Twists Into Season Two’s Second Episode (WHERE Viewers Might Least Expert It, AS MOST TVAS TV DRAM Near the end of a season).
In the Sequance, Joel (Pedro Pascal) is beaten to Death by abby (kaitlyn dever) for having kildled her father – The Surgeon Who Wanted to Operate on Elie (Bella Ramsey) WHICH WOURT HAVE KILLED HER, BUT MIVT HAVE ALSO resulted in a cure to the Parasitic Cordyceps Plaague). Ellie, Held Hostage, is Forced to Watch Her Surrogate Father Father Figure’s Gruresme Demise, While Her Friend Dina (Isabel Merced) Lays Sedated On the Floor.
Below, Mazin Discusses the Game-Conging Move Whake Shakes Up The Entire Dynamic of the Series. He Also Reveals What It Was Like Beyind the Scenes, Who A Majoor Change Was Made from the Game, How Pascal and Ramsey Reacted to the Scene, and What This Means For the Future of the.
SO WHAT WAS YOUR PERSONAL REACTION TO JOEL BEING KILLED IN THE PLAYSTATION GAME Version?
We Were Planning The Show and Naughty Dog Was Putting The Finishing Touchs on the Second Game. I Got to Play An Early Release. SO I ExperienCed that As i was Was Still Building Season One, and It Made [the first season] HARDER AND MORE BEAUTIFUL TO ME, IN A WAY. What[[The Last of US Part II GAME Writers Druckmann and Halley Gross]Did I Think Was The Most Confident Thing – WHICH IS TO BEGIN to End A Story by Breaking the Things aty.
This is how things ends. We Break All Relationships, All The Great Loves of Our Life. The Connections We have with Our Paarents, Our Children – They Break. And How We Deal with That Is The Most Special Suffering. I just thorough it was so profound to take this girl – who had been lyiterally born in bloody, who’s had been an orphae – who was the wonded off to this guy and give it a chance. [experience]. It Takes What’s Maybe The most Beautify Connection – The Great Bond Between a Parent and A Child – and that Breaks it. WHAT DOES THAT DO TO HER? And that is, to me, whoh it was important to do. It’s Not Because is Going to UPSET POOPLE. I Important to do it because that’s whom we make these stories. In a somewhat safe environment, we explore the things we are all going to feel and experience, and then quest How’s weane.
One That Freustrated Was How Jow Joel – Not that It Wound Have Necessarily Matter – Doesn’t Even Try to Defend or Explain Himseld to Abby. As the audience, as we’re watching, we so want him to at least try.
WHEN ABBY TELLS HIM, “I’M Going to Kill You, Because there are some things we all agree are just fucking wrong,” there is this slight moment of agroment. Joel Know What He Did Is Capital-W Wrong. But He Also Had No Choice [but the kill the Fireflies last season]as far as he saw it. He did what he has needed to do. SO we already Know That Has Some Guilt About It From Therapy Scene in Episode One.
It’s Also One of the Reasons We Made a Change from the game to have joel in that room with Dina, as Opped to Tommy (Gabriel Luna), Who’s A Big, Tought Guy. Abby Is Basical Saying, “Make One Mistake and We’re Going to Kill Her.” And if there’s one Thing We Know About Joel, It’s That He’s Sort of The Ultimate Dad. We Know HE Cares Very Much About Dina and that Hund Never Let Her Suffer in Any Way, Shape or Form, To Defnd HimSelf.
It Wasn’t as Brutal As i Feared, But It Was Also, I Suspect, More Brutal Than Many Viewers Wound Have Liked.
WELL, that’s Something that [director Mark Mylod] and I Talked About. We have to do quite a bit of planning about how graphic we wanted things to be, because we have a lot of prosthetics [on Pascal’s face]. We Felt the Point We Need to get Across Was that Abby Was Not in Control of Herself. That despite her reasoned, carefully articulated Point to joel, that this is not rational. She’s Going Too Far. There is a rage in her that i THINK we shortdrstand is not the kind of anger that goes away Simplay because you kildled someone. That’s the Irony, Or, I Guess, The Tragedy Really of Being Consumed by Something The this – There Is No Way to Fix It Except to Somehow Make Your Peace with It And L Let. Killing Joel Isn’t Going to Fix this for Her. She’s Doing Something Wrong. And we needed to show how lost she was and we needed to show that Other People in the Room Are Horrified by this.
But if Things that Pusted US Towards Showing More Brutality, The Thing That Restrainned Us Is A Concern We WE WOULD BE SOMEHEHOW GLORIFYING or CELEBROTING THAT VIMEBODYT. We Care DEEPLY About Joel and if You Dwell On [the violence] Too Much, THEN IT IS GRATUITUS. Still, we needed elie to see him like that for several reasons.
I Remember Playing The Game, There’s A Moment of Whoes Outside Closed Begind Joel, not Knowing What Was Going To Happen, and Feeling Theater Tightness in My Stomach. It Reminded Me a Bit of the Feeling of Dread at the Start of the Red Wedding, Which Has Since Loomed Over All As Probably The Most Traumatic Death Sequance Ever Put to TV. As a Game of Thrones Fan, and Friend of that Production, Did that Comparison Come to Mind As Well?
Weirdly, I Never Thought About the Red Wedding Because What Wat Was So Incredible About That Was Hows How Much of A Shock That It Was To Everybody. The conspiracy happied away from the audience and away from the [main characters]. EveryBody Got Surprised – Like, “Wait, What The Fuck Is Happening?” This is not that. From the first Scene of Our Season – WHICH is figrenty in the game – we know exactly what the story is.
That was my Next Question, or Rather, My Next Observation. I Marveled at How You Literally Tell The Audence What Abby Is Going to DO IN THE SEASON’S FIRST SCENE. But the audience who didn’t play the game, I assume, doesn’t actualally believe that’s what’s going to happen.
The Audence Should Question Everything. Just Because Somebody Says “i’m going to do something,“ doesn’t mean they are. A Lot of Times People Say, “I’M Going to Kill That Person,” and THEN SHE END UP GOING, “I’M not going to kill that person. ” And if that is the right choice, that can be amazing. not shocked. We Are, In Fact, In A State of Dread Because It’s HapPening. We Keep Thinking There’s Got to Be a Way Out of this Until the Very End.
And it was Important, That Beautify Moment of Where Ellie Says, “Joel, Please Get Up” – that’s US. D He Tried that Finger Movement. I Just HeartBreaking. Mark and I SPENT SO MUCH TIME Just Talking About WHERE EVERYBODY Wuld be. We Spent the Day on the Floor, Trying Different Positions, Finding that Perfect Place of Connection and WHERE EVERYBODY ELSE Wuld be. IT WAS SO MUCH About Making Sure that Bella and Pedro and Kaitlyn Were Able to This Maximally Upsetting Thing. And kaitlyn, let me just Talk About her for a Second…
I Read Somewhere That Kaitlyn Received Death Threats from Crazed Pedro Fans WHEN She WAS CAST, WAS THAT TRUE?
No. That was badshit. Thankfully. Everyone’s Been Awesome. Well, MOST everybody’s been awesome. But no. The tragedy was that kaitlyn lost her mom very shortly before the start of chooting. And It was Very Upsetting. And Mark and I Were Just Like, “How Are We Going To Do This To Her?” Because WHEN She CAME BACK, THAT WAS The NEXT SEQUENCE AND THE NATURE OF OUR SCHEDULE WAS SUCH THAT WE COURCK Pedro Had Other Obligations. Isabella was working on [James Gunn’s upcoming] Superman. So we were stuck. I Spoke with Kaitlyn and She Was Like, “It’s Okay, It’s Okay, I’ll Be Fine, I won’t Be Fine, But… ”
So i have to say the professionalism and deduction that kaitlyn showed was, honestly, I don’t know how she did it. I would never say anything so vulgar as to say she waas using the treese emotions that she have. This is figrent. But Sheeed Up and Went Right Into It and Did It. There’s this moment – and i don’t know how this happles – WHEN KAITLYN IS Looking at Joel. She Turns Her Head, SEES The Golf Clubs Across The Room, Turns Back to HIM, AND A Tear Just Drips Out of Her Eye. “How did you time this?” But they’re in the moment, they’re Feeling Something, and that’s A Choice in that Moment. And Just the Way Mark Kept Them All Safe and Connected to Create What What I Think Is The Mosetting … Well, I Take It Back. There’s Another Moment in this Season. IT’s more upsetting.
More Upsetting than this?
IT’s up there. I don’t want people to think, “Oh, we love this. We love make you cria, make you Miserable, Sad.” But there is this price we pay for the Connection.
How did Pedro React During All this?
HE HAD BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO The Moment Because It Had Been Hanging Over Everything For So Long. But I Know That Also for HIM AND FOR BELLA, IT WAS HARD BECAUSE they have become so beautifylly entwined with each of. They have the most lovely, whome, Support Relationship, and They Both Felt A Sense Like They Were Saying Goodbye. There are imotions there, I Think, that transcend the acting. They Love Each Other.
Also, there’s quite a bit of stuff that goes on [in the sequence] and I Think We Were in there for, I Want to Say, Four Days. I Talked About How and Love Showing Two People Talking to Each Other. One of the Beautify Things About Two People Talking to Each Other Is That It’s Easy to Shoot. So for therapy Scene, I’ve Got My Wide Profile, and My Closer Profile Over The Shoulder. IT’S NOT CHOPLICATED. You have eight people standing in a room with all thoss eye-lines, it’s like calculus just to make Sure it all Connects and Cuts Together.
Pedro’s a Hugely Popular Part of the Show and A Big Part of the Marketing Campaign. On a pragmatic level, is there a part of of you that wories if the show will be as big after this? I Mean, Character Deaths Often Get The Online Reaction of “I’M DONE, I’M Never Watching Again” – WHICH PEOPLE SAID ABOUT Thrones All The Time, and Its Ratings Kept Going Up. But this is a little digffrent as the show was been bildled as a two-haander and you just lost One of Those Hands.
No. People quit shows and I have gone through myself. I’m an audience member too. I Watched Ned Stark’s Head Get Lopped Off and I’M LIKE, “WHAT The FUCK IS THIS SHIT? WHY WILL YOU DO YOU DO THAT TO TO ME? WHAT AM I DOING NOW?” THEN YOU GO, “WELL, WHAT ABOUT ALL The CHARACters Who Are Dealing with The Same Emotions I Have? I Need To Find Out What Who Do.” And, Sure Enough, There I Was, Two Seasons Later and I’M LIKE, “What The Fuck is this Red Wedding?”
Look, if the Emotion Respense is Not Intense, Then We Fucked Up. This is not to say, “Great Job US.” It’s Important That People Be Uset But Also That Now Connect To The Characters in the Show Who Just As UPSET, IF NOT MORE SO, THANE ARE. What do they do? ALSO, CHARACters That We Think Are Gone Are Not Always Gone. But i’m not concerned that rats willfl Fall off the edge of a cliff, i don’t think that’s how’s how it work it is s. I ALSO KNOW How Powerful The REST OF THIS SERORY IS AND ALSO How Invested We Are Are In TheSe Other Relationships. But Joel Will Always Be there. I Remember Saying to Nico Parker (Who Plays Joel’s Daughter Sarah in the Series Premiere): “Nico, You Are In The Show for About 25 minutes, But You Never Go Away.” And Joel Will Never Go Away.