Pedro Pascal has been racking up rave reviews for his portrayal of Joel Miller in The Last of Us, but apparently, another star came very close to snatching up the role for the hit series. In a new interview with Jeffrey Pierce, who voiced Joel’s brother Tommy in the PlayStation game, HBO was looking at a future Marvel star instead of Pascal. Those casting choices gave Pierce a heads up that he probably wouldn’t be playing Tommy in the series, but he did land a role as Perry, the right-hand man to Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen.
Via The Direct:
So… I think initially they had talked to Mahershala Ali about playing Joel, which is an obvious cue that I’m not gonna play Tommy… And when they cast Pedro [Pascal], I knew like, yeah, that was certainly not going to happen regardless, I’m older than Pedro Pascal. So I was not under harboring any illusions about that, for sure.
Pierce also revealed that before HBO stepped in, The Last of Us was almost adapted into a movie, and for a while, there was talk of an animated series.
“There have been a couple of different iterations over time,” Pierce said. “There was a movie at one point. There was a motion-capture cinematic animated series at one point. And both of those are things that I thought, ‘I got a pretty good shot at being involved to some degree.’”
Ultimately, HBO brought in Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin to take a crack at a live-action series, and with the help of The Last of Us game creator Neil Druckmann, the two have pulled off the unthinkable by adapting a video game into a prestige TV drama.
(Via The Direct)