The Original Joel on ‘The Last of Us’ Was Skeptical of the Show

While there are some who scoff at the suggestion of a “curse” on live-action video game adaptations, the creators of The Last of Us are not among them. They believed in the curse; they feared a TV show. A flop would tarnish the game’s legacy.

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Few would have had a better claim to this skepticism than Merle Dandridge, Troy Baker, and Ashley Johnson, who played Marlene, Joel, and Ellie, respectively, in the games. Back then, decked out in black mocap suits, pandemic-ravaged America existed only in their imagination. But while they were working on HBO’s adaptation, in which they all have parts, the game’s ruined cities and fungal monsters were made tangible. 

On the show, Dandridge reprises her role as Marlene, leader of the Fireflies, but Joel is played by Pedro Pascal and Ellie by Bella Ramsey. That left creators Neil Druckman (the man behind the original game) and Craig Mazin to find new characters for the actors who played them first. For Johnson, that role was Anna, Ellie’s mother; Baker, on the other hand, was asked to play a member of a group of cannibals.

Prior to the series’s launch, WIRED spoke with Dandridge, Baker, and Johnson about the nuances in Ramsey and Pascal’s performances, the bizarre sensation of first visiting the set, and watching the game they spent years making get transformed into a whole new medium.

WIRED: How did you initially feel about The Last of Us being turned into an HBO series? 

Troy Baker: I had a very specific perspective on these characters. So much so that I was talking to Neil like, “We’ve already done this, we’ve already shot it, we’ve scored it, we’ve put it out there and people have experienced the story. So why do we do this?” He goes, ”Because at the end of the day, there are people that aren’t going to pick up a controller and play the story. And I believe that these characters can stand up on their own in any medium.”