This weekend, HBO’s The Last of Us delivered a gripping adaptation of one of the most important chapters from Naughty Dog’s game. It also introduced us to the haunting antagonist David (Scott Shepherd), alongside James, played by Troy Baker.
Baker is intrinsically tied to The Last of Us. He’s provided the masterful voice of Joel in the game alongside motion capture. Pedro Pascal now helms the role of Joel in the series adaption. However, Baker was cast as David’s secondhand man in the episode titled “When We Are in Need.”
Baker recently sat down with Daily Hive for a roundtable interview where he recounted his time spent in Calgary, Alberta. “They were very prepared and to be able to find the sound stages that they shot at and be able to literally take that over like they did… all of the locations that we found within Calgary to be able to shoot… it was surprising how much they could be completely transformed,” he said.
Over the season, Alberta has been shown to be transformed to create many backdrops for this post-apocalyptic tale. For instance, the small town of Canmore was turned into the blooming community of Jackson. Last week’s episode also used a real abandoned mall in Calgary.
Throughout the interview, Baker states what many Canadians already know: Calgary is a marvel to look at. Now, it’s put in the spotlight on one of HBO’s most popular series to date. “Calgary provided this beautiful landscape — inside the city and far outside of it,” Baker said to Daily Hive.
This week’s episode used Alberta’s Waterton Park for David’s community in this week’s episode. The extent of the area isn’t shown in full. However, there are many exterior shots showing the snowy streets. It was then up to production to make the area feel like a world living in the age of the Cordyceps virus. “Waterton is the town where we shot a lot of our episodes. It’s a far cry away from Calgary but the landscape that it provided really set the stage and you could believe that this was what the world could look like absent of civilization.”
HBO’s The Last of Us is barrelling toward its season finale on March 12th. Canadian viewers can catch up on the season, and see Alberta’s beauty captured on screen, via Crave.
Image credit: HBO
Source: Daily Hive
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