[This story contains spoilers for HBO‘s The Last of Us season two, episode two, “Through the Valley.”]
It all started when Emmy-winning director Mark Mylod made an offhand comment during an interview.
This is, at least, how The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin tells the story.
“I really wanted to get Mark on season one of The Last of Us, but he was working on Succession,” Mazin recalls. “Then he did the dumbest thing. Mark was doing one of those [For Your Consideration Emmy campaign] panels because obviously Succession was going to win everything. And the question they asked all these directors was: ‘If you could work with one person, who would it be?’ And he said, ‘Craig Mazin.’ And then I texted him: ‘You fucked up.’”
Mazin sent Mylod the script for the second episode of The Last of Us season two, “Through the Valley.”
“And then Mark was like, ‘You motherfucker. How can I resist?’”
Indeed. The second episode, which aired Sunday, had everything — an epic battle sequence, intimate drama, outdoor survival adventure and the brutal killing of a beloved character, Joel (Pedro Pascal).
“And I can’t tell you how much I love working with him and how grateful I am and how bummed out that he’s not going to be available to us anymore because he’s doing [HBO’s upcoming TV series version of] Harry Potter,” Mazin adds.
But this story isn’t Mazin’s interview (that interview, which analyzed the same episode from a writer’s perspective, was published last night). So let’s turn this over to Mylod with some questions about his work on this pivotal episode which will doubtless earn the director, at the very least, another Emmy nomination.
So Craig told me the story of sending you the script. What was your reaction to reading it?
My first reaction was a combination of jaw dropping and terror — because as soon as I read it, I knew I had to do it. But there’s an extraordinary responsibility with taking on writing of that quality and also obviously just being aware of the importance of that episode as a fulcrum in the story and killing off Pedro’s character. Though, obviously, killing beloved characters on television is becoming a bit of a habit [having also directed the rather deceptively titled Succession season four episode “Connor’s Wedding,” among others].
I’ve been a fan of Craig’s writing for so long and he has this capacity that the born storytellers have, to effortlessly combine the epic and the intimate — Chernobyl being a beautiful example of that. The minutia, those details of the human condition and our vulnerability, and our flaws; he’s so beautifully obsessed with those details.
For staging Abby killing Joel, it’s a sequence that’s pivotal and also technically complicated — you’re dealing with all these different actors in the room. What were the things that were most important to you that you wanted to do and, also, what did you want to avoid?
I wanted to avoid overt torture. I don’t have much interest in showing violence itself. But what motivated Abby to a place where she was doling such extraordinary violence — that is endlessly fascinating. So after establishing the brutality and, hopefully, exploring some of the context to why this young person was driven to such extraordinary violence and cruelty, I wanted to keep most of it off screen — and Craig was very much on the same page.
What was important to me was to do my best to deliver those extraordinary words on the page and to do that moment justice. That becomes about working with the actors and, in this case, protecting and supporting Kaitlyn and Bella who both had to go to make themselves incredibly vulnerable. A lot of this is blind instinct. It has to do with hopefully having an empathetic connection with the cast to feel when is the right time to really push for that Zen state. We always know when we’re there because I can’t speak after the take, or I’m just simply in tears.
Was there any specific decision an actor made on that day that surprised you? Something that you didn’t expect from your prep?
Yeah, I didn’t expect Bella to make me cry. I spent months thinking about that moment. During prep, I’m basically filming the scene in my head and that internal scene becomes clearer and comes more into focus as the process gets more evolved. So by the time we actually get to the day, I’m so prepped and I’ve run the moment so many times in my head. But Bella took it to a level where I was just destroyed. I can’t help connect on some level, as a parent, to seeing a young person in such pain when the performance is that good. It’s kind of difficult in the room to disassociate from that and think “it’s just acting” because it was transcending that.
And I felt the same with Kaitlyn. It’s been well documented that Kaitlyn is not the big physical character that Abby is in the game. So the ferocity and physicality and stamina she displayed over the multiple days that we were shooting … I’ve worked with actors where I would say, “We’re just seeing the side of your body [in this shot], so you don’t need to kill yourself on this take.” But then Kaitlyn would get into the moment and she would [go all out] anyway. It was the same when we were up on the mountain running from the Infected. I’d say, “You get past the lens here, it’s just the side of you running, you can take 10 percent off it.” But she couldn’t or wouldn’t in the moment. She was just an actor who would just give everything, which is my dream as the director.
Obviously, the episode has a massive action battle sequence as well, which I would think, if anything, would be even more grueling. Obviously, you worked on Game of Thrones, which had somewhat vaguely similar action epics. Was there anything from that experience that helped you prepare for this, or any specific goal you had for this?
HBO
Everything’s a learning curve in life, isn’t it? Game Thrones was a huge step up for me in terms of experiencing a big scale production. It was certainly the biggest thing I’d done at the time, and it was kind of a stepping stone on the way to The Last of Us. [Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] have similar instincts to Craig, which is why, I think, they’re good friends. They’re all interested in the human condition and then putting that onto a huge canvas. This particular episode was a step up from anything that I had done Game of Thrones in terms of physical production, scope and scale and ambition. I did feel more confident in how to express a vision and how to use [pre-visualization software] and how to work with the visual effects team, the stunt team, the movement coaches — all of that.
But my instinct has always been to focus on the emotion, focus on the story, focus on what makes any character vulnerable in any given moment. What are the flaws and what is the context for those flaws, and how is that relatable? That’s always the obsession as for me — why is somebody behaving like that? One of the joys of The Last of Us is it’s this perfect cocktail examining of the dark side of love, but with monsters. What’s better than that?
My favorite shot in the episode was when the Infected rise out of the snow. But wondering what shot you were most proud of?
I don’t know about a shot. But in terms of the big set pieces, working out how to get Kaitlyn sliding down the mountain, the Infected emerging from the snow, and then the chase off to the copper mine — we based that sequence very closely on the game. But just feeling that same visceral fear that I did when playing the game was very satisfying.
In terms of original content, the whole assault on Jackson — just the sheer challenge of that and the ambition of it and the intensity of it day after day — was hugely enjoyable and terrifying at the same time.
But what the scariest thing was by far — and, ultimately, the most satisfying thing for me — is that closeup on Bella the realized Joel is dead. That will stay with me forever — and hopefully with some of the audience, as well.
For more on “Through the Valley,” see our interview with showrunner Craig Mazin: “All relationships break.”