The Last of Us American TV series star: I've never played a game and don't want to "imitate" Joel

Pedro Pascal, the actor who plays the protagonist Joel Miller in the live-action series The Last of Us, has said he has never played the game, in part because he doesn't want to have the urge to "imitate" Joel when playing the role.

In a new interview with GQ, Pascal was asked about his familiarity with The Last of Us games. He said he initially tried to play the game (presumably the first one), but ended up giving the controller to his nephew after realizing he didn't have the "necessary skills" to complete it.

Pascal said he watched his nephew play for a while back in the day, but other than that, he didn't seem to have watched much of the game. The actor said this was because he didn't want to get too close to the characters in the game when filming the live-action version of the series.

“I thought Joel was very impressive — I thought the whole game was a visually stunning experience. And then I started to worry that I was trying to emulate too much, which I think might be right in some cases but might be a mistake in other cases. So I just wanted to keep a healthy distance and let [series co-writers] Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have more control over that.”

Pascal could only vaguely describe the script in terms of the similarities between the show and the game, describing the live-action adaptation as "a very, very creative way to both respect what's important and preserve what's most iconic about the game experience." He also added that the show includes "something you wouldn't necessarily predict." He also compared the show to The Mandalorian, believing that the two also have similarities in this regard.

At present, no trailer has been released for the series, and it is speculated that it will be available on the HBO Max streaming platform at the end of 2022.