There have been very few moments of levity whenever we’ve seen Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie on our television screens for the past several Sundays in The Last of Us – as a matter of fact, they’ve been pretty much just breaking our hearts. As it turns out, shooting such an emotionally-charged TV show tends to take its toll on the actors involved.
In a “Creator to Creator” interview series hosted by Sony, the stars dished about how they coped with the process. Turns out, it was by distracting one another with what showrunner Craig Mazin described as “shoot-delaying laughter.”
Around the five-minute mark of the above clip, Pascal is wholesomely describing how he and Ramsey helped alleviate each other anxieties on the set, before quickly pointing the finger at her for being the primary productivity killer. Ramsey rapidly returns his serve before a playful shouting match breaks out.
In the end, however, the pair agree that the biggest perpetrator of on-set chuckles was Anna Torv, who brought life to Tess in the first few episodes of the series. Pascal turns to Craig Mazin, telling him “you’re very lucky that you killed Tess.” Mazin agrees, saying they had to kill her off to make it through shooting days without excessive laughter.
Shooting “dramas and delays” or not, The Last of Us turned out to be a resounding success both critically and with the audience it is pulling in. Its second-to-last episode broke yet another record for the series.
The big finale to the first season of The Last of Us lands this Sunday on HBO Max.
