The last episode of Season Two of The Last Of Us hit our screens this week on Sky and NOW. We sat down with the series creator Craig Mazin (pictured above, left, with stars Merle Dandridg and Pedro Pascal) about working with the show and game’s co-creator Neil Druckmann, the success of the first series, if he’d be up for adapting any more video games and whether he knows how the show will finally end…
Did you have any idea how successful the first season of The Last Of Us would be?
I wanted it to be successful, but I didn’t even think that this level of success was possible! I think there are probably people who do my job who feel very self-assured and entitled to an enormous audience. I’m not one of them.
My hope is mostly that we can get enough people to watch it so we can keep telling the story. Also, so that I don’t feel very guilty about spending all of HBO money like this!
But the number of viewers and the fact that it grew every week… I mean, we started quite high, and then it just kept growing, which is sort of unheard of. It was overwhelming to us all and I take none of it for granted. I’m right back to where I was before, which is ‘go people! Watch!’.
I take none of them for granted. I’m very beholden to the audience. I just want them to be entertained.
Video game adaptations have had varying results. What do you think makes this particular video game adaptation resonate with audiences so well?
Well, first, start by adapting The Last of Us. That makes it quite a bit easier. It’s still the greatest story ever told in the medium. But also, I’m a fan. I’m a geek, I’m a nerd. I play D&D three times a week, and I’ve been playing video games my whole life. So when I came to this adaptation, I didn’t come as somebody who understood there was a built in audience, or it was a franchise or IP or any other horrible words. I came to it because I loved it and because I really wanted people who would never play to experience it. I also wanted the people who had played to re-experience it through this new medium, which lets us do quite a bit more at times.
So come at it with love and honesty and purity. The good news is that we are seeing this more and more. There are more and more video game adaptations that are successful. Minecraft is enormous right now, and Fallout was such a delight. I love that game. I love the show. I’m hoping that we’ll see more and more as time goes on, and I don’t see why we wouldn’t. I think that Hollywood is waking up to the idea that video games are both an incredible source of material, but also worth adapting with respect.
If you could adapt any other video game, what would you pick?
Well, I’m not ever going to, of course, because where can you go from here? But oh, man, I’m tempted to say Grand Theft Auto IV because I’m a masochist and I just think that would be like 19 seasons of TV! Haha. But then also part of me thinks, ‘oh, no, don’t do that. Do something else. That’s almost no story at all. Go ahead and try and do Candy Crush…!’
Mostly, I’m excited to watch what other people do, even if I help. I have no problem being a helper. I would love to help produce some good adaptations of video games, just a couple in mind that I actually have. But in terms of writing and dedicating myself on a day-by-day basis… this one’s my video game swansong.
What are the positives and negatives of telling The Last Of Us story through the medium of TV?
What we get to do, in a nice way, is to expand in areas because we are not beholden to gameplay. So we can wander off and we can slow things down. We also aren’t married to perspective. So you aren’t playing as Joel or Ellie or Abby. We can be with anyone we want to be at any given time.
That said, there is this incredible instant empathy that occurs when you are the person, when you are the character. There are also things, from a production point of view, that video games can do easily that we find very difficult to do. Like scenes that take place at night. Oh my God, if you’re outside at night, and we are a lot, then you’re up all night. That’s how it works. Neil can just press a night button on his computer and it’s night! Haha.
On the other hand, we can get very close to people’s faces, and we don’t have to spend the meticulous hours animating. It’s all there. So there’s a certain kind of reality we can achieve. They probably can, it would just take forever, or at least currently. So each medium has its pluses and minuses, and we try to be as scientific as we can to take advantage of the one we’re in.
How does your working relationship with Neil Druckmann work? Do you take on different episodes?
Mostly we just fight. Fist fighting. Then whoever wins…! Haha no, we try and mastermind the season first together. Really break the story out and make decisions about how we’re going to approach things and where we might fill things in.
A lot of the writing I end up doing on my own in a room. I like to give Neil a script and say, ‘look, I’ve written a complete episode. Here it is. Read this. Let’s discuss.’ It’s just my nature. I’m very monk-like in that regard. But the real, most valuable time, I think, is in the beginning, when we’re just having discussions about what’s possible and finding those great opportunities to do things differently or (and I say this is a fan), the opportunities to do things exactly the same, because I love those too.
How closely did you want Season Two to follow the game?
Basically we approached it the same way as we approached season one. We changed nothing about the process. Partly it’s understanding the things from the game that I try as best I can to represent the fans. Because I am one. What do I want, I need, and please don’t change?
Then there are things that are so connected to the act of gameplay that it won’t quite work the way it wants to. We have to change it. And what are the opportunities to do things entirely differently, because we have more story time? So I ask questions like, ‘Well, how did this person get there? What occurred?’ And we can explore those avenues.
So, for people who are very familiar with the games, the experience should be similar to the experience from season one. A lot of times, people will say this scene was one of my favourite scenes, and they did it just like it was in the game and I’ll think ‘that scene’s not in the game, but you thought it was’. I like that. I want things to feel like they were, even when they weren’t there.
Were there any fan reactions from Season One of The Last Of Us that surprised you?
I was really taken aback by the way that third episode was accepted.
There were, of course, fans who felt cheated of Bill’s interaction with Ellie, which is amazing in the game. It’s so much fun and I appreciate that. I’m a big believer in people’s right to disagree about these things, but it was more common that people who had played the game loved it and really appreciated it for what it was.
I got incredible emails from people watching it with their parents and thinking like, ‘I’ve been struggling to get my parents to accept me for who I am, and then we watch this, and I look over and my sixty-year-old father is crying’. For a television show to do something like that is sort of beautiful. It’s hard to imagine aiming higher than that as a writer. I’m particularly fond of all those memes of people saying ‘I thought it was just a zombie show’. Well, you’re not done crying yet. Welcome to Season Two.
It definitely isn’t just a zombie show. What do you think it is about sci-fi that allows a good platform to explore deeper themes?
I’ve been a fan of science fiction my whole life. It’s so good at clearing the decks of unnecessary narrative baggage. You get to start somewhere else, a brand new planet, a brand new time, and then just deal with the characters. There’s something about how universal and consistent human behaviour is, no matter where we are in the universe, even if we’re not humans, it doesn’t matter. There’s something beautiful about how consistent it all is and how universal it all is.
Yes, if you show me a show about somebody who looks like me and sounds like me and is from where I’m from, I will understand them quite a bit. But it’s not as satisfying as seeing myself in somebody that isn’t like me at all, who lives in a different place, in a different time, under different rules. That is why I watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy every year. The extended one, of course!
Have you mapped the whole series in your head? Is there an ending?
Yes. Neil and I start from a fairly high point of view, very Bird’s Eye, and broad strokes. Then, as we plan a season, we narrow down. But in order to know what you’re supposed to do, you need to know where you’re going, and you definitely need to know how things end. Not every writer does, but I’m one of the ones who do. I just need to know. To me, the ending is the point. So we’ve definitely thought it all through.
All episodes of The Last Of Us Season One and Two are available now on Sky and NOW TV.
Watch our interview with stars Gabriel Luna and Young Mazino here.
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