When We Are in Need (HBO's Podcast)/Transcript

The following is the full transcript of "When We Are in Need", the eighth episode of HBO's The Last of Us Podcast.
== Transcript ==
[Audio from TV show:] David: What does Cordyceps do? Is it evil? No, it's fruitful, it multiplies. It feeds and protects its children. And it secures its future with violence, if it must. It loves. [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: Welcome to the official podcast for HBO's original series. The Last of Us. I am your host, Troy Baker, and I had the amazing opportunity to play Joel in The Last of Us video game. But today, I am here with the showrunners, Craig Mazin...
Craig: Good to be back.
Troy: ...and Neil Druckmann.
Neil: Hey
Troy: And we are discussing a very special episode, perhaps one of my favorites, episode eight, titled, "When We Are in Need." Now—
Craig: I thought you were going to say, "titled, 'I'm in this one.'" (LAUGHTER)
Troy: That's why it's my favorite. It's my favorite for many, many reasons, and I'm warning you now, this is as spoiler-y as it gets. So if you haven't watched the episode yet, you're gonna want to. This is a very different kind of cold open. For many reasons. The image that we're given is very, very cold. Bitter cold. And we hear something that, up to this point, has been absent in this world. And that is scripture.
Craig: Yeah, so, we're here in a different place, in a different season, and this is one of those places where Neil and I discussed how to expand the other. We've been doing this all season, looking at the other that in the game we see through a fixed perspective from Ellie. And... Okay, we don't have to. We can actually start on the other side of it and present the other as humane, and with, in this case, a guy named David, his own goals, his own community. He is a preacher. There are people clearly relying on him. Things are not going well. He knows it. And he comforts a child. He comforts a little girl who's about Ellie's age.
[Audio from TV show:] David: Do you remember what comes next?
(CHILD SNIFFLES)
David: "And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. And there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying. Neither will there be any more pain. For the former things are passed away."
(CHILD SOBS)
David: Do you know what that means? (CHILD SNIFFLES)
David: Good. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: There's an intimation that her father has been killed, and there's also the undercurrent that something else is going on here that's worse than just sadness, and, if I may, we understand that because this tall, lanky drink of water named Troy Baker, playing a character named James, shares a look of recognition with this guy, David. Something is going on here that these two guys know about, and maybe other people don't.
Troy: Revelation 21, "And I saw a new heaven and a new Earth." Why- Why this verse?
Craig: It's about rebirth. It's about the idea that there can be a new world that is better than the world that we know or have left behind. And it is also a verse about moving past tragedy and grief. It's something that I think David, who is played by Scott Shepherd here, has read every time someone has died. I think it's his go-to. I think it's a call to maintain faith even in the face of tragedy and loss.
Neil: It's also where he found faith, which we discover later, which is like he discovered faith through this massive loss that happened on our planet.
Craig: Yep.
Troy: Once we leave that moment, now we're out into their city. And what I loved seeing this, especially now that I've seen the episode with Jackson, is you're presenting two possible outcomes. Whereas Jackson has prospered and flourished and is a functioning communistic society, here is one that is the underbelly. Where it's- In order to control, you must do that through fear and oppression.
Craig: Well, you can certainly read into this the dangers of theocracy, although I think—
Neil: They're just unlucky. 
Craig: That's part of it. 
Neil: That's where they settled down. They're just unlucky. 
Craig: They picked a bad spot. And that-
Troy: Why? What about it was bad, do you think?
Craig: Well, in my mind, this place must have looked fantastic in the spring. There are all these buildings.
Troy: It's a resort. Silver Lake Resort.
Craig: It's a resort. There's a beautiful lake, and there are a lot of trees, and probably quite a bit of game running around. You have this steakhouse, and this is all taken directly from the game, Todd's Steakhouse, which is instantly convertible into a community gathering space, and a church, and a house of worship. And you don't stop to think about things that are not particularly religious, but rather scientific. Like this is Colorado. We are up against the Rocky Mountains. And when the winter comes, this place is going to be unrecognizable from what it is in the spring. And the food is going to run out, the weather is going to be bitter cold, and we are so cut off from other settlements that if anything goes slightly wrong if it's even a slightly worse winter than we expect, people are going to start dying, and we are going to start starving. And that is where we find you- uh, James and David contemplating what to do.
Neil: There's also a conversation that, you know, is reflected in the dialogue between James and David, which is faith. And faith can, just like love, can be wonderful or sometimes terrible.
[Audio from TV show:] David: I sensed doubt in there. 
James: They haven't lost faith in you, David. They're just scared.
David: Not from them. I still believe. It's been a- The last six months have been hard.
David: For all of us. But I need to know you're with me.
James: Yeah.
David: Good. Now, go get our guns, we're going hunting. [/End Audio from TV show]
Neil: And in this instance, I think that David has fallen too far into, like, "Everything's going to work out because everything happens for a reason. We are in these trials for a reason." But now it's becoming too much. And I think he let faith kind of override it. The positive thing of faith is you can maintain hope in these extraordinary circumstances, which is what he does. But he hasn't prepared for the winter in the way that Jackson has.
Craig: Yeah, Jackson is run by a woman who was a prosecutor. She was a woman of law. And it was founded, therefore, on the bedrock principles of law. I believe very strongly in the separation of church and state, not only because it's important to protect people who are of religious minorities, but because religion doesn't do a good job of running a state. I believe religion does a terrible job of running a state. If you look at theocracies around the world, you will see this being repeated time and time again. Where there is a theocracy, your state starts to fail. David is not only theocratic in nature, but he's also paternalistic in nature, which is another interesting thing to talk about the idea of how a patriarchal theocracy functions here versus a democracy built on secular law run by both men and women in Jackson. There are these very clear differences, and I think our show is not shying away from saying one is better than the other.
Neil: It doesn't help that he's a narcissist, and everything is about him and the love that he receives. And- 
Craig: Well, this is- You know, the people that tend to end up running theocracies... are probably not as godly as they think. 
Neil: But he's also extremely confident at adversity. Like, that's why I think he makes the hard calls. Just like Kathleen, just like Marlene, just like a lot of the people we've seen in this story, he can make the hard calls that no one else can make.
Troy: Once we move away from David and James and that conversation you talk about, we're back with Ellie and Joel. And we see perhaps a little progress because she has been able to stitch him up, and we see a remarkable bedside manner from Ellie. Just to place us in the time, how much time has passed, would you say?
Craig: To me, it's been a day or two.
Neil: Yeah, not that much.
Craig: Yeah, she's sewn him up.
Neil: But what I love about this sequence is that there's these long moments where you just see her staring, and the idea of, like, you wouldn't know. You're like, "I stitched him. Is this working? It's kind of turning infectious. I'm not sure. -Is he going to survive, die? I don't know."
Craig: He doesn't look good. Yeah. I mean, the wound still looks really bad. The discoloration is spreading. And more importantly, Joel's not waking up. He's in and out of consciousness. He's not eating. He's not drinking. She's tapping water to his lips. She's doing everything she can, but she is a kid. Now, she's also a kid that, as we've talked about, has this aspiration to be like Joel. And so I think when she's sitting there looking at him, and she's starving herself, 'cause they're down to their last little scrap of beef jerky, she thinks, "Well, what would Joel do here?" And what Joel would do is pick up that gun, go out there, and shoot a deer. I mean, remember, Ellie asked, "Teach me how to hunt. I want to know how to hunt." Well, this is her chance to go out there and hunt.
Troy: Ellie takes the rifle, and she forges out because they need food. And we have moments of this for the first kind of sequence with Ellie in the game where she is now hunting, and we have this moment with a deer. And we get to actually see this where she's trying to remember just the steps that Joel walked her through of what to do. And she breathes, and we have this very intimate- You chose to be very close with Ellie and also with the deer. And then we find our two other characters David and James. And now, just as Joel has had the drop- someone's gotten the drop on him before, Ellie has now got the drop on these two guys.
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: Turn and face me! Slow! Any sudden moves, I put one right between your eyes. Ditto for buddy boy.
David: You're quite a hunter. We didn't even hear you coming.
Ellie: Turn around and walk away! [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: There was a specific choice that felt like it was made. She doesn't know how to hold that rifle well. 
Craig: No. It's too heavy. 
Neil: It's bigger than her.
Craig: It is. And that rifle that we're using there is the real thing. We, you know, obviously stressed gun safety all the time. Most of the time, when our actors are holding guns, they're not loaded with blanks or, obviously, never loaded with real ammunition. In that case, the gun, as she's walking around, is unloaded. But it's the real rifle, and it is heavy. And Bella, like, the next day, was feeling it, like, in her biceps and her pecs. It was hard for her to hold that thing up. And we would- Throughout the scene where she confronts your character and David, from off camera, we would occasionally be like, "Lift the gun! Lift the gun!" Because she would- It starts to lower, but she can't lower it. She has to keep it on you guys. And yet you can see her struggling with it. And we kept some of those moments in. They're subtle, but you can tell. It's just- She's not equipped, and yet she's trying her best. She lowers her voice when she, you know, yells, "Don't!" You know? "Turn around!" You know? She's doing the best she can to be tough and scary. And what I love is that Scott Shepherd, as David, sees right through it and doesn't take advantage of it. He goes the other way, which is all about what's going on in his mind as he sees this for the first time. 
Troy: David is unflappably calm. 
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: Why? 
Craig: Well... Neil and I talked a lot... about when a certain concept begins to form in David's mind. And the concept is, "I want her." So, we've seen this episode now. There are no spoilers here. David's interest in Ellie is not merely paternal. There's something else. He wants to have her. He wants to possess her. He wants to own her. And I think it happens immediately. I think he looks at this kid, who is so far away from any of the people that he is currently the pastor for, and he is lit up. I think he is intensely attracted to her force of nature, her power.
Neil: Her confidence. Like, you think about the- He has broken all the people around him. Right? It's like sheep. And here he sees a wolf, like him.
Craig: The people that came to him came to him because they were sheep. So, these sheep keep huddling towards David. 
Neil: But Ellie is different. 
Craig: Yes, Ellie is different. And he is so impressed. And it's not only that she's holding a gun, and that she got the drop on them, and that... He knows exactly who she is already. This is the girl that was with the guy that killed Alec, who was the man with the baseball bat two episodes ago, episode six, who jabs Joel in the stomach with that broken handle of a baseball bat. That's the guy that Joel kills. That's the father of this little girl who's crying. And he knows all this. So does James. So, when David says, "Go get her medicine," James is... so confused. 
Neil: Hesitates.
Craig: And I love that David says, "It's not code." 
Troy: "It's not code." 
Craig: Yeah, he's saying... Because some- You could see it was like, "Oh, go sneak aroun- What I'm really saying is sneak around behind her and shoot her." No. He's saying, "Help her," which is absolutely the weirdest possible decision. But that's the thing, I think, that already attracts David to Ellie is that she was involved in killing.
Neil: Well, he's a master manipulator, right? He's like- He's making Ellie feel like she's in control, but he's in control the entire time.
Craig: Yeah. Everything at that point was about the world shrinking down to two people, David and Ellie. David is... carefully creating a circumstance whereby Ellie will lean forward. He's not gonna pull her. He's not gonna- He's gonna make her want to lean forward. In the game, that discussion happens after Ellie and David have to fight -a lot of infected together. 
Troy: Right.
Craig: It's one of the hardest-
Neil: Yeah. It ends with a big bloater-
Craig: Yeah, it's a really hard encounter. So, they're bonded by a certain trust because of gameplay. 
Troy: He cheers her on.
Neil: In the gameplay, you save each other's lives, and that's how we build trust. Here we have to build trust through our conversations.
Craig: Yes, because we felt... While we could do that, the plot implications of a lot of infected running around out there that can just get you at any moment, it would permeate throughout the episode, and we wanted it to function a different way. So, it was about the conversation. And he's very crafty about letting her make her jokes, not pushing things, not taking things personally, being kind...
Neil: Yeah, she's insulting him quite a bit. And he just- he rolls with it. 
Troy: "Well, you got me there." Yeah.
Craig: And then there's that moment where she's like, "But seriously..." And that's when he knows he has her because she's interested.
David: So, I sent four of our people to a nearby town to scavenge what they could, and only three of 'em came back. And the one that didn't was a father. He had a daughter just like you. And her dad was taken from her. Turns out, he was murdered by this crazy man. And get this... that crazy man was traveling with a little girl. You see? Everything happens for a reason.
Craig: What I love is that Bella- the way Bella played it was, it takes her, like, three seconds too long...
Troy: To realize that she's-
Craig: -to realize because she's into the story. She's suckered in by him completely. It's- And what I love about that is that's the first time, I think, we've seen it happen. No one's been able to fool her. No one's been able to sucker her. She's always one step ahead of everybody.
Troy: As soon as she gets the penicillin from them, she runs back to give it to Joel.
Neil: There's a lot of payoffs that would not work if the rest of the season didn't work as well as it did. And one of these moments that- one of my favorite moments from the game is Ellie is- She got this penicillin, shot of penicillin, and she doesn't know how to- She just injects it where she thinks it might go. She's not sure if it's going to work or not. And then she lies down next to Joel and leans into him. And I just- Again, I'm watching this, and I'm seeing Ellie and Joel, not like Bella and Pedro. But I love, again, that we wake up the next day, and she does another injection. She's, like- She doesn't know how much to give, where to do it, whether it's going to work or not. And again, there's a little bit of this blind faith that this is all gonna work out.
Troy: And there's nothing more helpless than having a solution and having no idea how to use it.
Craig: It's something I remembered feeling in the game, and it was, at the time, shocking. When, in The Last of Us the game, you wake up, so to speak, as Ellie. You become Ellie. The screen goes black, and now you're playing as Ellie. It was shocking. And playing as Ellie and not knowing if it was gonna be okay, if Joel was gonna live, was really scary.
Troy: Mm-hmm. Let's talk about the slap and the hand. So, we see this exchange with Josiah and Joyce, and she says, "What is it?" And he looks at her and he goes, -"Venison." 
Craig: No, it isn't.
Troy: So, that's a question.
Craig: Yeah.
Troy: This is where we also have the scene that contrasts with earlier, whereas Hannah interrupts, and instead of crying, she's now saying- she's crying out for the vengeance of her father's murder. David slaps her.
[Audio from TV show:] David: I know you think you don't have a father anymore. But the truth is, Hannah, you will always have a father. And you will show him respect when he's speaking. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: This is a big deal. Like, we talked about this a lot. When we expanded this out, we thought that it was important to humanize David, humanize the world around him, make us feel, at least when he was initially with Ellie in that sawmill, that... he's a good guy. You know what? He's forgiven her, which is a very Christian thing to do. In fact, he's given her medicine so that she can save Joel.
Neil: Yeah, he's been honest with her.
Craig: He has been honest with her the entire time. And we need to make it clear that that isn't the complete truth. But we don't want to go all the way into showing who he fully is yet. And this is the product of that. It was important for us to show the audience that he is not the nicest guy in the world. He says to Hannah after he hits her, "I know you think you don't have a father anymore, but you will always have a father." It's about the most patriarchal thing you can possibly say. And what does father do? Father comforts you, father teaches you, and then father hits you. -Everybody- 
Neil: But it's out of love.
Craig: Yeah. But that's the thing, he- In his mind, that is love. Because he doesn't understand what love is.
Neil: There's a lot of dark in this episode, but to me, this moment is so dark. Like, he hits this girl, and then he does this, like, really gentle motion to her mom, "Sit back down. Sit back down. I got this."
Craig: So, controlling, right?
Neil: And, again, the control he has, -where, like, the mom then sits back down. 
Craig: Sits back down.
Troy: To me, the look is, "Keep her in line. Keep yourself in line. Because you remember what happens if you don't."
Craig: He also- He then reaches his hand down to Hannah, but he doesn't take her hand, he just reaches down and makes her take his hand. And that's about the most David thing you can do. That's this other level of, "You see? You wanted to take my hand." 
Neil: But that is like the DNA of abusive relationships. 
Craig: It is. Like, this guy is the model of a gaslighter, a manipulator, and an abuser.
Troy: To somewhat stay chronological, there's this great shot where we're now hunting Ellie.
Craig: And what's interesting is, your instinct, James' instinct, and Timothy and Marcos, and Josiah's is to kill this little girl for what she did. Because she and whoever that guy is killed their friend Alec. And David won't let you.
Troy: "I shot the horse to stop her. I just want the girl gone. I just- 'Cause she- I feel the fact that she could easily usurp my position." In the same way that David intuits that he has found an equal, I think there's something inside of James that senses that from this girl as well. He looks at her differently.
Craig: Yeah, James is not his equal. And that's what's sort of tragic is that... It's the reason the first real conversation that David has with James is about David challenging James' faith. And James says, "No, I still believe." And you would think, okay, this is, like, "Because I need you with me," and he's like, "We're going hunting," you know? This is what bad people do. They make you crave their approval, and then when they give you the approval, it makes you feel things that you probably shouldn't be feeling. That's how they manipulate you, and that's how David manipulates James. But the whole time, David doesn't really love James. David has contempt for James. David has contempt for practically every single person in that church of his.
Troy: I would even think that, from my perspective, contempt was just a little bit too much thumb on the scale of an investment. He was disposable. "You serve a purpose for me right now." 
Neil: Yeah. Yeah.
Troy: So, then after David and James kidnap Ellie, she wakes up in this cage, and David is there trying to prove he's a good guy. 
[Audio from TV show:] David: Did you hear me say the others want to kill you? 
Ellie: Yeah.
David: But I stopped them.
Ellie: Fuck you.
David: Why don't we just start with your name?
Ellie: Eat shit.
David: Hey, listen to me! You can't survive on your own. No one can. But I can help you. Let me protect you.
Ellie: I'm not on my own. 
David: Right, your friend. And how is he? [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: What's happening there is, again, David doing this thing of slowly luring her, and Ellie doing her best to put on a brave face. She is concussed. She is trapped in a cage. She is unarmed. Joel is out there dying somewhere. This guy's saying, "Hey, I'm keeping you alive." And she's telling him to "eat shit." Which is a very- You know, "What's your name?" "Eat shit." There's no more Ellie thing to do than that.
Neil: By the way, the "What's your name?" thing, it goes back to the conversation we just had of, like, again, you're in this room where everybody's eating human meat. And only some people know because there's a secret, and trust only goes so far. And so much of this back-and-forth, this chess game that they're playing, is about trust. And the question he keeps asking her, "What's your name? What's your name? What's your name?" And she knows this is what she has over him. And she's saving it for, like, this very specific moment.
Troy: Let's talk about Joel. There's some really cool things that, again, we get to enrich the game. There's a physicality that, throughout every episode, Pedro's brought to this, and this is a shining example of that. We have the fight. 
Neil: That fight is so cool.
Craig: I love that fight.
Neil: I was just rewatching it last night with Halley Gross, who co-wrote the second game, and she starts laughing. And I'm like, "What are you laughing at?" She's like, "Just Joel at ten percent is better -than two of these guys at 100 percent."
Troy: But the only reason- This, to me, is what makes it so good is because he fights smart. Which is, "I have one shot at this, and I gotta get this knife in his neck. If I can get the knife in his neck, it's over."
Craig: And it's also he is fighting for Ellie. 
Neil: Yeah. 
Troy: Yes.
Craig: If it were just him, I think he would just be like, "Oh, for fuck's sake, just do it. Just kill me already. I'm useless, I'm broken, I'm lying on this mattress, and I'm dying." But the thought that Ellie might still be alive, that Ellie might need him, that is what gets him off the mattress. That's- Well, that and the penicillin, which is derived from a fungus, which I love.
Craig: That's what gets him going, and Ali really stressed that this fight should have a sad desperation to it. That Joel is hanging- He stabs this guy and then hangs onto him -because he doesn't have the strength to stand anymore. 
Neil: Yeah.
Craig: And then they both fall to the ground, and it is ugly and-
Neil: By the way, that guy has the coolest death. 
Craig: Oh, he really does. 
Troy: Just the look on his face.
Craig: He did a great job, and it is horrible.
Troy: We should mention that the Ali that we've been talking about is the director of this episode, Ali Abbasi.
Craig: And they, Ali, is not, as you know, he's not a director that just likes to do one or two takes. And that was- I think those guys had to kill- try and kill each other about 100 times that day. And the level of commitment from both of them is extraordinary. And that grounded level of violence is what we're talking about, we've been talking about it all along. We want you to feel it. We want you to feel it as much as possible. And we want you to even wonder, even if it's subconsciously, even if it's for a fleeting second, "Who loved this man? Who did he love? How did he get here? Is this what he deserves?"
Troy: Names are important. There's constantly names being used, and we saw that with Brian, we saw that with Alec. We've seen this use of, like- These are real people.
Craig: Josiah, Timothy, Marco.
Troy: Josiah, Timothy, Marco. These are people.
Craig: They're people. And Josiah and Timothy and Marco and James are all following someone who is telling them to do these things.
Troy: After this fight that Joel has, we are back now with Ellie in a cell. And David and Ellie have a very tough talk.
Craig: That's the scene where we get to this... somewhat more developed truth about David and why he likes her so much. Which is not merely this sexual- misplaced sexual desire in a 14-year-old girl, but this recognition that he's found a kindred spirit. And that is a very disturbing thing. Because on the one hand, he hasn't. Ellie is a far more decent person than him, no question. But on the other hand, he does put his finger on something. Two things. One, he talks about how Cordyceps is the thing that set him free. That he looked at what Cordyceps did, which is to be fruitful, and to multiply, and to protect its own through violence, if it must.
Neil: Which is often organized religion.
Craig: And that is his definition of love. To secure- He says, "To secure a future-" That line, "To secure a future," is part of, like, a White supremacist anthem, "To secure a future for our White children," or whatever it is. It's this- We've talked a lot about these two kinds of loves, and this xenophobic, protective, defensive, insular, tribalistic love, David has taken to its furthest extreme. And so, of course, he admires Cordyceps because that's what Cordyceps does. But he says to Ellie, "You have a violent heart. I should know. I've always had a violent heart." Now, he's right and he's wrong. She does have a violent heart. In fact, everything he says about her seems to come to pass, including, "If I put this knife in your hand, you'd stab me with it." Well, he gets more than that. She does have a violent heart, but she also has a beautiful heart. Ellie has both kinds of love within her. David only has one. And it is dark, and it is possessive.
Neil: Yeah. They both have these violent tendencies. But whereas David's a narcissist, Ellie's overflowing with empathy.
Troy: What do you think David's plan was?
Craig: I think he wanted her to recognize that he was her way to safety now that her other father figure, who was presumably dead, or dying- He did not expect Joel to come back. And, purposely, Joel doesn't save the day. I think he wanted her to begrudgingly begin to trust him, and then she would become his wife.
Neil: He wanted her to fall in love with him, to look up to him and fall in love with him, and have someone like her worship him.
Troy: Do you think that he would have stayed in Silver Lake, or do you think he would have left?
Craig: I think that he really did believe that she would help him. -I think he was being honest when he said...
Troy: "Look at us."
Craig: ..."Look at what's happened. I could use the help. God knows I could use the help." He needs a partner. He doesn't have one.
Neil: He feels like he's smarter than everybody else. And that's why he believes he can't have, like, a conversation on his level with anybody else. And then here's Ellie, where that could be that person.
Craig: Yeah. There's a moment in the game that we replicate identically because we have to, because it's brilliant, where David finally reveals the truth of his attraction to her.
[Audio from TV show:] David: Think of what we could do together. As strong as we are. We'd make this place perfect. We'd grow. Spread out. And we'd do whatever we needed for our people. [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: And she plays along.
[Audio from TV show:] David: Imagine the life we could build.
Ellie: Oh... [/End Audio from TV show]
Craig: It's that "Oh..."
Neil: By the way, that "Oh" is, again, it's like, I thought I was hearing Ashley Johnson in that moment.
Craig: And that's not a moment where we sat Bella down and said, -"Now watch this. Now do this."
Troy: It was the line read.
Craig: It was the opposite, in fact. I remember on that day, Bella and Ali were like... You know, they're blocking and stuff. And I'm over here probably, you know, working on another episode or writing, you know, in the corner on my laptop. And they're like, "Hey, can you come over here for a second? What exactly does-" Because neither one of them had really studied that scene. I was like, "Oh, this is interesting. Let me explain exactly what's going on here." And I do- I remember laughing because I sort of said, "This is what's going on. You're saying this because you want him to think that you are getting it and that you're into it. And you're only doing that because you've made the calculation that you'll be able to break his finger and grab the keys and get out of here.
[Audio from TV show:] David: Let's see what I go tell the others now.
Ellie: Ellie...
David: What? [/End Audio from TV show]
Ellie: Tell them that Ellie is the little girl who broke your fucking finger!
Craig: When David smashes her face against these- the bars of the cell, she is hurt. She is bleeding from her face. -And when she yells at him, "Tell them-
Neil: She's still defiant. Still won't give him the satisfaction.
Craig: -“I'm the little girl who broke your fucking finger." And this is where I used to call Bella "My little savage" because she can do these things where it's terrifying, where she's like an animal. And-
Troy: That's when she finally gives her name.
Craig: Yes. Yeah.
Troy: That moment, both in the game and in the show, rapidly accelerates the situation. David and James go back into the room with a cleaver. And Ellie, in the scramble, manages to bite David, and right before they're able to kill her, she thinks of a way out.
Ellie: I'm infected! I'm infected. And now so are you.
Neil: Which, by the way, right, if you think about that scene, they could have gone in there and shot her. But that's not satisfying for David. David wants to win. He has to, like, kill her slowly, and he wants her to know that he's in control. The thing I've always loved about this sequence is that it's a chess game between these two characters of who has control. And Ellie has an ace up her sleeve.
Troy: Right. And of course, David doesn't know that, but he has revealed that he has a violent heart, and here is where he is going to show her just how violent that it is.
Craig: This is very close to how it functioned in the game because it was one of those moments that was so visceral in every sense of the word. And Ellie interrupts with the final card she has to play, which- And I remember when I was playing the game, I had no idea, "How the hell is she going to get out of this?" It was seemingly impossible, and it didn't occur to me. I had forgotten when I played that she could do this, that she could say this. It struck me as so smart. And it works the same way here. The dialogue is the same. Even how she kills James is the same.
Troy: But she's poked around violence before, but she's never- This act of violence has never happened with her. And she does it almost instinctually.
Craig: Well, she, by this point in the story, has committed acts of violence, and she herself has been "violenced," and right now she is in full fight or flight. Live or die. She has been reduced by this man to being an animal.
Neil: Yeah. She's not even processing what's happening right now.
Craig: No. She uses the last of her intellect to buy herself some time, and then she goes into absolute survival mode. And in survival mode, your life means nothing. His life means nothing. The only lives she cares about are her own and Joel's.
Troy: Ellie is trying to escape. She accidentally sets the building on fire. And that is when we have this terrifying moment with David.
Craig: When Ellie kills David, we are doing what was there in the game.
Neil: There's something about this version, I will say, that's harder to watch and is more disturbing.
Craig: It is. And part of it is that there's that one less thing of separation between you and reality because it's not animated. It's a person. Because there is blood flying everywhere, including hitting the lens. And then it's also... just telling Bella, "You have no restraints. You have no leash. You have no nothing. Just do what needs to be done." And when she kills him, it's so clear that he is beyond dead after this fifth or sixth blow. And she keeps going. And then she slows down. And then she starts up again. And it's that moment where you realize that there's just everything pouring out of her. And when she finally stops, and she looks off, it's- I don't know how you could portray trauma better, more convincingly, more accurately than what is on her face in that moment and what is in her eyes. It is so upsetting.
Troy: There is one moment that, as close to the game as it is, is very different even though it's a very small thing. How we get out of that moment. Because in the game, she... enacts her revenge on David with extreme prejudice. Joel takes her from that and tries to pull her away from that violence. In this, nothing is there to stop Ellie from that scene. And she meets up with Joel outside, and he says, "It's me. It's me." Why the difference?
Neil: I think our conversations were like, we didn't want it to happen with the fire around. Like, there's the danger of the fire that just felt a little different in live action than it did in the game.
Craig: Yeah, there was a question of, like, "How does Joel get inside if the keys are on David?" It was like a little bit of a logic thing, and then it was a little bit of, like, wanting our Ellie to have completed it to the point where she could literally walk away on her own.
Neil: But it was important when the sequence was constructed in the game, and I think it's the same for the show, which is, like, we want the audience or the player -to think Joel is going to save Ellie.
Craig: Yes.
Neil: Because that's what this character traditionally does. And it was important that, "No, no, no. -Ellie saves herself."
Craig: Yes.
Neil: Except that he does save her. But now he has to do a very different thing that a parent does, which is he saves her emotionally.
[Audio from TV show:] Joel: It's okay. -(Ellie stammers)
Joel: It's okay. It's okay, baby girl. I got you. (Ellie whimpers)
Joel: I got you. [/End Audio from TV show]
Neil: Before she loses her sanity, he's there to bring her back. Now, she will never be the same after this, and we'll see the consequences of that in the next episode. The whole scene was constructed when we made the game. And this is one of those sequences that made me want to make this game. That the whole thing was kind of a study of a more stereotypical hero you would have in a person like Joel. And then there is one moment in time towards the end of the story where he would get so incapacitated, this is how it was pitched, that the roles would flip, and then you would play as this girl protecting this man. To me, almost the entire story hinges on this sequence. And I remember when we were making the game, I was so nervous about whether this was going to work or not because I'm like, "If this doesn't work, then that means the whole story's not working." And then when I finally kind of played that sequence, I'm like... You know, it's one of the most emotional parts of the story, where like he, Joel, comes and embraces her and calls her "baby girl," and you're like, "Oh my God." Like, look how much these two characters have been through. And I was so nervous whether this would hit us hard on the show. And I wanted to be hit as hard in the show as it did in the game. When I watched this, finally, like, I watched, like, two episodes before so I could go into this with full context. I'm watching it, and it's different. She stumbles on into the snow, and just the contrast of, like, the blood on her skin against the white snow... And Bella does such an incredible job of, like, this disembodied performance where she's not quite there. And then Pedro grabs her, and the way he looks at her, there's a sadness of like, "I couldn't protect you from this." Again, another failure to like- another notch of failure. -And I'm bawling. I'm crying.
Neil: Not just like tears in my eyes. -I'm like, it's waterworks.
Neil: And I'm like, and I was like- I pick up my phone. I just text Craig this one sentence, "We did it."
Craig: Yeah.
Neil: And it could only work, again, if all- everything that preceded it was working.
Craig: I continue to marvel at both of them. When Joel finally finds her, and she finally realizes it's him, that, to me, is why I cry every time. Because I know what just happened. And the same person that obliterated a man's face with a cleaver is now a little girl, who is...
Neil: Who just needs her father's affection.
Craig: ...clinging to her father, who is calling her "baby girl," and putting his coat around her, and leading her off to safety. It's... Like, it's a testament, again, to the story that Neil created and the way that you and Ashley perform those scenes. All of that is the text that we pull from. All of it. And that's why I've loved this job. I love this job. As crazy as this job was, as long and exhausting as it was, I love it. And I want to just keep doing it because of moments like that. It's so satisfying to know that we've put something like that out there. Even though it's so upsetting, it's also so beautiful. And my hat's off to everybody that worked on that episode. Everyone, but especially you two ding dongs for all you've done.
Troy: We're not done yet. We have one more to go, and that's where we'll pick it up next week. Craig, thanks a million, man, for being here.
Craig: Thanks, Troy.
Troy: And of course, the same to you, Neil.
Neil: Goodbye.
Troy: This has been the official The Last of Us Podcast from HBO. Again, I'm Troy Baker, joined by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. You can stream new episodes of the HBO original series The Last of Us Sundays on HBO Max. The podcast episodes are available after episodes of The Last of Us air on HBO. You can find this show wherever you listen to podcasts. Like and follow HBO's The Last of Us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And as always, when you're lost in the darkness, look for the light. 
Narrator: This is the official companion podcast for HBO's The Last of Us, 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 The Last of Us on HBO Max.
Category:HBO's The Last of Us Podcast transcripts