Award-winning writer-directors Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin joined the Deadline FYC House event on Friday to discuss their HBO record-breaking drama, The Last of Us.
Based on the video game series co-created by Druckmann, the TV series takes place two decades after modern civilization collapsed from exposure to a deadly mutable fungus. The story follows a hardened survivor named Joel (Pedro Pascal), hired to smuggle Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone in hopes of uncovering the mystery—and potential cure for humanity—behind her immunity.
Since the show’s January debut, The Last of Us has continued to set records for both HBO and HBO Max. For the first four weeks, its audience grew consecutively larger after first amassing 4.7 million viewers just from its premiere episode alone, making it the largest same-day debut after House of the Dragon.
In gathering a staggering 8.2 million same-day viewers for the season finale, The Last of Us also holds the current title of attaining the largest same-day audience. (Not to mention, it became the most-watched show in history on HBO Max in both Latin America and Europe.)
On the red carpet, Druckmann reflected on the aftermath of the first season’s successful run. “My life has been insane. I don’t know how I ended up here,” he said. “This [concept] started as a small student project, turned into a video game, and now it’s this incredible TV show. I’m just incredibly grateful to be part of this journey.”
Considering the upcoming and highly anticipated season two, Druckmann explained the pressures of exceeding fan expectations and trying not to psyche himself out too much during the current production.
“There was a lot of self-imposed pressure because The Last of Us means so much to me, and the rest of the developers at Naughty Dog that made the game and want to make sure we got [the show] right, and I feel like we did,” he said. “We loved what we made. We’re very proud of it. Fans have responded very positively to it. So, for us now, it’s important to replicate the process, how Craig and I work, and how we’re going to put the show together. There’s some learnings and things that I feel we can make it even better going into season two, but the pressure is usually self-imposed more from the outside, so I want to make sure we end up with something that, again, we’re proud of and does justice to the game that came before it.”
Mazin opened up about the duo’s approach to season two, boasting that though the pair might stray a bit more from the original source material, their overall method would remain the same.
“From a process point of view, Neil and I are pretty much in agreement that we’re not changing a damn thing,” he said. “I mean, our process worked. We worked really well together. We adapted where we wanted to adapt, how we wanted to adapt. We stayed close to the material. Sometimes we drifted away from the material, but that process worked great. So, we’re not changing that process at all. We are going to [continue to] push ourselves in all sorts of ways.”
The showrunner also emphasized the process of the grueling physicality expected from its series leads and other recurring actors. “It’s our actors who are going to have to push themselves even more. As they age up, as time has passed, what does that mean to them physically in their bodies?” he said. “And how do they move, and how do they fight? And what happens as the world gets more and more physical and dangerous?”
Nevertheless, under the pressure of trying to build another harrowing season of television, Mazin mentioned that the team was committed to pushing the boundaries. “We’re certainly also going to push the technology that we use forward. We learned so much, particularly in regard to the infected and how to better deliver scenes with them. So, we’re just going to keep moving the bar up and up and up. That’s kind of our call to arms.”