Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for season 2, episode 2 of “The Last of Us” by HBO, now in difficulty on Max.
Pedro Pascal is expressed from episode 2 of season 2 of “The Last of Us”, in which his beloved Joel is killed after being beaten to death by avenger Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). The shocking torsion is straight out of the video game “The Last of Us Part II”, which means that Pascal knew when he signed up to play Joel in the HBO series that his time in the series would not last forever.
“It is not as if they said:” Hey, we kill you at the start of season 2 “,” said Pascal to Entertainment Weekly about death. “But it has always been understanding that it would remain faithful to the source material in a specific way and that, let’s say, the practical and exclusive obligation would be for season 1. It was just a question of how and when.”
Addressing HBO during the official program “Last of Us” after the show, Pascal added: “I have only respect for the level of investment that people have in a video game or a television program or a film or book. I experience it myself. I threw books into the room because its impact is so deep on me and I experience history.
In the series, Abby de Dever is due to Joel hostage and reveals that she is the doctor’s daughter whom he pulled in the head in the final of season 1 in order to save Ellie. She then shoots Joel with her leg and the baton with a golf club. After having passed his fists and beating him, Abby gives the fatal blow by a peak in the neck of Joel. Pascal told HBO that “meeting Kaitlyn was incredible” and “it is ironic that something so violent and tragic between the characters can immediately link you to the actor”.
As for presenting himself on the set with all his bloody makeup, the actor said: “It was interesting to enter the room and see the reactions on the faces of people. It was not a revulsion but sorrow.”
“I am in the active denial,” added Pascal to EW about Joel’s fate. “I realize more and more as I get older, I find myself denying that everything is over. I know that I am forever linked to so many members of the experience and that I must simply see them in different circumstances, but I never go in the circumstances to play Joel on “The Last of Us”. And, no, I don’t spend much time thinking about it because it makes me sad. “”
“The Last of Us” was above all a two-two between Joel de Pascal and Ellie de Bella Ramsey during his race. This now changes following Joel’s death. Ramsey told HBO: “I knew that Joel was going to die but reading him in the script that I was redouncing to arrive at this piece … and I cried. I actually sobbed my little heart. This is the first time I cry while reading a piece of writing.”
In an interview VarietyThe co-creator of the series, Craig Mazin, explained why the creative team of the HBO show decided that episode 2 of season 2 was the right time to give life to the “damn horrible” of Joel’s death on the screen.
“There is a danger of tormenting people. This is not what we want to do,” said Mazin. “If people know that it happens, they will start to feel tormented. And people who do not know that it will happen that it happens, because people are going to talk about the fact that it has not yet arisen. Our instinct was to make sure that when we did, that it was natural in history and was not a metal-function to disturb people.”
Read Variety Interview with the creators of “The Last of Us” here.
