‘The Last of Us’ Showrunner Craig Mazin on Writing and Directing Season 3: “The Pages Are Happening”

Craig Mazin will be The Last of Us season three’s lone writer after co-creator Neil Druckmann and co-writer Halley Gross announced they were returning to video game studio Naughty Dog to develop a new title. (Druckmann co-developed the original Last of Us game and directed The Last of Us: Part II, which he co-wrote with Gross.) Emmy-winning writer-director Mazin (Chernobyl), who this year is nominated for outstanding drama series, spoke to THR about how the HBO thriller focusing on the survivors of a mass fungal infection that collapses modern-day society has helped level up the art of game-to-small-screen adaptations and whether he’s already busy writing the third season.

Video game adaptations are nothing new, but a TV spinoff earning Emmys is. Has The Last of Us proved that video game adaptations can hold their own? 

Yeah. I think that in the wake of The Last of Us, a ton of video game projects got greenlit. Fallout was already happening, and that was fantastic in its first season, and I’m really looking forward to the second season. There’s just this incredible wave coming. Like anything, when people first said, “Hey, let’s start adapting books into movies or television shows,” some of them are going to be great, some of them will stumble. But the idea that the industry has woken up to how rich some of that storytelling is and how wonderful it is to adapt is fantastic. 

Where are you with writing season three?

This is kind of my favorite time. It’s very quiet. It’s just sitting here with my wonderful ergonomic keyboard and clacking away. The pages are happening, and I get to be a monk for a while, which I love, and I just write. It’s the purest form of what I do. And then in just a couple of months or so, that happy time will start to be less quiet because we begin a very long prep period while I’m still writing, and then we begin to shoot while I’m still writing. In seasons one and two, I finished writing about six weeks before we started shooting the last episode. I don’t necessarily recommend this method other than to say this works for me, but it is insane.

Now that Druckmann and Gross are stepping away to focus on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, will the writing process change?

I don’t think it is, in the sense that I was pretty much a monk just writing in a room by myself for most of the time regardless. And I’ve gotten so much out of talking with them over the course of seasons one and two. When we made season two, we really were thinking about what comes after because you can’t really tell half of that story without thinking about what the whole story should be. So we really did get that work in. Neil’s always had a full-time job running Naughty Dog, so it’s always been me up in Canada [where the production is], and, ultimately, things are pretty much going to proceed as usual.

What were the most challenging scenes to shoot, logistics- and VFX-wise?

Episode two, the attack on Jackson, Wyoming, was an enormous undertaking for everybody. It was hard to write, it was hard to plan, it was hard to shoot. The prosthetics, the stunts and then the visual effects afterward were just massive. So we had [VFX houses] Weta and DNEG and about five other companies all working together to create all of the moments, and that was insane.

There were nine episodes in the first season but only seven in this one, and yet the pacing feels so different. Despite the fact that everything takes place in a span of three days, the attack on Jackson feels like it was ages ago. How does it compare to the game?

The attack on Jackson is not in the video game, so that’s new to our show. It’s one of those surprises that people who played the game would be like, “Oh!” But, yeah, the characters have gone through quite a bit, but the way we use time, it’s almost like so much of season two is really about three days, and I love being able to focus in on a period of time. 

The Last of Us subreddit is quite a busy place. How closely do you keep track of the chatter and are there responses that surprise you? 

I don’t look at them, so I don’t know. Problem solved! I don’t go on Reddit. I mean, I’m always playing video games; I’m playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered right now. Sometimes I’ll go on Reddit when I’m like, “What is the best bow for an archer build?” That’s about as much Redditing as I do.

What lessons did you learn from Chernobyl that you brought with you to The Last of Us?

For starters, I learned how much attention to detail matters. [What] we showed in Chernobyl was really born out of a desire to be as respectful as possible to the culture. We were telling a story that impacted people who are still alive, who lost people. 

I just had a sense that stories that have been told in the West about the Soviet Union were not accurate, and why not go for as real, real, real as you can? That approach to being as grounded as we can, especially in a genre story where there are monsters, is something that I brought forward. The style of shooting is something I pulled through — and I say it every time — but everything I ever learned about directing, I learned by watching Johan Renck direct Chernobyl. I really internalized the way that he used multiple cameras as an artistic choice, as opposed to just [shoot] faster. 

The other thing that I learned from Chernobyl was how important it was for the people who were at the creative helm to pay as much attention to visual effects as they do to anything else that you don’t. In your mind, you think, “I’ll just send this away, it’ll come back, I’ll put it in the show.” It doesn’t work like that at all. It is almost like doing takes with an actor: “Great, now let’s try this. Great, let’s try this.” And then, “Ah, there it is.” And that process of working through visual effects is exhausting and exhaustive for everybody, but I think what we end up getting is pretty remarkable, and it makes the show better. I just believe that visual effects are beyond integral to the success of a show like ours.

Before Chernobyl, you worked on The Hangover films. How much are you itching to get back to comedy?

Not strong itches. I mean, I spent a long time doing comedy, and even though I’ve been doing drama — it’s been about five, six years. Prior to that, it was like 25 years of comedy. Look, I think I’ve told all the jokes. I think my comedy is used up. I like having moments. I like having moments inside of drama. And I love working with comedic actors in dramatic roles because we can find comedy in there. So you do a scene where you’ve got Catherine O’Hara and she has this very heavy scene with therapy and all the rest, but still we find the funny in it because, of course, we do. But going back to pure comedy, I think probably, no, I don’t think so.

Do you envision directing the first episode of TLOU season three as you’ve done with the first two seasons?

Yeah. Honestly, I’d love to direct more, but the problem is just logistics. I like to direct the first episode because you can prep the whole season. There are a lot of characters that get cast and there are a lot of decisions that get made about environments, so you can sort of prep a lot of the season by prepping and directing the first episode. As we’re going along, you have to prep the other episodes. We have directors alternating, and I’m on set doing — I don’t know what you’d call it — “showrunner QC” sounds insulting to our directors, who are amazing. But [I’m] just making sure everything is fitting together tonally. So it’s hard for me to then go prep something while I’m also still writing, but we’ll see if I can get away with [directing] more than one.

Are more people lining up for roles now that The Last of Us has more Emmy nods?

It’s not quite like people knocking on your door as much as I think after season one. There may have been actors who were unaware of the video game or the show, but what they were aware of was that we were filling up those guest actor Emmy categories pretty extensively. We had fewer actual guest actors in season two, but we’ve still got Jeffrey Wright, Joey Pantoliano, Kaitlyn Dever and Catherine O’Hara, [who] all got nominated [for best guest acting in a drama series]. So when we pull people in, I think at least in the community, there’s an understanding they’re going to get something juicy to do. They’re not glorified day players. We try and create these little tiny, impactful stories with really, really good actors. So as we head into season three, I hope that we’ll see a couple of more fascinating additions like that. 

For me, it’s so much fun to [say], “Hey, let’s just get Melanie Lynskey, why don’t we?” And to discover brilliant new talent, Keivonn Montreal Woodard, who had never acted before, and there he is getting an Emmy nomination for season one — that was just incredible. And Storm Reid won — obviously, she wasn’t new, but it was giving actors these interesting things to do that maybe they don’t normally get to do. Nick Offerman, who also won, normally doesn’t get to play that guy. And I love doing that.

Who’s on your wish list for actors to write for?

My wishlist is Meryl Streep. I’ve always had [her] on my wishlist since I started in this business. I’ve never worked with her, but I met her when I was at the Golden Globes and I ran into somebody who was there with her. We were talking, and he was like, “Do you want to meet Meryl? She’s just around the corner. She’s going to walk over.” And I was like, “I would love to meet Meryl Streep. Yes!” 

So she comes over and he [introduces us]. And I shook her hand and I went, “Pffff. You know!” [Raises hands] And she was like, “Yeah, I know.” I wanted to say, “Oh my God! I love you in this [and] this!” But I just figured, everyone always says that. I’m just going to package it into just, “Insert here, me just freaking out.” And she was really nice and seemed to accept that I was freaking out. So anyway, I short-handed it to, “You know!”

I have not spoken to Meryl Streep, I have not written anything for her — yet — but one day, one day! 

You just announced you and podcast co-host John August are releasing a book based on ScriptNotes. Will Neil and Halley ever join the pod guests?

Neil and I have done at this point, 16 podcasts for the show and Halley’s been on, so that’s sort of that. ScriptNotes, the show has been going on forever. It was just hardcore screenwriting nerds, and it sort of expanded a bit. And we’ll get pitches from publicity people like, “Hey, would you like this person or this person?” But John and I have always felt we will bring guests on the show, but mostly we’re just keeping it a non-guest show so that it doesn’t turn into a talk show. 

You got a tattoo of Ellie’s switchblade to commemorate The Last of Us’ success. Any plans to get any more show-inspired ink?

I don’t have a specific plan, but I’m thinking maybe when it’s over. The other possibility is that I go for a tattoo-per-show method, so I only have the one. I may say, “OK, this is my Last of Us tattoo, now let’s see what comes next, and maybe that’ll be the next one,” but no plans yet. “No ragrets!”

Since the second season only covered the first half of the second video game, what will the pacing and episode count be like for this next installment and beyond?

We’re kind of fiddling around with that — it’s a little bit of a trade secret at the moment. But I will say that season three will be longer than season two. Season three will be more on par with season one. More bang for the buck.