Endure and Survive (HBO's Podcast)/Transcript

The following is the full transcript of "Endure and Survive", the fifth episode of HBO's The Last of Us Podcast.
== Transcript ==
[Audio from TV show:] Henry: Welcome to Killer City.
Joel: No FEDRA? Henry: Not as of ten days ago, no.
Joel: I always heard KC FEDRA was-
Henry: Monsters? Savages? Yeah, you heard right. Raped, and tortured, and murdered people for 20 years. Hey, you know what happens when you do that to people? The moment they get a chance, they do it right back to you. [/End Audio from TV show]
Troy: Welcome to the official podcast for HBO's original series The Last of Us. I'm your host, Troy Baker. And today, I'm here with showrunners Craig Mazin...
Craig: Hello. 
Troy: ...and Neil Druckmann.
Neil: Hey, Troy.
Troy: Today, we're going to be discussing episode five of the series entitled, "Endure and Survive." We've had different kind of openings. We've had the intellectual. We've had the emotional. And this one is pure violence. Why was it important to put that on display from the onset? 
Neil: Well, this is one of the things I love about this adaptation is, you know, in the game, we explored similar things, but we can only do it from Joel or Ellie's perspective. So, Kansas City is Pittsburgh, but you get to see the aftermath of FEDRA having fallen. This group of antagonists toward Joel and Ellie have taken it over. And you find, like, bodies that have been hanged of the previous soldiers. And you could tell there was this uprising. And here, we said, "Okay, what if we could see that?" Because, again, we're not married every moment to Joel and Ellie's perspective. Like, what if we could see it and to tie it to character? What if we placed Henry and Sam in that and tie it to that, which, you know, is a change from the game? In the game, there were travelers like Joel and Ellie, and they end up being stuck in the city. Here, they were part of this uprising, and they're connected to the politics of it. And I think there's a lot of kind of richness to talk more about what happened here and eventually get to the other side, the other perspective of, like, "Well, why did they have this uprising, and who led that uprising, and what does it mean for the people that have remained now?" 
Troy: So, here we get to learn more about Henry and Sam. Sam's played wonderfully by Keivonn Woodard, and Henry is played by Lamar Johnson. In the game, they are two brothers that have somehow survived. And we learn more about what has helped that survival. The choice that Henry specifically has made to protect his little brother. But there is something different about the version of the characters that we see in the show, namely, with Sam, who, like Keivonn, is deaf. -We gotta talk about it.
Troy: Where did that come from? Why make that change?
Craig: It started with a bit of a weird worry I had. I became nervous that there was a mode of communication between Joel and Ellie that I didn't want to feel like I was repeating between Henry and Sam because, as Neil points out, in the game, you don't spend time with Henry and Sam on their own, ever. But if they are on their own, and we knew we wanted to do that, well, what do those discussions sound like? And it could very easily fall into the trap of "exasperated father figure" and "curious, concerned, scared child figure." And so, I was looking for a way to change that mode of communication. We'd also talked a little bit about making Sam younger because we liked the idea that Ellie would have somebody that could look up to her, you know, the way that she looked up to Joel. It may have happened because it was sort of on my mind a little bit. So, I'd been watching this show called This Close by a woman named Shoshannah Stern and a guy named Josh Feldman, who co-created it, and wrote it, and acted in it. And they're both deaf. And it is about two best friends navigating the world, and what it's like when you're both trying to find love in your own life. And Josh is gay and plays a gay character, so there's no romance between them. It's about their friendship and how they navigate, but also how they navigate the world as deaf people when they're dealing with other people who aren't deaf. And I became friendly with Shoshannah. So, it was just sort of, like, banging around in my head. And then I was like, "Well..."
Craig: So, this was one of those moments where I called up Neil, and I'm like, "I have a radical suggestion." So, I said, "What if Sam was deaf?" It automatically brings a certain kind of intimacy to those scenes because they're quiet, which I love. This is a lot of talking. This is a very verbal show, and Ellie talks a lot. And it was interesting to sort of see what would it be like if it were just quieter? And also put Sam and Henry in this bubble that had to expand to include Joel and Ellie because it had been so quiet between the two of them since, obviously, they use sign language. And Neil said, "Go fuck yourself." 
Neil: Basically, I believe I said, "You motherfucker. I wish I had thought of that." 
Troy: It's a term of endearment.
Craig: Oh! No question! It's when I-- When Neil's like, "Oh, oh, I wish I'd done that," and then I'm like, "Okay, we're onto something." And it was-- it was important for us-- I just want to be clear, like, as we went through it, I had my guesses as to how these things would work, but I actually then-- we hired Shoshannah to review the scripts and make sure that it worked correctly, that we weren't making mistakes. And it was the same thing I did with Chernobyl, you know, showed it to people that grew up in Soviet Ukraine and say, "How does this all look?" And it's almost like a cultural review. And she was incredibly helpful in that regard. And then we, um... Keivonn, we'll just take a moment, I think, was eight. He was incredibly young. Let's just talk about how we even found him. We were in trouble. I mean, we had created-- It was one thing to say on the phone, "Hey, Neil, here's an idea. Why don't we cast this kid?" And so, now we're like, "Okay, here's the casting call." We said to Vickie Thomas, our casting director, we were looking for a Black kid between the ages of eight and eleven. We'd like him to be shorter than Ellie, who's, I mean, Bella is not a tall person, and he has to be deaf. And he has to be fluent in American Sign Language, which not all deaf kids necessarily are. Some of them have been trained more to read lips, but most of them are. Or BASL, by the way, because there's Black American Sign Language, which is actually different than American Sign Language. And... guess what? Not a ton of people. And you're like, "Oh, this is frustrating" because I know the problem is the pipeline. It's a pipeline problem. It's not a, "Are there kids out there who can do it?" problem. So, we're running out of time. The traditional methods are not working. 
Troy: I would also point out one really important component to that casting call is they have to be able to act. 
Craig: Well, then there's that. 
Troy: Being able to find someone who fits the demographic is one thing. It's like, "We found someone!" 
Craig: Then they also have to be able to act, and act really well. And so, after a certain point, we were, like, really up against it. We needed to cast somebody. And I just went, "Oh, fuck it" and made, like, a Google email for our casting and just went on Twitter. And I just said, "Here's what we're looking for. Open to the world. Send us stuff." And I thought we were going to get 80 auditions. -And I think we got five.
Troy: Wow! 
Craig: And one of them was Keivonn. Now, Keivonn wasn't just the best of the five. He was astonishing. I mean, this is where you start to think maybe this is a simulation because, I mean, I have never been in a circumstance where a kid who has never really acted on film before shows up, and is so naturally good at it, and is a joy to have around. He was just a dream. Still, to this day, I just-- I'm kind of puzzled by it.
Neil: Oh, he's brilliant.
Craig: He's incredible. And I cannot wait to see more from him. I hope that when people watch this episode here in Hollywood, in our business, that they don't just stop at the end of it and go, "Boy, that kid was really good playing the character of Sam." I hope that they go, "That kid ought to be in a lot of things." The fact that he's deaf is a fascinating aspect of representation that is underrepresented on television. But, more importantly, his story in our show wasn't about him being deaf. In fact, the biggest factor to his character was that he had had leukemia. That was a bigger deal for Sam. And I hope that people in Hollywood think about casting Keivonn again, and not in stories about being deaf but just in stories about people because he's... Boy, is he good.
Neil: The word I think about is, it "enriches."
Troy: "Enriches." 
Neil: It adds this extra layer to this tale from the game. I was rewatching it last night in preparation for this. And when they're hiding out in the attic, there's this moment where Henry reveals to Sam that Edelstein is not coming back, that in fact, he's dead. And Sam, just his instinct is, he reaches out that he needs the comfort of his older brother. And that scene just really resonated with me in a way that, even when I was working on the game, didn't. My son is now the same age as Sam, and I've had those situations where my son is either scared, or upset, or just distraught in some way, and he just needs that hug. And that hug felt so real and authentic. Man, it hits me right to my core. 
Troy: Lamar Johnson, who plays Henry, I met him, and I don't know if you-- if this resonates with you, but you feel like you've just known him forever. Like he's a friend. 
Craig: He's one of the nicest people. Now, this is not-- shouldn't come as a surprise -because he's Canadian. 
Troy: That's what it is. All right. 
Craig: Canadians are incredibly nice people, but he... Lamar has this-- He's humanity forward, right? Like, you can just-- You feel his spirit the moment you meet him. He's just-- There's decency. That's what hits you first. It's just how obviously decent he is. He is also fiercely intelligent. And he also just quickly learned sign language.
Craig: Our first scene with Henry and Sam, I believe, was in their hiding space in the attic. And I believe it was a Monday. And I'm pretty sure that he had learned it over the weekend. I shit you not. So, CJ Jones was working with us on set. He was sort of the head of ASL. And I met him also through Shoshannah. He's also deaf and is an acting teacher. And so he served this interesting role of being both a liaison, a communication liaison between us and Sam, but also coaching Keivonn along, and also helping Lamar learn sign language, and then watching. And after Jeremy Webb, who was the director, would say, "Cut," CJ would go over to Lamar and either congratulate him or berate him...
Troy: Depending on his... 
Craig: ...for not getting the signs quite right or for not signing with the proper speed or fluidity. It was really important to Lamar that anyone watching this who was deaf and fluent in ASL, or not deaf and fluent in ASL, would not point their finger and go, "Nope. Fake." And he just was that smart and that good. It was almost scary.
Troy: As dads, all three of us are dads, there's this bizarre desire to protect our kids. And sometimes we will do that by employing lies. 
Craig: Mm-hmm. 
Troy: Henry, this is a paternal relationship, and he's being brutally honest. "We're out of food. We need to leave." Did they kill him? Probably, yes. As a father, are you writing this as a truth for yourself, or are you espousing an ideal? 
Craig: My point of view is that you can lie to keep your children comfortable and happy to a point. But then there comes a point where you need to tell them the truth in order to keep them safe. The reason that Henry tells Sam the truth that, "The doctor isn't coming back. They did probably kill him. And we have to move because there is no more food" is because if they stay there one more hour, they're going to get caught. And then Sam's gonna die anyway. So, it's all about, in the moment, what will keep this kid safe? It is never, and I wish that I had a more noble answer, it's never about feeling obligated to be super honest with your kid when you're in situations of stress. Obviously, when you're not, you want to be honest with your children. But when there's danger afoot, you become, I think, as a parent, very utilitarian in your approach. "What will work the best to keep my kids safe?" And when Henry has to tell Sam the truth, it's because he has to tell him the truth, not because he wants to. 
Neil: Because again, and this will come back later in the season, anything you could do to take the pain away from your kid, -you will do that as a parent. 
Troy: Yeah. 
Neil: But sometimes you gotta be brutally honest with them in order to protect them. -It's the same exact motivation.
Craig: Yeah. 
Neil: Which will ultimately get us to the most brutal repudiation of that by Melanie Lynskey's character, Kathleen. 
Troy: Well, let's rewind a little bit in our episode to the interrogation scene with Kathleen...
[Audio from TV show:] Kathleen: You're informers. Inform! Where is Henry? I guess they don't know. Kill them.
Informer: He's with Edelstein. [/End audio from TV show]
Troy: This scene is entirely new. 
Craig: Melanie Lynskey was perfect because I could describe her as this, like, "What if a kindergarten teacher were in charge of the terror of the French Revolution?" It's this kind of-- Just because you're sweet on the outside doesn't mean you don't have the capacity for terrible anger and vengeance in your heart. 
Neil: But the way she justifies it is love. 
Craig: Love. I mean, the theme of "us versus them" is always there. This notion of tribalism is always there. It was important for me and for Neil to not NPC-ize these people. We didn't want them to just be bad guys. 
Troy: Can you just define a little bit what you mean by that? 
Craig: So, NPCs are non-player characters. If you play D&D like I do, and I know you do, you run into those things from time to time, and they're monsters. Bad guys. And in video games, NPCs are the enemies that typically aren't named. They don't have much in the way of dialogue, and they are there for you to kill, typically. Then the tough part is, if I'm playing Joel or Ellie, and I need to kill these people to get through this level, I can't connect with them too much as a player. I need to be able to sneak up behind them and kill them without feeling like, "Oh, God, I just killed Linda," you know? That would be really hard to deal with if I felt a lot for them. But when you're making television and there isn't the gameplay aspect, we wanted as best we could to give these people a sense of justification. And this is, again, what happens when regimes fall. The retaliation that comes after can be terrifying. 
Troy: We have this wonderful blending of moments now. Something that happened in a previous episode, where we have the truck ambush scene, where they crash into the laundromat. And now we have the other side of that where we're seeing the same thing happen from a different perspective, now from Henry and Sam's perspective. Which kind of helps inform who these people are to Henry. And what Henry sees is two desperately vicious people. And there's this great quote... 
[Audio from TV show:] Henry: My name's Henry. That's my brother, Sam. I'm the most wanted man in Kansas City. Although right now... my guess is you're running a close second. [/End audio from TV show]
Neil: There's a change here, pretty significant from the game, which is in the game, you're playing alongside Henry and Sam and Ellie, and you come across these enemies, and therefore we needed Henry to be able to fight and kill with you. And we try to give a certain morality in the game to Henry that even Joel wouldn't have, which is like-- There's a part where, like, Sam tries to steal this toy from this toy store, and Henry says, "No, we only take what we need and no more." And it was just a way to kind of separate them. Here, again, because we don't need Henry to kill, there's this beautiful choice of, like, "I've never killed anybody."
[Audio from TV show:] Henry: Now, I know where to go, but I don't know how to make it through alive. Not if it's just me and Sam.
Joel: You seem capable enough. You're armed.
Henry: You're wrong, and wrong. I've never killed anyone. And pointing an unloaded gun at you was the closest I've ever come to being violent. [/End audio from TV show]
Neil: I think it just immediately separates him from Joel. And you understand why Henry is so reliant on this man that he just spotted kill a bunch of people, it's like, "Okay, if I need someone to protect, essentially, Sam..." His entire motivation is Sam. "...I got to team up with this killer." 
Troy: "I can do this. You can do that." Are you wanting to catch the audience off guard? Are you wanting them to constantly remind them that this is something different? Or are you just in a sandbox playing because you can? 
Neil: You mean different from the game? 
Troy: Yeah. 
Neil: No, I don't think we ever, like... I don't remember any conversation like, "Oh, let's show them how this is different." It's more like what's best for this medium, and what's best for where we are in the story that has already kind of evolved and kind of changed in some ways. 
Craig: Yeah. There were areas where we knew we wanted to hew really closely, and then there were areas where we thought, "Okay, actually, we're going to wander off a bit." Well, once you decide to wander off because you think it's going to give us an opportunity to make a better show, then you do what you always do, which is to make the scenes interesting and to create a little bit of a sense of mystery. I mean, who is Henry? Why is he on the run? Why is Kathleen so interested in hunting this guy down to the point where even her right-hand man, played by this guy you might know named Jeffrey Pierce, is saying, "Hey, whoa, you know, we have other fish to fry"? Including the possibility of something terrible underground that we are now responsible to hold back since FEDRA's gone. And yet somehow, Kathleen is just monomaniacally fixated on finding Henry. What did he do? And when Henry says, "I'm the most wanted man in Kansas City," why? That mystery, that's just how you keep people engaged. I don't think we ever thought, like, -"Let's show them how different we can be."
Craig: I think we were always scared to either be too close to the game or too far away from the game. And the only way to get around the fear was to ask what would make the best story and the best scene? 
Neil: Again, going back to, like, right, we want to show more of these quote unquote hunters, these people that have taken over the quarantine zone. And it's like, well, if we just do that and it's completely removed from our main characters, then I don't think it would have worked. It was the tying it to Henry and Sam, so that all these things are interconnected, that made it all gel. 
Troy: It's starting to look like these characters are all -somewhat of a night of mirrors for Joel. - 
Neil: Mm-hmm. 
Troy: We have Kathleen, who is obsessed. But we do see this mirroring of this relationship that Joel and Ellie have in different versions. Henry and Sam and also Kathleen and her brother. 
Craig: Mm-hmm. 
Neil: But, by the way, also Kathleen and her entire group because I don't know if we ever talked about it, in my mind, it's like she's operating from a place of like, "I have to bring this person to justice to set the foundation of this thing that I'm building now, where FEDRA used to be." 
Troy: That, to me, was a really interesting point that, again, Jeffrey Pierce, my boy who played Tommy in the game, now plays Perry in the show. Every time I give him a compliment about his performance, he's like, "You know, the beard did 90 percent of the work." He looks nothing like that. 
Neil: The other 10 percent were his muscles. 
Troy: I mean, he just only does what is necessary. But there's so much happening underneath the surface. And he still stands in opposition. And we see this kind of-- this, um... 
Neil: Well, he does and he doesn't, right? That, to me, helps flesh out Kathleen even further is the fact that he loves her and looks up to her. 
Craig: They all do. I mean, he is questioning what she's doing in regard to Henry, but he understands it. And when he has this moment with her, he comes to see her, and we've seen him be nervous about her course of action a couple of times. And she presumes that he's there to say, "You got to pull back here. We have other stuff to do." And she talks, finally, about her brother and what he meant for her... Kathleen: Michael told me that this wasn't a room at all. That this was actually just a big wooden box. A big wooden box that nothing could get inside of. And it didn't matter if there was lightning, or tornadoes, or gunfire. He said, "As long as we were together in our perfect box, we would be safe." He did that for me. 
Craig: And what her brother meant for her was safety. Her brother was her Joel. And her Joel died. And when her Joel died, she kind of lost it and needed to kill the people that killed her Joel. If this sounds vaguely familiar to anybody, there might be a reason. So, she is saying, essentially, "My brother was rather Christlike. He told me to forgive." And she is not Christlike. She has a darkness in her. And her point of view is, "Forgiveness is stupid. Punishment is how we are going to win the day." And you expect Perry to say, "Well...," and he doesn't. What he says is... PERRY: Your brother was a great man. We all loved him. But he didn't change anything. You did. We're with you. 
Craig: And they are free because somebody with darkness in her said, "We're going to do whatever it takes." And when somebody frees you like that, you tend to trust them, and you tend to follow them all the way to the bitter end. 
Neil: It also kind of sets the rules for this world of like, these are the people that survive. These are the people that have the tools to survive in this world. And this is why Joel lives. 
Troy: One of my favorite moments in the game was when we're in the tunnels with Henry and Sam. 
Neil: We talked a lot about how the show enriches the game. This is one of the instances where the game enriches the show.
Craig: Definitely.
Neil: Where there's a story, and again, this talks about just the collaboration of how these things are built. There were all these environments that were built, including this, like, underground school, and where, like, a small group, a small tribe lived there and survived on their own. And in the game, you have this mechanic where you walk around, and you can find these notes and read them. And they told you the whole backstory of this guy, Ish, and how he, like, started this community, and he recruited other people. And you can find this whole story of, like, the height of how they survived here and their ultimate downfall. And we just couldn't tell the story in the show. There was just no way to do it. But we wanted to honor that this place existed, and it felt like there's a way to reflect back on these characters and the journey they're going through now, especially with kids lived here. And you saw Sam sketching and drawing stuff before, and now you could've imagined there would have been, like, a dozen kids here, and now they're all gone. So, I just love, again, it's this moment that honors it. And it's like these two almost like parallel dimension of the same story live side by side and kind of help talk to one another and enrich the other. 
Craig: So much of adaptation comes down to instinct. And reasonable people can disagree, but I remember being so... surprised and delighted by discovering that underground colony, the abandoned underground colony in the tunnels. So, there was no question that we needed to see it. It was important. The fact that Ellie and Sam can play soccer and that Joel and Henry have a chance to have a dad talk in this weird, brief respite of safety and sanity was incredibly important to me. I needed to see it. When it came to the story of Ish, which is awesome, there's something about the epistolary nature of that in the game, the way that you learn about it through letters. Communication. 
Neil: Environmental storytelling. 
Craig: It makes it better. We could absolutely do a stand-alone Ish episode, but I think where we landed was, it's better to tip our hats to Ish and then have people play the game. Or if they're not gamers, there are places on the Internet where they can go and read every one of those letters. 
Neil: No, no, no. Buy the game. Don't listen to Craig. 
Craig: You don't need to buy this game, guys. You don't need to spend a dime on it. - 
Troy: They've done okay.
[Audio from TV show:] Ellie: To the edge of the universe and back, endure and survive. Endure and survive. [/End audio from TV show]
Troy: This is where one of the mottos or mantras of the game we really get to display, and it's in this moment with the "endure and survive." 
Craig: You just did the ASL for "endure and survive." 
Troy: I hope that that catches on. And I want people-- I would love for people, for that just to become a standard greeting for people walking around. "Good morning to you. Oh, good morning to you, sir." As they sign "endure and survive." 
Neil: Fun, quick tangent. When we were scouting Edmonton for episode two, we went to, like, a random restaurant. And there's a bunch of us there, and the waitress comes over and is like, "Oh, what are you guys here for?" We're like, "Oh, we're shooting a TV show." She's like, "What show?" "The Last of Us." "Oh my God, I love that game!" She pulls her sleeve, -and she has a tattoo that says, "endure and survive." And I'm like, "Oh my God." 
Craig: One thing I should mention, since we've talked about how people literally tattoo the words "endure and survive" on their skin, is that at one point, not in the game, but in the show, Henry sort of makes fun of it...
[Audio from TV show:] Joel: What's that comic book say? Endure and survive?
Henry: Endure and survive. That shit's redundant.
Joel: Yeah. It's not great.
Henry: No. [/End audio from TV show]
Craig: I just have this instinct sometimes to kind of pop the balloon a little bit, and I hope that nobody that does have "endure and survive" on their skin or-- doesn't think that we are mocking them. It's really just a kind of a self-deprecating moment. 
Neil: I could talk a little bit about that. Like, the whole idea for this comic book was very much inspired by Watchmen. There's a comic book inside the story that reflects back on what's happening in the world. So we wanted to do something similar where there was, like, this sci-fi comic that speaks to the same themes of relationships, and love, and all that. And I was like, "It should have a catchphrase that the main hero says." And I'm like, "What could be kinda like a cheesy catchphrase? Okay, our game is about survival." I'm like-- And then I just went on thesaurus.com, typed in "survival," and "endure" came up, and I'm like, "endure and survive! There it is!" 
Troy: "To the edge of the universe and back, endure and survive." 
Craig: I mean, it's very meaningful but obviously has great thematic resonance. We're being cheeky about it, but I just-- I don't want anybody to think that we-- 
Neil: No, no, no. You hate everybody that got a Last of Us tattoo. -Let's stick with the-- Let's stay honest here. 
Craig: Since Neil and I are about to get a Last of Us tattoo, I don't-- Can we talk about that on this show? 
Troy: Yeah. I got two. 
Craig: You have two of them? Neil-- So, Neil and I made a deal early on in prep, and the deal was if the show does well, and we sort of loosely defined "does well," then he and I will both get a tattoo of Ellie's switchblade. 
Troy: Yes. 
Neil: I will say, this is the third time I've made this deal. I've made it on The Last of Us I, -then The Last of Us Part II. - 
Craig: Yeah, I'm gonna make you-- 
Neil: And I've always backed out of it. - 
Troy: Not this time. - 
Neil: We're making it pretty public. - 
Craig: Oh, no, no. It's-- 
Troy: No, this absolutely stays in. 
Craig: It's public record. Yeah, it's happening. 
Troy: One of my favorite sequences in the game, the sniper...
[Audio from TV show:] Joel: Stay here.
Ellie: What?
Joel: If you don't move, he's not going to hit you. I'm going to go around and try to get in the house through the back, and then I'll take him out.
Ellie: But if you go out there, he's gonna kill you.
Joel: It's dark, and he has shit aim. Nobody's gonna kill me.
Ellie: Then he's gonna kill us.
Joel: Do you trust me? [/End audio from TV show]
Craig: So, in the game, the sniper is really good, and he's not alone. There are six or seven other guys with him that you have to clear out.
Neil: At least.
Craig: Yeah, at least. So, there's quite a good action sequence where you're sneaking behind houses and ducking and trying to-
Neil: It's actually-- The way we wrote that sniper was that he would antagonize you. He yells at you to kind of rile you up to make you angry. So when you get in that house, you unleash on him. This was a very different approach...
[Audio from TV show:] Joel: Put the gun down, slide it over to me, and then stay up here for another hour. That's all you have to do. Please don't do it. Please. [/End audio from TV show]
Craig: And this wasn't us going, "Hey, we're going to subvert expectations." It was really more like, "Well, what if there is a sadness to this?" Because we understood, A, we weren't going to get the same value from presenting the action the way that the gameplay did. That watching it on television, if there was a lot of ducking and shooting back and ducking and shooting back, it just sort of isn't—
Craig and Neil: It's not the show. 
Craig: But I'm obsessed with the cul-de-sac, and I'm obsessed with the sniper. So, then the thought was, "Well, what if he stinks? What if this sniper is really bad, and all Joel has to do is just get around and get in there?" And then the next question is, "Well, why is he bad?" And the answer is, he's really old. He can't see. And this is sad because when you are dealing with the citizen brigade, this is often what you're dealing with. It's not trained military soldiers, these are people. And this guy, one can imagine, has seen a lot. Because let's say he's, what, 80? That means 60 years of his life, he was living in a perfectly normal world, and then-- 
Troy: The last 20 went to shit. 
Craig: ...the last 20 went to shit. And the sadness there. God only knows what amount of grief he's gone through. When Joel walks in there, I think Joel can already see it in the guy's eyes. He's going to commit suicide by cop here. This guy doesn't want to be here anymore. 
Troy: Got it. 
Craig: And he's begging him not to because he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to kill this guy. He doesn't want to hurt this guy. But this guy's had it. He's done. 
Neil: In the game, there's a scene where Joel-- they find this person who had committed suicide, and Joel talks to Ellie, and he's like-- and Ellie says, "Oh, he took the easy way out." And Joel says, "It's not easy." 
Troy: Yeah. 
Neil: The thing that Craig was just talking about, Joel recognizes that. And that's why he sees it immediately in this man. 
Troy: I remember walking onto set, and I just kept saying, "Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit." 
Craig: I remember that day well. 
Troy: It's night, we're back in Calgary, and you said, "Come here, I want to show you this." And we walked from base camp, and all of a sudden, we're in a neighborhood.
Craig: Yeah. - 
Troy: You built this. 
Craig: We built this. This was a massive undertaking. There was this large, empty lot next to the main stages where we were shooting, CFC, Calgary Film Center, and we knew we were going to be making this big cul-de-sac scene, and we needed to control it completely. So we needed to be able to do gunfire. We needed to be able to do burns. We needed to do an explosion of a truck. We needed hundreds of extras running around, backlit by fire, lots of stunts, motor vehicles racing and driving, and all of this. And it needs to be lit. There's no way to do that practically on a regular street. It's just not going to work. We needed to build it. Also, we couldn't find a street that was going to be perfect the way that one was. So, we turned to our beleaguered overworked art department, led by John Paino, our production designer, and Don Macaulay, our art director. And just as important as those two guys in this case was a gentleman named Dino Centanni, who was our head of construction. And we said, "We want to build a pretty big street, and we want it to look roughly like this." We had some images for inspiration, both from the game and also from some actual neighborhoods in Kansas City. And they didn't have a lot of time. And they worked at light speed. They didn't just bring in people who were really good at constructing for film and television. They brought in actual house builders, home builders, to get these things up. Obviously, the interiors were not finished by any stretch of the imagination. 
Troy: But it's important to point out, when I left, they were pouring foundation, and a month later, I came back and that neighborhood was there. 
Craig: It was there. 
Neil: The speed of how all those sets came together was incredible because I've never done live action. It's the first time I got to see it. 
Troy: You get to build it in Polygon.
Craig: It's much easier. Much easier. Way fewer nails. 
Troy: We're talking, like, this is about an eighth of a mile long? 
Craig: Yeah, and we used every inch of what we had, going all the way back to the end of the lot. First of all, the sequence originally was going to take place during the day, just like it does in the game. 
Neil: Oh, let's talk about that. 'Cause we met, like, with Jeremy Webb in Santa Monica in a restaurant, and we just, like, were brainstorming, like, "Okay, what should happen in the sequence? What do we want to see?" The thing that was really exciting for me is, like, in the game, you're just Joel, so everything you're seeing is really far. 
Troy: Yeah. 
Neil: And Henry, Sam, Ellie are these tiny figures running, and you're trying to protect them. - 
Troy: Through your scope. - 
Craig: Yeah. Yeah. 
Neil: Here, you get to jump in perspective, back and forth, back and forth. So, you get to see it from afar, and then you're in it, like, as they're running. And then, as we're brainstorming, Craig goes, "I got it. It's got to be nighttime." -And I'm like-- - 
Craig: That is not what I said. This is what I said. I said-- 
Troy: You motherfucker. 
Craig: I said, "Ah, shit!"
Craig: Because I suddenly realized that... So, the infected, they are scarier in the dark. 
Troy: Yeah. And fire is cooler in the dark. 
Craig: And fire is awesome in the dark. And I said, "Oh, shit" because I knew that the sequence was going to be about three weeks to shoot. Everybody now has to work at night. The nights were getting shorter, and yeah, because it was Calgary, it also occasionally would snow in the middle of the night. So we would lose some time to that. But mostly, it's just working at night is hard on everybody. If you do it two or three nights in a row, you get over it. Three weeks, it starts to really get into you mentally. I mean, even as your schedule shifts, mentally, you start to wear down. The episode of Game of Thrones, you know, the famous one in the last season, they shot, I think, 11 weeks of night. And I remember Dan Weiss telling me that people were literally losing their minds. Obviously, people can successfully work at night on night shifts and things, but we shoot long hours. So we would get there, we would rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, wait for Eben Bolter, our wonderful cinematographer, to say, "It is time," and then we shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. And this is not easy shooting. This is explosions, fire, stunts, gunfire. Safety is our most important priority, and it's exhausting. And yet, everybody was there for it. I mean, we had a gazillion stunt actors, all of whom were running and crawling as fast as they could. - 
Neil: With prosthetics.
Troy: With prosthetics. 
Craig: With prosthetics. It was an army. And we're also doing things like driving a truck into cars, for real. It was the most complicated thing I've ever done, for sure, in terms of production difficulty. And while you're doing it, you are always aware that you are creating what's going to work out to be a few minutes. 
Troy: Mm-hmm. Almost a year.
Craig: And that's where we have to talk about Weta. 
Troy: Weta FX, which of course is the digital visual effects company. It's based in New Zealand. 
Craig: So, backing up, Alex Wong, who is our VFX supervisor, is, you know-- becomes, over the course of the production, one of the most important people on the team. 
Neil: By the way, to talk about how much he loved the material, he left ILM to come work on this show because of how much he loves the game. 
Troy: Wow. 
Craig: And that actually carried forth to his then bringing on vendors because right now, the world is kind of dealing with a visual effects shortage. It doesn't seem like it because everything has visual effects, but everybody is using more and more visual effects to help produce and tell stories, to the point where there aren't enough artists on the planet to fulfill all the demand of content, especially as content has exploded on television. So, when you reach out to these companies, you are not necessarily just haggling over price. At some point, you're just like, "Do you want to work on this?" Because they have their choice. And then there obviously are levels of expertise within companies. One of the great things for us is that all of these places we talked to were like..."The Last of Us?!"
Craig: I mean, huge overlap in visual effects and gaming. And so, we got the best of the best. And in this sequence, nobody, nobody does creature work the way Weta does. Nobody. They are the best. And what they did here is so phenomenal. If you study it carefully, there may be moments where you're like, "Okay, that one's VFX, but that one's real." But I guarantee you won't get it all right. 
Neil: It's really hard to tell. 
Craig: It's really beautifully blended. 
Troy: Got it. We saw in the previous episode that you have these-- something is looming literally underneath the surface, both metaphorically and literally. Can you talk about that? Like, what is that? 
Craig: When we were talking about this section, we definitely knew we wanted to have this massive set piece involving a lot of infected. So, it was a bit of a challenge. We thought we have all the story we want to tell in Kansas City, and we know that we have this big thing waiting for us at the end in the cul-de-sac. But prior to that, the story is really about Kathleen, about Henry and Sam, about Joel and Ellie. And the threat is humans here. So, we found this-- It was really inspired by the tunnels from the game, that the infected seem to be underground. Well, what if we added this additional twist, which is that FEDRA drove them underground here? And what was interesting about that is that we come to understand that even though FEDRA was terrible, they were providing this one service. And now that Kathleen has effectively eliminated them, it's Perry who is saying, "This should probably be something we jump on right away."
Troy: Someone still needs to do this job.
Craig: Yeah. Someone needs to do this job. And here's an indication we see at the end of the fourth episode. Here's an indication that it's beginning to already be a problem. Just the fact that it's been two or three weeks since we overthrew FEDRA, and we're already seeing this? That's bad news. So, we put it in the back of your head. Then Henry makes it explicit...
[Audio from TV show:] Joel: So, you want us going into a tunnel?
Henry: Everyone thinks that it's full of infected, including Kathleen, which means that we're not going to be running into any of her people. You see, what I know is, it's empty.
Joel: You've been down there?
Henry: No, but the FEDRA guy that I worked with told me that it's clean. Completely clean. They cleared it out. All of it.
Ellie: When?
Henry: Like, three years ago. Okay, maybe there's one or two, but you handle it. [/End audio from TV show]
Craig: We think when they go into that tunnel, "Uh-oh!" Nope, there's nothing. And I was particularly fond of the way that in our show, Henry is like, "Told you. Told you. I told you." Every step of the way, he's like, "My plan is great." And Joel's like, "Shut up." And then at the very, very end, tying into that moment in the game when there is that crash and the infected come out of that house, well, here we've set it up that they're all underground. Not some of them, all of them. And we kind of imagined the idea of, like, an ant colony where there's these tunnels and things, and if you pop it open in one spot, they can all just start coming up. And it was terrifying to me. There is a moment in The Fellowship of the Ring. The Fellowship is in the mines of Moria, and seemingly thousands of, I think they're goblins, I don't think they're orcs at that point, I think they're goblins, anyway, come skittering down these massive columns like spiders. And I thought it was so beautiful when I saw it, and terrifying. So, I was thinking a little bit about that, of just what it would be like if they just came belching forth out of the earth. And particularly some of the larger infected that we deal with here, like the introduction of Señor Bloater. 
Troy: We've used this term, but it's probably important to point out. What is a bloater? 
Neil: When we worked on the game, we came up with, like, the lifeline, all these stages of when someone's infected, what could happen to them. So, you know, when you first get infected, there's a thing called a runner, which is just a recently infected. In the show, it's the one that you see, like, tendrils coming out-- Nana in episode one. Then if you've survived long enough, eventually the Cordyceps grows through your face, cracks it open, takes away your eyes, your vision, and you become what's called a "clicker" because now these infected use echolocation to find their way. And then we're saying, okay, there's got to be some people that, again, because this thing is eating away from your inside. Eventually, when they know they're going to die, they go to, like, underground, like a dark place, and they settle against a wall, they settle in the corner, and the infection just-- they become part of the environment that grows all over the walls and the ceiling and the ground. But there are certain people that are just so strong and big that could survive even longer, and those are the bloaters. And that's where you're seeing this person is so tall, and massive, and their strength. And it just becomes that much scary again as we go forward. They're just these new types of infected. And we're like, "Should we do bloater, or should we not do bloater?" - 
Craig: Right.
Neil: Should we do bloater, should we not? And we had this, like, back-and-forth for months before we just said, -"Let's definitely do a bloater."
Craig: "Let's do a bloater." And this is sort of one of those differences between television and games. When the bloater comes out in the game, you understand you have to kill it. So, in the game, you meet a bloater in the school gymnasium with Bill. And the point is, you've got to kill it. 
Troy: With nail bombs.
Craig: Nail bombs, and keep the shotgun ready in case you run out. 
Neil: I like to throw Molotovs, so just-- it's on fire, and then I blast it with the shotgun as it's coming. 
Craig: Molotovs also work terrifically well.
Troy: We don't have those things -at our disposal.
Craig: We do not. And we also thought, look, whatever this thing is, and however it got that way, there was this notion that it might be scarier if at some point you realize you're not killing it. No one's killing it, ever. 
Troy: And not only that, but it's also going to-- we're going to see them rip apart two of the most fearsome people that we've seen in this episode so far. 
Craig: Yeah, and that was something where I was overly ambitious. So, I had this thing where I wanted the bloater to pick Perry up and rip him in half, like at the waist, you know? And Neil was like, "Well, okay, I mean, is that going to be realistic?" And I'm like, "I think so." And then, like, the more Weta tried to do it, the more you realize, like, people don't rip along the waist. It's just really hard to do. 
Neil: There's a really cool animation of it though. -Again, it's-- for that, it's super realistic.
Craig: It got close. It came close. But ultimately, Neil prevailed and was correct in suggesting that something that felt more grounded anatomically would be more effective. And then, of course, we were like, "Well, the bloater has this head rip that is iconic, and it's great, and it's terrifying.
Troy: We see Perry meet his fate, but also we had this standoff moment for Kathleen, where-- Why was it important for her to meet that end? 
Craig: Let me crib a line from Westworld, "These violent delights have violent ends." I think it's important to show that when you are dead set on using violence to settle the score and win the day, you are going to probably get subsumed by that yourself. And the fact is, Kathleen is a moral criminal. She's done terrible things. Does she deserve to die? I don't really get into that. I just know that the odds that you are going to die by the sword go up dramatically if you live by it. 
Neil: Well, she's also so obsessed with this idea of justice that it could end one of two ways. -Either she succeeds, or she fails.
Craig: Right. 
Troy: She could have run. She could have gotten away. 
Craig: Well, that's the thing. He told her to run. And she couldn't help but chase the white whale to the very end. And this is where we, you know, in talking about this new variant of infected, the child clicker.
Neil: Which, by the way, shout-out to Hyoung Nam, the original designer of the clicker at Naughty Dog, because we were, like, debating, like we had certain sketches, and we're like, "Okay, we just need to go back to the source." And we brought him onto the show to, like, help design this clicker. 
Craig: And so, he just whips up a little illustration that makes us all go, -"Oh my God!"
Troy: Terrifying. 
Craig: And then it was a combination of this, actually, this kid named Skye, who's this fantastic contortionist actor.
Neil: Oh, man, remember those audition tapes...
Craig: Oh, she was terrifying. 
Neil: ...we got for all these like contortionist kids?
Craig: Oh, yeah, but she was the most terrifying.
Troy: Nightmare fuel.
Craig: Like a spider girl.
Neil: It was so creepy.
Craig: And she's this beautiful little girl, but she's truly like, it's so creepy how she can move her body like that. And so, it was a combination of her performance, and then Weta kind of creating, taking, drafting off of what Barry Gower had created with prosthetics, and then making this little girl. And I insisted that our child clicker wear a Blue's Clues shirt because I'm really sick, and I just loved the contrast of innocence and horror. But it was important for me, also, that Kathleen is killed by a child because what she says, it's one of my favorite lines in the series, is when she's saying that Henry has to die, and so does Sam. And Henry says, "He's just a fucking kid." And she says, "Well, kids die, Henry. They die all the time." And she's not wrong. The thing is, a lot of what we talk about when we're talking about the moral conundrum of The Last of Us is, "Why does my kid's life matter more than yours? Does my kid's life matter more than your mother's? Does my kid's life matter more than an old man's life?" And so, the idea that she ultimately is killed by a kid felt sort of like a circular completion of that story. You're not supposed to feel good. You're not supposed to feel bad. If people struggle a little bit with how they feel about that moment, then I think we probably did it correctly. 
Neil: Sometimes it's a zero-sum game, which is like-- you think back to that first episode, you know, when Joel drives by that family, and he chooses not to help them. And maybe they died afterwards, or like, maybe that kid died afterwards. 
Troy: We have this moment after this where Ellie, and with the help of Joel, they get to team up, and Joel is providing cover. Ellie gets Henry and Sam out of there. They shoot. They barely escape. Kathleen and Perry meet their ends. And then we have this moment between Sam and Ellie, "What are you afraid of?" The use of... childlike things, which are normally the representation of innocence, is very prominent, probably the most by the magic slate. And I just want to talk about that a little bit. 
Craig: It's easy to say, "Well, if you're deaf, your older brother is going to learn how to sign ASL." But Ellie doesn't know sign language, other than "endure and survive" and "awesome" and "promise," and...
Troy: Which she learns in this.
Craig: Which she learns in this scene. So, then the question is, "How do you communicate?" And I love those things. -I just remember having them, you know, the little--
Troy: Same. And it was that thought of like, well, in the post-apocalypse, it's the low tech, ultimately, that is the most valuable. If you have to move through life as a deaf kid, and there isn't technology, and there's limited resources, you don't have a thousand pencils, and you don't have a thousand pads, that thing makes a lot of sense. It's just an endlessly renewable way to communicate with people that don't sign. So, it made sense that he carried it with him everywhere he went.
Troy: It's around his neck.
Craig: It's around his neck. And I really like that it was the Woody Woodpecker version. It was so great. And so, Justin Onofriechuk, who's our prop master, this is where he would just get so delighted, and never disappointed. He would always bring these things, and you'd go, "It's perfect." I mean, that scene, that conversation they have is very close to what it is in the game. 
Troy: It is important to note, though, that there is a huge revelation that happens in the show version, which is that Sam confesses that he's been bitten. 
Craig: Yes. So that is a different thing. So, in the game, they have a conversation. "What are you afraid of? Do you think that people who are infected are still them inside?" Ellie does not reveal that she's immune. 
Neil: And Sam doesn't reveal that he's bitten. 
Craig: And Sam doesn't reveal that he's bitten. Now, Sam is older in the game, and it makes sense. In this context, we thought that because of the nature of the relationship between our Sam and our Ellie, which is that he looked up to her, that it made sense that he would trust her. And he's so scared. And then we really wanted to show Ellie starting to believe that she could do something special. 
Neil: There's also something about knowing what the audience is asking right now. "Okay, so if she's immune, couldn't she just give her blood?" Like, I've seen since the game came out, people ask that. -I'm like, "Let's answer it."
Craig: Yeah.
Neil: And the answer is no.
Craig: No. 
Troy: There is this moment where Ellie offers a solution. "I can fix this." We're starting to see what it was like for Joel.
Craig: Yes, exactly. 
Troy: "I can fix this. I will do this." Then there's this moment where Ellie has a crisis of conscience. "What if it's not true?" And there's this moment of doubt.
Neil: But it's, again, it's the parent lying.
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: The parent is lying. 
Craig: And in this case, I think lying to herself as well because she has the same thing that Joel has, which is this desire to save the person you love. And we are going to get into Ellie's past a little further as the season goes along. But we already know from a conversation she's had with Joel in the prior episode that when she killed that guy in the laundromat, that was not the first person she killed. There's something that's happened in her past, which means there is loss. And what Bella is showing us there is this longing for redemption. "Now that I know, I can fix it."
Neil: There's also a naivete that a kid would have of like...
Craig: Exactly. 
Neil: "We're invincible. Like, I'm not going to experience this tragedy. We're going to get past this." 
Craig: "I didn't. So you won't." 
Neil: And this is, like, part of Ellie's journey, is this like, one, like this violent corruption through her interaction with Joel, but two, a loss of innocence. Every step of the way, there's a loss of innocence. 
Troy: What I witnessed was someone going from solution to experiment to prayer. 
Craig: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. 
Troy: And then there is the promise. 
Craig: Yeah. 
Troy: The promise to stay awake. When she wakes up in the morning, man... There's still some moments that really hit me. Sam couldn't hear. 
Craig: Exactly. Exactly. 
Troy: And what that says is, it was still him inside. - 
Craig: Yep. - 
Troy: And that is... What a powerful thesis. 
Craig: Everybody can kind of create their own theory about what it must be like in there. And it's reasonable, I think, to say, "Well, if you've been infected for a week, a month, five years, you're not-- you're gone." And it's also-- People would also say, "Look, physically, his ears, the eardrums, the nerves, they don't work the way that they do in people who can hear. So why would they work now?" But I think it's still him. I think in that moment, where it's just beginning, there's just confusion. It's a little bit like being on a bad trip. You can't stop yourself. You don't know what's happening, and you're reacting like you're in a dream. And you may even realize in moments like, "I'm trying to hurt somebody that I love, but I can't stop." 
Neil: Which, by the way, goes further to Henry because then he enters this almost like a nightmare-like state, where he's behaving in a way that he can't even control himself and then has a realization of like, "Oh my God, what have I done?" And like, again, the game has an almost identical moment for Henry. But even though the lines of dialogue are different, but he's just saying-- in the game, he says, "It's all your fault." Here, he's like, "What have I done?" Same subtext of like, "Holy shit, I can't believe I just shot my brother..."
[Audio from TV show:] Henry: What did I do? What did I do? What-- What-- What did I do?
Joel: Henry, give me the gun. Give me the gun. Give me the gun, Henry. Give me the gun. Henry, no! [/End audio from TV show]
Craig: He has every desire to keep his brother safe here. He knows that Joel will get the gun and shoot him, so he gets the gun first. He shoots at the ground to keep Joel from running over there and pulling Sam away. And then there's this thing in his mind that takes over, that he-- and it's-- I think it's almost a spinal reaction to say, "As a decent human being, I have to stop somebody from killing a kid." And in this case, the someone is his own brother, and the kid is Ellie. So he doesn't even understand he's done it until after he's done it. And we had a long, long conversation. I even wrote other versions where... I was really nervous about this ending. In the game, it was so shocking and so brutal. But I also knew, like... I remember the screen goes black, and then we move ahead, and it's a different season. And I go, and I'm just breathing, but I'm watching the two of them in a different moment, a different time and place, and then I can keep kind of going. But we don't let you keep going. We know we have to stop this episode. And so the question is, "Should Henry kill himself or not?" 
Neil: We had a lot of long conversations. I don't know if we should get into the alternatives because people might get mad at us that there were alternatives. But it's just-- it's almost an identical process to what we went through in the game because in the game, initially, Henry didn't die. But again, it's like if you're trying to reflect the worst possible outcome for a parent, I felt like we had to take it all the way to show, like, then you have nothing left. There's nothing left. 
Troy: In the show, we have the opportunity to show the aftermath of tragedy, which is the burial. We see the magic slate with two words written on it. "I'm sorry."
Neil: Yeah. 
Craig: And there, you see the end of something because just a couple of scenes earlier, Joel was saying to Henry, "It's easier for them. They don't have anybody relying on them." But there was somebody relying on Ellie. But even more profound, I think, is what Joel begins to think here, which is, "I can't go through this again. I just saw somebody lose their kid. And that's the thing that happened to me 20 years ago that I swore I would never allow happen to me again. And this is a warning from above that whatever is connecting me to this kid, I am now in the most dire emotional danger possible." 
Neil: You know, in the game, we hinted that they buried Henry and Sam. Here we get to see it, and there's a change that's happening in Joel as well, which is Joel is such a pragmatic survivor. -He wouldn't spend time burying someone.
Craig: Right. 
Neil: He's not doing it for himself. -He's doing it for Ellie.
Craig: Yeah. 
Neil: The father-daughter bond is now there. And that's to what Craig was saying, the fear that a parent has is the most intense fear one can have. 
Troy: I can't think of a better place to end it, but we will pick this back up next week. For now, thank you both, Craig and Neil.
Craig: That was great, Troy.
Neil: Always fun. 
Troy: This has been the official podcast for HBO's The Last of Us, where you can stream new episodes every Sunday on HBO Max. Podcast episodes are available after those episodes air, and you can find those wherever you listen to podcasts. Please like and follow HBO's The Last of Us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Until next week, keep looking 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