The Last of Us is an award-winning online game thought-about by many to be one of many strongest story-driven video games ever. The Last of Us follows Joel, a hardened smuggler, as he’s tasked with defending and bringing fourteen-year-old Ellie throughout a post-apocalyptic America. following a devastating fungal pandemic that worn out a lot of the inhabitants. The Last of Us has garnered acclaim from critics and has expanded right into a sequel recreation, comics, and now a tv sequence.
Merle Dandridge has been part of The Last of Us because it first debuted in 2013. She performs Marlene, chief of the Fireflies, a bunch of revolutionaries combating in opposition to the oppressive navy regime that took management after the outbreak. Marlene additionally shares a reference to Ellie. While Dandridge shouldn’t be the one actor from the sport concerned within the sequence, she is the one one reprising her unique function.
Screen Rant and several other different media retailers spoke with Dandridge about reprising her function as Marlene from The Last of Us online game within the new HBO sequence. Dandridge shared the way it feels to play this character for ten years throughout totally different mediums and talked about working with Pedro Pascal, Neil Druckmann, and Craig Mazin on The Last of Us.
10 years in the past, you get the decision to voice a personality in a online game. Did you ever for a second assume you’d really get to play that function in live-action? Tell us the way it all went down?
Merle Dandridge: I do know. I really feel singularly fortunate on this specific iteration that I get to see Marlene in 4 totally different varieties. That over the course of the ten years I really feel as if I’ve obtained a possibility to mature as an artist, mature into the function, and actually get to know her on a deeper, extra inherent stage. But after I first obtained the decision to audition for the sport, I went in, and I auditioned reverse Troy Baker who was taking part in Joel. And Neil was the opposite individual within the room.
I instantly felt like I discovered my tribe. I felt like, “Oh, these are my people. One, they get me. I get, this material is fantastic. I feel like there’s so much to chew on.” And I used to be proper. 10 years later, there’s nonetheless a lot to chew on. When it even grew to become a chance that an HBO sequence was within the works, after all my spirit leaned towards, “Oh man, that would be really cool,” however with little or no expectation round it. When I did get the decision from Neil and he stated, “I’d like to offer you the role of Marlene for yet another time,” it was an absolute astonishing delight.
Screen Rant: It has been 10 years since taking part in the function of Marlene. What shocked you essentially the most about reprising your function on this new kind for tv?
Merle Dandridge: I feel I used to be every day shocked as a result of I had beforehand solely lived in my creativeness so far as the world was involved. I had by no means tangibly been in a position to work together with the partitions, really feel the dankness of the room, really feel the heaviness and despair of the setting, and see the damage and tear on everybody round me due to the extraordinary costuming and make-up design, the breakdown of the units of the costumes of the characters, the wigs, every little thing was a sensory overload to my system for any individual who was already very vibrantly alive and linked and having all of my feelers out on this world anyway, to see them like that and to step into that world was wild.
And then having solely been within the MoCap swimsuit as Marlene, to step into these garments and to maneuver round in these boots, to hold the weapons. And, gosh, on the fly to have the ability to load these weapons, I used to be like, “This is not my strong suit, but it better be.” All of these issues that weren’t simply blocks of wooden, to virtually take possession of being a soldier and the chief of a military.
It was one thing that I used to be like, “Okay, take a deep breath, jump over this cliff, girl. Just do it. You know who she is, you know what she’s about.” The solely factor is to get used to the sensible bits. And so there was just a little little bit of messing with the clutch just a little bit and cease and go. And then I used to be off to the races.
Talk to me just a little bit about how Craig and Neil let the arc that you simply had been going to be taking part in, and the way a lot it deviates or it goes extra in-depth than you anticipated from what you knew about her within the recreation.
Merle Dandridge: I feel I used to be every day shocked as a result of I had beforehand solely lived in my creativeness so far as the world was involved. I had by no means tangibly been in a position to work together with the partitions, really feel the dankness of the room, really feel the heaviness and despair of the setting, and see the damage and tear on everybody round me due to the extraordinary costuming and make-up design, the breakdown of the units of the costumes of the characters, the wigs, every little thing was a sensory overload to my system for any individual who was already very vibrantly alive and linked and having all of my feelers out on this world anyway, to see them like that and to step into that world was wild.
And then having solely been within the MoCap swimsuit as Marlene, to step into these garments and to maneuver round in these boots, to hold the weapons. And, gosh, on the fly to have the ability to load these weapons, I used to be like, “This is not my strong suit, but it better be.” All of these issues that weren’t simply blocks of wooden, to virtually take possession of being a soldier and the chief of a military.
It was one thing that I used to be like, “Okay, take a deep breath, jump over this cliff, girl. Just do it. You know who she is, you know what she’s about.” The solely factor is to get used to the sensible bits. And so there was just a little little bit of messing with the clutch just a little bit and cease and go. And then I used to be off to the races.
The present has much less motion than you may anticipate from one thing primarily based on this recreation. From your perspective, had been you shocked by that method? Were you anticipating to have extra motion sequences if you began?
We already know that Pedro Pascal’s a hell of an actor, however when do you know filming that he’s positively Joel? Was there any specific level the place you knew that, “Hey, there’s chemistry here, this is really going to work?”
You’ve been with the sequence for therefore lengthy. What shocked you essentially the most about what the present is doing to tell apart itself from the video games?