Observe: This interview is a spoiler-free dialogue of the February 10th episode of The Final of Us.
A part of the enchantment of HBO’s The Last of Us series is the way it provides to the story of the unique PlayStation recreation upon which it’s primarily based.
In a single case, this meant dramatically increasing the love story between Invoice (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) in the standout third episode, which was solely hinted at within the unique recreation. Elsewhere, this would possibly result in introducing new characters.
Nowhere has the latter been extra obvious than in Episodes 4 and 5 of the present, by which creators and showrunners Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and Neil Druckmann (the unique The Final of Us recreation) introduce not one, however two new figures. Enter Kansas Metropolis revolutionary chief Kathleen (Yellowjackets‘ Melanie Lynskey) and her right-hand man Perry (Bosch‘s Jeffrey Pierce).
Jeffrey Pierce as Perry.
However for followers of each 2013’s The Last of Us and its 2020 sequel, Pierce is probably most recognizable for one more function: Tommy, the youthful brother of protagonist Joel. With Gabriel Luna (Marvel’s Brokers of S.H.I.E.L.D.) portraying Tommy within the sequence, Pierce has been given the possibility to play a totally new character. It wasn’t all the time going to be that approach, although.
“They really had me learn for a special half, and so they had me learn for it 3 times,” Pierce reveals to MobileSyrup in a roundtable interview. Whereas he coyly declined to disclose what that half is likely to be, he says Mazin and Druckmann quickly offered him with the character of Perry.
“Finally, they got here again and mentioned, ‘Look, we’re by no means gonna imagine you as a sufferer, which is a really gratifying factor to listen to.’ And per week later, they known as and mentioned, ‘Hey, we received this man that we expect you’d be good for.’ So it was form of a roundabout approach again to the form of casting that’s actually in my wheelhouse.”
Certainly, Perry is hard and resolved like Tommy, however with a novel wrinkle that units him aside due to his relationship with Kathleen. The place Tommy leaves Joel (Pedro Pascal) to go off on his personal, Perry follows Kathleen, who’s taken over as revolutionary chief from her brother, and serves as each muscle and advisor.
“I loved Tommy for lots of causes, however Perry is the form of iconic Ronin samurai who’s discovered his objective, and what extra might I ask for?” says Pierce.
Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen.
For Pierce, the HBO sequence additionally offered a brand new solution to expertise a world he’s acted in for properly over 10 years. Within the video games, he’d report in a studio with no resemblance to The Final of Us‘ post-apocalyptic world, surrounded by fellow actors in offbeat motion-capture outfits.
Whereas he says the problem of imagining all the pieces by movement seize “takes you again to the roots of why you fell in love with performing,” he was nonetheless in awe of the expertise of truly filming in real Alberta locations. With an estimated budget of over $100 million USD (about $133.7 million CAD), The Final of Us is believed to be the costliest TV manufacturing in Canadian historical past, and it exhibits.
“Strolling onto the sets that they built, particularly for Episode 5’s climactic alternate — they constructed that total neighbourhood. That was a car parking zone, and so they constructed it from the bottom up,” he says, referring to the massive battle between Kathleen’s forces and contaminated creatures that Joel, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), Henry (Toronto’s Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Woodard) get dragged into.
“And if there’s any CG, it’s simply the sky. Every thing else is sensible. And that was unbelievable. I imply, it’s received to be 15 to twenty homes that they constructed the skeletons of, after which the precise façades of, after which they’ve received one which’s burned down, and the one factor left was a chimney. They usually did each single piece of element in there. So to get to come back to play on one thing that was provided that a lot love and sweat and blood to construct — you felt that you just needed to honour what that they had performed together with your work. And that made it a very, actually particular expertise.”
Additionally including to his time on the present: Calgary.
“With COVID, I used to be stored fairly contained [in] downtown Calgary, which was nonetheless nice. I’ve shot throughout Canada, and the factor that I get pleasure from, no matter the place I’ve been, is the folks. They’re simply such a beautiful bunch. And that crew in Calgary was superb. That is one other first expertise, and I feel there have been most likely 250, 300 folks on the crew. And greater than two-thirds of them took that job as a result of they have been followers of the sport; [it] impacted their lives in such a approach that perhaps that’s why they received into manufacturing, perhaps that’s why they received into TV and movie. However they took that job particularly as a result of it was The Final of Us.”
For Pierce, this all introduced his long-running journey with The Final of Us full circle.
“Strolling onto set the primary day was like strolling into my very own lounge as a result of everybody knew me as Tommy from the sport and have been simply so heat and welcoming and type and beneficiant. I feel it was perhaps my favorite expertise filming due to that.”
The Final of Us is now streaming exclusively on Crave in Canada.
For extra on the present, check out our interview with Pascal, Ramsey, Mazin and Druckmann, by which additionally they reward the Alberta crew.
Picture credit score: HBO
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