Joel’s voice in the video game ‘The Last of Us’ plays a disturbing character in the HBO series

On HBO Max they are approaching the end of the first season of their new phenomenon and, to celebrate it, nothing like paying homage to the original work and having the voice of Joel in the video game ‘The Last of Us’ to play a disturbing character in the series.

“It was a surprise. She really didn’t expect it“Troy Baker confesses in an interview published in GamesRadar+. “Neil came to me and said: I have a role for you.”

Troy Baker, who gave life to Joel in the Naughty Dog video game, appears in the eighth episode of the series as James, David’s right-hand man, the preacher of disturbing culinary tastes.

“I thought it was going to be like a clicker or something.“, he says, pointing to one of the types of infected from ‘The Last of Us’. “The challenge was, okay, how not to interpret him as a villain or, worse still, as a minion? Because that’s kind of the purpose it served in the game. So I immediately got down to business and thought about who this guy is. Every character in this story parallels or mirrors Joel and Ellie in some way.”

“And that’s where I see James,” he stresses. “James was not born into this situation. This probably happened to him very early, as a teenager, when he maybe he was in law enforcement or was going to be a policeman.. He learned to use a weapon, but he never thought that he would use it for this. So when the time comes he shoots the horse to stop the girl, but he’s never going to shoot the girl, he doesn’t dare do it and it has nothing to do with David. His morals don’t allow it.”

Regarding Pedro Pascal’s interpretation of a character we met with his voice, Baker is clear: “What I love is that I didn’t necessarily think of Pedro Pascal, but as soon as you mention the name, you’re like, ‘Okay, okay, I can imagine.’. And then you see him as Joel and you see Joel. And what he showed me was, thankfully, this character is bigger than any performance.”

“Not only Peter, but also Bella Ramsey and the rest of the cast prove that this story, these characters, are bigger than just one version.“, he points. “I hope this serves to publicize the hard work that video game people do. It’s not about adapting games into series, that’s a reductionist way of looking at it, because it’s about an extraordinary story that was presented in a medium that did phenomenally well. What matters is the union of that creator with another who is passionate about the game and trying to stay true to the original intent in a different medium.”

At the moment, we already know of 10 video game adaptations to TV series that are on the way and ‘The Last of Us’ is, according to its fans, one of the best series on HBO Max.