I can’t wait to post these pictures this weekend to be like, “This is what I went through!” They called it a bladder of blood. To the neck! I give a lot of credit to our special effects team. And that’s not because David said “Don’t kill the girl.” It’s because he can’t bring himself to kill somebody.Īnd then you get a meat cleaver to the neck. That’s something that James does not have - if you look, he will shoot the horse to stop Ellie from going further, but when it comes to shooting and killing her, he can’t do it. More importantly, as David says, Ellie has a violent heart. Here comes Ellie, who is clearly capable, resourceful and brilliant. It’s better to be the right hand of the devil than on the wrong side of him. He wants to be David’s right-hand man, because he recognizes that David is the devil. Both Bella and Ellie are incredibly fierce, adept, talented, powerful people. What Bella quickly teaches you, especially in this episode, is that there’s absolutely no protection needed. Here’s what’s so cool about Bella : From my perspective, I’ve had such a dear relationship with Ashley Johnson and with the character of Ellie for so long, that I naturally want to assume that role. That was probably my biggest challenge, not being in protector mode for Ellie. What was it like being on the other side and going after her? When you played Joel in the game, he was such a fierce protector of Ellie, who was played by Ashley Johnson. And if I can make you care about him a little bit, that makes you hate him even more. It’s a very short-lived story! So what I wanted to do was find some level of truth to him and empathy. So how do I make this guy not a villain? And to me, we’re all the heroes of our own story.

This is something that, while I’ve done on-camera before, it still is like, how does this translate? Can I do this? And I was lovingly guided through not only by Neil and Craig, but everybody on our cast, everyone in our crew that just worked so hard for this.įor me, the challenge was apparent: I don’t want to play a villain. I’ve gotten very adept to walking onto a performance capture stage and acting inside of that environment boxing in that ring, if you will. I got this opportunity to challenge myself. And then I got the script, and I was like, “Oh, there’s meat here.” Pardon the pun. I thought I was gonna get a walk-on role. Neil came to me like, “Dude, we’ve got a role for you” I’m like, “No shit!” He said, “Dude, you get to play James!” And I’m like, “Oh my God, dude…who is James?” And it was like, “Oh, it’s buddy boy! Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.” And I’ve been graciously welcomed now to the table of this extended family that we now have. When did you first find out you’d be part of the series, and how did you feel about being cast as James?

Joel last of us model