Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for The Last of Us episode 9
With a cast already full of familiar faces, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann break down the importance of The Last of Us show casting original Ellie actor Ashley Johnson. Well before Game of Thrones vet Bella Ramsey was scoring rave reviews for her turn as humanity’s savior, Johnson captured gamers’ hearts with her mo-cap and vocal performance as Ellie in The Last of Us games, winning two BAFTA and landing a TGA nomination from the first two games. Though recasting many of its characters, The Last of Us show has seen the return of multiple game actors, including Johnson in the season 1 finale.
In honor of the season 1 finale, Screen Rant attended a special The Last of Us press conference with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann exploring the HBO show. When asked about casting original Ellie actor Ashley Johnson, the duo explained why she was vital for the creative process in exploring her game character’s backstory in the show. See what Mazin and Druckmann shared below:
Craig Mazin: It was one of those moments when I would ask questions, and you were telling me things, and I was like, “Good!” But then, we both kind of simultaneously came to like, “Well, wait, Ashley!” That, to me, is one of the most fulfilling moments of the production of the show, because I’m a fan of the game, and I’m a fan of Ashley’s, and as I often say, “Troy Baker disappears into 1000 roles, I can’t believe he has all the different characters he plays, but Ashley sounds like Ellie, and Ellie sounds like Ashley.” So, she’s already this quasi-mythological creature to me, and to see her giving birth to herself, in a sense, and to create that genetic connection between her performance as Ellie and the origin story of Bella as Ellie was just profound. I think everybody just felt something beautiful about it, and it goes to something that I think is important, which is that Neil has these very deeply connected relationships with the people who have played these parts, whether it’s Troy or Ashley or Jeffrey Pierce or Merle Dandridge. You feel these things and that carrying through those relationships, carrying through to the show, and giving me space to make relationships with them too, you feel like there was a family and the family has grown, and man, it doesn’t always work like that in this business. It really doesn’t, it was honestly like a beautiful thing, and I am so proud of what Ashley did in that episode.
Neil Druckmann: Ashley’s incredible and I had no doubt that she would be incredible, because I’ve worked with her for so many years. This is one of the first times she did anything Last of Us that I wasn’t directing, so before that shoot, she called me and she was all nervous, she was like, “I don’t know how to do this, I wish you were here.” I think I told her, which I wasn’t lying, I feel totally confident saying this, I’m like, “Craig is there. Trust Craig. He’s been my co-parent now for all these months,” and I felt comfortable leaving the set for months at a time, because I saw the love he had for the material. I think that kind of gave her some ease to say, “Okay, someone else is watching me, someone else who really loves and cares about these characters,” and I told her, “Just do what you do, which is collaborate.” Because working with Ashley was such a collaboration that I had one understanding of who Ellie is when I was writing those scripts, and in working with her, I had a very different understanding. We were making the game, I was writing it live, there was an outline that we were adhering to, but again, after shooting those first few scenes with Ashley, she helped shape that character in so many ways. And that’s why she metaphorically gave birth to that character, and to have her literally do it in this scene just felt incredibly poetic and beautiful, despite how sad that that scene is.
Ashley Johnson Should Return For The Last of Us Season 2
Johnson is just one of many game actors who returned for The Last of Us show. One of the most notable to appear was that of original Joel actor Troy Baker, who starred in episode 8 as James, a senior member of the group of cannibals Ellie encounters while searching for medical supplies to save Joel from his life-threatening wound. Others who returned from the game include Merle Dandridge reprising her role as Fireflies leader Marlene, original Tommy actor Jeffrey Pierce playing new character Perry and Laura Bailey as one of the nurses in Ellie’s operating room.
Though Johnson’s Anna may have met her demise in the season 1 finale, it would seem a missed opportunity for her not to return in The Last of Us season 2. Episode 9 established that she and Marlene had a prior relationship to Ellie’s birth, making her death all the more tragic at the latter’s hands after having been bit by an infected. As emotional a moment it was for Marlene to have to kill her friend, it would be interesting to further explore their relationship through flashbacks in the next season.
Despite some hopes for this, however, it does seem unlikely for original Ellie actor Ashley Johnson to come back in The Last of Us season 2. Mazin and Druckmann have indicated that the show as a whole will largely stick to the events of the game, rather than including new material, and that season 2 will adapt the events of The Last of Us Part II, and with both Marlene and Anna’s deaths in season 1, there may not be an organic place to fit a further exploration of their backstory into.
