You’ve talked about how Tommy feels that he’s now responsible for Ellie after Joel dies, but he’s also responsible for Jackson. He is an important part of the security of that whole community. Why do you think he takes the risk to go to Seattle to try to either save her or find out what’s going on, knowing that he could be putting Jackson in danger by doing that?
I think that’s a decision that he ends up making kind of unilaterally for himself, and it’s kind of all he has left to his brother at that point. She is family. She resembles Joel in all ways, both good and bad, and frustrating. And that’s another slight shift in the way that we handle the story in the game. Tommy rides out alone the day after, but the way we handle it in this story, it’s much less about blind vengeance and more about retrieving someone that you love and protecting them and bringing them home. But once Tommy is in Seattle, there they are. There are the people who cause so much pain for him and his family and his community, and I don’t think his priority completely changes, but I think he restructures some of his priorities when he is there. Knowing that these people are kind of within arm’s reach. And so then once again, just kind of different ways of arriving at the same kind of emotional crux and moral crossroads. But yeah, that’s all to be discovered, I guess, in the third season.
You’ve been part of franchises before. I don’t know how online you are beyond just general social media, but how has dealing with this fan base been compared to other projects you’ve been on, and has it been hard to keep secrets from friends and family?
I guess, to the first part of the question, as I’m talking, I’m staring at all of these memories. I got this Ghost Rider portion of my office here that has action figures and Lego Robbie Reyes and all these things, and I got all these “Terminator” Funko pops and all these things that kids have given me. And I think “The Last of Us” fan base is such an interesting one. So, intensely passionate about it and kind in both directions. Both with all of their shining praise and with a lot of very intense scrutiny and it’s, but in whatever way they approach it, it ends up being out of love for the story, love for Ellie, love for Abby, love for Joel, whatever it was, however they reacted and however viscerally and however in some positively or negatively they all have that have that kind of shared characteristic of really just incredible investment. And you see it in the art and the stories and the edits and all these things that these kids do, but they’re very, I guess, a loving kind of fan base. And they bring along a lot with that, a lot of kind of emotional baggage they carry into the story and they pull from it, they extract from it. But what I did appreciate about them as we were leading up to the second season was the stewardship of the story and the kind of guardrails they put up against spoilers for other people who hadn’t really played the games. And I loved how they protected a lot of elements for the story, even those who were trying to hint at certain events, the death of Joel, and things like that. None of them really were doing it explicitly. They were just kind of sly little suggestions, but never just kind of blatantly spelling it out for people. So, I kind of appreciated that they were so protective of the story because it really is an intriguing and impactful story if you don’t know what’s coming. But they are a very passionate fan base and one that we love very much, and certainly consider when making the show. They’re certainly on our minds, in every frame. You can see that across the board, production, design, art direction, the performances, everybody there is taking great care to give them what they love about the story, and then try to give them something more.
And then keeping secrets from family and friends?
I don’t want to tell. [Laughs.] My mom doesn’t play the game or anything. My grandma has never seen this. Well, she did see some of it at the premiere, but she fell asleep during the Dina [Isabela Merced] and Ellie fighting off the stalker scene, which I was happy about. It was very loud and violent, and I was looking over at my grandma and making sure she was O.K., and she was completely conked out. So, I was like, “All right, good.” But no, I think it was hard to keep the flamethrower deal secret. I did have some very cool videos that I may have shown a couple of friends before the show came out. Don’t tell Warner Bros or HBO. [Laughs.] But, no, it was all cone of silence, circle of trust, a couple of different people just because it was a really, really memorable day, or three weeks, I should say, three and a half weeks
Wait, I didn’t realize this. That’s a real flame blower. I just assumed the fire was digital.
No, no, no, it’s real. It was a real practical flamethrower that spit out liquid propane.
Was that scary? Is that a stupid question?
No, it wasn’t scary because of just the redundancies that the stunt performers had on the process and the protocol that we were adhering to with each take. But it still doesn’t discount the fact that mentally, you don’t often set somebody on fire as they’re running towards you. So, there was still an element of how unnatural it felt, but it wasn’t necessarily scary because it did feel that we had all the safeguards in place to make sure everybody came out the other end breathing, and it was all good. But I tipped my hat to Glenn Ennis, who played the bloated, who took 13 body burns for us, another stuntman named Jonathan who did a couple burns as the monsters are running down the street, and that first time I ignited the flamethrower, that was Jonathan, a really sweet guy. But no, you just try to take care, be considerate of the people who are doing incredibly demanding, this incredibly demanding stunt work, and then just always try to be consistent. It must be the same every time, every single take, the same things must happen on the same timing so everybody knows what’s happening and everyone feels safe and knows they’re safe. I am curious why the training was so short. They drove me out an hour and a half to Squamish to set to train on the thing the day before we shot it, and I literally just walked up and down the street with it for about three or five minutes, and then I was licensed to torch, I guess.
Hey, you’re ready for the apocalypse if it ever comes. I hope you have one in your garage somewhere. But sort of going down that line, and maybe that is the moment, but what’s the one day, the one scene that immediately just pops into your mind for season two? What would it be?
I mean, there are two things. I think it is the first day that we started working, the real meat of the matter, there. I mean, we kind of bounced around a lot. They did a lot of stuff on the wall, and like we said, it was shot over such a long period of time that it’s kind of hard to isolate certain moments. But I do think of that town that we built and [production designer] Don Macaulay‘s incredible team and his incredible design, how accurate it is to the games. And so I think about that set a lot. We built the whole town, and so I think just walking around the streets and playing my guitar and talking to the crew and making friends with background actors who were playing the townspeople and stunting people and who were playing the monsters and just finding little spots in the town to kind of sit and and feel like this is a real place, which is very easy to do.
So many of those buildings had a full working interior, so you can go and find a cool little nook that had all of the details of the show kind of strewn about. And there’s a cool area in the restaurant up above in the balcony, the gallery area where there was this dartboard that I used to just go, and I used to take Ezra [Benedict Agbonkhese], who plays my son Benjamin, we used to just go play darts and jhe got away with a few things that I guess his mod doesn’t always let him do. He’s like, “Well, these are sharp, right? My mom doesn’t let me.” I said, “It’s all right, just as long as you don’t touch the pointy.” [Laughs.] But yeah, I think about that, and I think about this great jam session that we had. I’ve posted a bunch of videos of it when we were in Vancouver at the Orpheum Theater, shooting all the stuff in the actual theater, the stage there, and we moved in a bunch of equipment and guitars, and amps, and we just had y wonderful time. That was an off day. We weren’t working that day, but we took a Sunday and just did some team building, playing music together.
That’s freaking fun. You’ve got a big part in season three and are a very busy guy, do you know when you’re supposed to go back and shoot it? Is there any sort of rough schedule?
No, I don’t have any dates right now. I’m currently shooting “The Terminal List” in Toronto and have some stuff lined up for the fall, but that’s as far into the future as I can look right now.
Is there anything you’re looking forward to in season three from playing the game?
There really isn’t. I wouldn’t be able to kind of bank on some of these things that I love and that I hope for, but because it’s going to be entirely up to the approach that Neil and Craig take, which I’m excited to see. I mean, I’m curious how much we can explore. The most exciting parts for me, as someone who’s played the game, are always these new chambers of the story that we enter into. And just with the way that we’re able to approach perspective in this art form, there are a lot of really fruitful, exciting possibilities.
“The Last of Us” is available on HBO Max
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