The filming of The Last of Us took place under a particular condition: the teams were prohibited from uttering a specific word.
Television adaptation of the famous video game of the same name, The Last of Us is the phenomenon of the moment. Created by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, the series takes up the plot of the video game work and follows the intense journey of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) through an America decimated following the mutation of a parasitic fungus. , Cordyceps.
During their journey, they will have to face many hostile survivors but also infected with this famous virus, sorts of living dead categorized according to the stage of their infection.
The Last of Us is not a zombie series
While it was presented as a zombie series due to the infected to the general public, The Last of Us was not described as such to the technical team. This was revealed by Eben Bolter, the series’ cinematographer, to The Credits. So much so that the word “zombie” was banned on set!
“We weren’t allowed to say the Z word on set”explained Eben Bolter, “It was like a forbidden word. We’re talking about Infected, period. We weren’t a zombie series. Sure, there’s tension and scares, but the show is really about our characters and the infected are an obstacle they have to face.”
The HBO series avoids many pitfalls and is totally different from other works of the genre such as The Walking Dead according to the director of photography: “There’s a lot of things The Last of Us isn’t. It’s not a cliched zombie movie, it’s not a Hollywood lighting model where everyone’s close-up is perfect. It’s a world of organic cinematic naturalism, and that’s something I could feel.”
Even though The Last of Us is more than a zombie series and is praised every episode for its emotion, humanity, and treatment of its characters, the fact remains that the care taken in the design Infected, such as the Claqueurs or the Colossus more recently, allows an impressive result.
The Last of Us series is available on Prime Video.