The Last of Us is poised to become one of HBO's biggest original series of the year, adapting the universally acclaimed video game series of the same name created by Neil Druckmann, with Druckmann co-creating the television series with Craig Mazin. The series will be accompanied by an official companion podcast hosted by Troy Baker, who played protagonist Joel Miller in the video games and appears in the television series in a different role, dissecting each of the episodes with Mazin and Druckmann. Poring over every detail and heartbreaking narrative moment, the podcast is the perfect complement to the series as the show premieres Jan. 15 on HBO.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Troy Baker revealed the origins of developing a companion podcast. He observed how witnessing the creation of the television series, with Pedro Pascal playing Joel, has changed his perspective on The Last of Us and Joel and also teased what fans can expect as the post-apocalyptic horror series arrives on HBO.

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Ellie and Joel in HBO Max's The Last of US

CBR: Troy, you and The Last of Us have a longstanding connection, but how did the possibility to host this companion podcast series come about?

Troy Baker: I was walking through the airport, as I am oft found to do, and Craig Mazin texted me and goes, "Can I talk to you about something?" I said sure, and he calls me and says, "I have this crazy idea. I did this companion podcast for Watchmen, and it was a lot of fun. I want to do a companion podcast for The Last of Us." I was like, "You should absolutely do this!" and he said, "It would be me and Neil," and I went, "That's an awesome insight into the show!" Then he went, "I want you to host." I was like, "Say what?!" [laughs]

That's kind of like my entire career, with people going, "I'm going to put you in this ridiculous situation," and me either being smart enough, dumb enough, brave enough or a combination of the three to say yes. The more I started thinking about it, and we had this wonderful conversation, we were like, "What do we want this podcast to look like?" because everybody wants to start a podcast. The really good ones have a very specific target, not in a demographic but in the intention behind it. Even though some of my favorite podcasts meander, seemingly, they're always very organic conversations. The thing that Neil, Craig, and myself realized is that the conversations we have, when we text, are on the phone, or in-person on set, those are conversations we find incredibly compelling, and we're hoping people find [them] interesting as flies on the wall as well.

What makes this podcast unique to me more than any other podcast is that you have three disparate people talking about the same thing with three completely different perspectives. Neil comes at this as the creator, someone who has sat with this for a decade and watched it grow, not only as just an idea but into a playable demo, into a game, into one of the most successful games that has ever been made, into potentially a movie and now --I've been reading press about this coming out, and it's one of largest shows HBO has ever done.

Then you have Craig, who's coming to this as a fan of that game and someone who has been in the system for so long and become such a passionate and respected creator and writer. Now, he's at the helm of this side-by-side with Neil. Then you've got me, who's coming to this as an actor who has watched this as something that started off, from my perspective, as something that was just on the page to then something that was on the stage and now on the screen in a different way and being done by different actors. Those are three really cool different lenses by which we're all viewing the same thing, and the conversations, they have to cut them down because we talk so much. [laughs] It's something that all three of us are so passionate about. I think people are really going to find these conversations not only exciting and informative but really compelling and hopefully very revealing.

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Joel and Tommy hug in The Last of Us

You've known Neil and Craig for a while now, but how was this experience of sitting down with them change how you saw The Last of Us and how you see their creative process?

That was the number [one] goal I had. When Neil first came to me and said, "There's talk about turning this into a movie." I said, "Why? We've already done it!" That was the challenge -- can this exist in a different medium? Does the story that we helped craft become something that could stand on its own in any form, or can it only be told as a game? My goal, personally, was always, whoever they cast as Joel, I just want them to teach me something new about the character that I didn't know -- pull up some board that I didn't explore, show me something that I missed. Dude, if Pedro [Pascal] didn't do that and more, and so did Bella [Ramsey], and it's not just the performances.

I'm going through these episodes, I could dissect each of them -- and we do in this podcast, dissecting each of these episodes down to their minutia, and then we zoom back out to the macro. There are versions of scenes that are so familiar to me that, in a lot of ways, both Craig and Neil have turned on their head and [asked], "What if we look at it like this?" I came to this realization last night that this isn't an either/or. It's not, "If you won't play the game, maybe you'll watch the show" or "If you don't like the show, you'll still have the game." These things don't exist in competition with each other. They exist as a complement to each other. It's a yes-and; play the game and watch the show and get two different versions of the same scene, two different tellings of the same story from multiple different perspectives. That, to me, is what makes this unique. It's not an adaptation. We surpassed that a long time ago. This is an evolution. This is something far beyond taking something and translating it to the next.

Speaking specifically to their process, I've always been the guy that, when I get on set, I walk over to the audio and go, "What is that?" and walk over to the weapon master and go, "Can you teach me something?" and walk over to the stunt team and go, "I want to learn how to do this?" If I don't need anything else but learn from every job, that's a win. I always want to know from Craig, "Why are [you] doing this? Why did you make this switch? Who hurt you?" [laughs] He decided to make this choice. This threads back into the podcast and the whole ethos of it, but Craig's thing is, "What are they thinking? What are they feeling?" and to take that and feel that, whether that's him as a writer or a showrunner or him telling his actors what they're thinking and feeling and then to think and feel that [while acting]; it's almost that binary.

Then you have Neil, who masterfully demonstrated what it was like to go from the big spectacle of a game like Uncharted, where everything is a showcase and big, crashing, and tumbling cacophony of sight and sound to the distillation of what the scene is about, with what's the least amount he can write about or that can be said in the least amount of time in this moment that can raise the tension of this scene. That, to me, is what we do with this podcast. It's the distillation of this process --what do we think about this scene, how does it make us feel, and then we talk about it.

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The-Last-of-Us-Trailer-Joel-Ellie

Playing The Last of Us games was always intense, and that intensity carries over to the show. I feel like the podcast is a way for audiences to commiserate over what they just saw.

100%! It never ends with somebody walking off in the sunset, and a beautiful music cue comes up. [laughs] Last night, I was watching this with my wife, and we were watching the fifth episode. We're sitting there, and it fades to black, and that beautiful music, "Fuel to Fire" by Agnes Obel, comes up. There's this 10-15 second pause of just sitting there in that almost post-coital reverie of what just happened, and my wife was the first one to speak, and she just exclaims out loud, "Fuck!" [laughs]

There's always that moment in every episode where you see it coming. What Craig and Neil both do masterfully [is] they don't telegraph where that dropoff is going to happen. It only happens right when it's too late to stop, and then you go over the edge. I don't know if you've ever sky-dived before, but there's this moment right before you go out when every cell of your being at a very primal level is telling you, "Don't do this!" [laughs] But then there's this active decision where you just nudge yourself forward, and you're out, and you fall.

That is what I love about every one of these episodes. There's a moment where I have to consciously go, "I'm on the ride." It lovingly lets me do that, and it always catches me, that's the other thing. Being able to take to Craig and Neil, sometimes we go very inside baseball, I'm not going to lie to you. For the people who are fans of how things are made and the grinding of the gears, that's going to titillate those senses.

For people who watch very controversial scenes in given episodes and pound their fists down on the table and go, "Why did you do that?!" that's why this podcast exists, to unpack that. We don't shy away from those questions. We dive in and want to talk about that. If there is something that the audience is going to be wrestling with, this is the ring in which we're going to wrestle with it together. There is 100% a sense of community and commiseration with this podcast.

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Marlene from HBO's The Last of Us

You've known and been working with Neil longer than Craig. How has it been working with Craig, the guy that created Chernobyl, on the show and this podcast?

Dude, it's been so much fun. Craig is one of those people that could be into stamp-collecting and would convert me through his passionate proselytizing into going, "Stamp-collecting is the coolest thing. I don't know how I never did it before!" He's so consumed with this story and the pursuit of excellence in telling it that's infectious. I've watched Chernobyl, and some people think that's just where Craig popped up without realizing the history that he has with writing. This guy has been doing this forever. I started finding out more about him and followed him on Twitter, and he followed me back. He was like, "I'm a huge fan of yours," and I was like, "I'm a huge fan of you!" We were like two eighth graders at a dance, trying to figure out how we get on the dance floor for a while. [laughs]

Once we found out he was going to be the person who was going to be at the helm with Neil on this for the show, then those conversations became more in-depth, and it became more me offering my support. My involvement in the show was never guaranteed. It wasn't part of my deal that I would get to be a part of this. If there was a spot for me that they felt that I was a good fit for, great; otherwise, I'm happy to sit on the sidelines with everybody else and cheer louder than anybody else. The fact that I got to be a part of the show in a very cool way was a bonus for me. If I could just visit the set, that was all I wanted to see.

Being on set and seeing how large that cast and crew were, how hard they all were working in some of the worst conditions -- everyone was safe, but keep in mind, we were still shooting this in the middle of COVID, so everyone has to stay healthy. We're shooting in Calgary, Canada -- not known as a tropical location! [laughs] It was cold, and we're shooting in winter into February. You have that as another factor that all these people are working through, and you realize that the reason they're all doing it is not because of the paycheck but because of the passion. Every day there were people who came up to me and said, "I don't want to cross lines or anything, but I want to let you know how much the game meant to me and how much I loved your performance. Can I tell you my story from The Last of Us?" Everybody had that, from our A camera operator to our wardrobe to our weapons master.

All of these people were here working on this show because they were fans, and that is a compelling thing we talk about on the podcast. When you talk about the camera language that we use and how each thing is shot, in some of the most difficult shots I've ever seen, you find out Neil, one of the camera operators, is literally running backwards as he's chasing into camera. That's passion, and that's something compelling to talk about. It's those aspects of the show that I can't wait for people to see as well because there is a lot of stuff that is very subtly done and not in your face. The heart is definitely on display with this show, but the way that they did things and the subtlety and ways they're communicating scenes -- once people hear us discuss it on the podcast, [they'll] want to go back and watch that. It's definitely something I think will prime people for a second or third viewing.

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Tess and Ellie in The Last of Us

There is an incredibly high production value to this show. After imagining these worlds while doing motion capture, how was it to visit these worlds on set and see them made into literal blood, flesh, and bone?

Neil tells this story of when he was on a Zoom call while he was on set, directing his episode, and he literally did it from Sarah's bedroom, and people were freaking out. What I love is there's a similarity between world art with someone who works at Naughty Dog or is involved in any game, and their job is to polish the pixels on this one specific part of a room that you may walk into or may not. They will commit their life to that for several months, making sure it's perfect just in the off-chance that someone goes over there and investigates. The payoff is when somebody does and goes, "Oh my gosh, do you see this thing?!"

It's the responsibility of the director and the showrunner to be able to be the camera, and that's what makes it two completely different experiences. If I'm on the sticks for the game, I control where Joel or Ellie goes. When I'm watching this, I'm subject to where the director wants me to look, but the people on the production crew who built these sets, the same attention to detail went into every single facet whether it was in that scene or not. As an actor, when you walk on set, you are immediately immersed into it, of course. It's the difference between riding English or riding Western because, when you're riding Western, that saddle just holds you up, and it's easy to sit into. With English, you've got to work for it, but either way, you've still got to ride that horse.

That's one of the differences and also one of the beauties and similarities between these two mediums. One is theater of the mind, and one will completely immerse you inside of this. The credit goes to Craig, Neil, and everyone on the production staff for being able to replicate to such an incredibly authentic and exquisite detail some of the most intricate and interesting facets of this world.

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The Last of Us Marlene and her right hand

Troy, we've been looking back and honoring the life and work of Kevin Conroy over at CBR. As someone who was friends and colleagues with him, I wanted to know if you wanted to share any words about him.

I've been thinking about him so much and in such a beautiful way. That, to me, is perhaps his greatest legacy -- the people that were fortunate enough to spend any amount of time with him, that indelible fingerprint that he has left on their lives. You hear that phrase "never meet your heroes," and it's not true -- just get better heroes. There were none greater than Kevin. He was the most warm, kind, caring, consummate storyteller. Some of my favorite stories with Kevin are sitting in a green room or a restaurant and just listening to him tell tales of being in New York and being in a soap opera and also in this theater production, going back and forth and being exhausted.

He did this wonderful thing where he would tell a joke, pause, and then let out this hearty laugh. He almost did it in a way where, if you ever saw Bruce Wayne in The Animated Series laugh, they must have modeled it after his laugh because it was so one-to-one. I'm grateful for the moments that I got to have with Kevin and that I got to meet one of my heroes. Not only do I have the benefit of being able to go back through the entire catalog of his work and being able to revisit an old friend, but I can look back at the fondest memories that I have and revisit them as well.

I had read somewhere that watching Pedro Pascal play Joel made you want to change up your own approach to the character. Was there anything specific that changed your perspective on this character you've known quite intimately?

Just watching somebody else do something that I'm very familiar with. The goal is always not for me to create something that I can hold on to but something that I can create and comfortably let go of. It's the same thing as this show not being an adaptation but an evolution -- Pedro's performance is not mimicking something that's already there. It's still in the pond, and it's comforting in such a beautifully affirming way that we made something that can stand on its own two feet.

I have a four-year-old boy who's almost five. We moved into our house two years ago, and it's a two-story house with stairs. My heart stops every time he gets close to these stairs. It's been this thing for the past couple of weeks where my wife and I are downstairs in the kitchen having a cup of coffee, and all of a sudden, we just hear those little feet. He comes into the room all by himself, and to him, he didn't really do anything that was all that great, but to us, we were floored. It can be something that small, seemingly insignificant, and pedestrian that I realize is wonderful, beautiful evidence of growth.

That is what Pedro shows me in every episode, that I thought this is the way it can be and could be, and then I look at it and go, "I never thought of it that way." If there's a specific example, I don't have one. The beauty is everyone in every episode shows me something new, and every episode blows my expectations out of the water.

Created by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckman, The Last of Us premieres Jan. 15 at 9pm ET/PT on HBO. The companion podcast series hosted by Troy Baker has new episodes released alongside the show as its first season progresses.