When The Last of Us – the smash hit series about a post-apocalyptic society ravaged by a mass fungal infection – arrived on our screens in 2023, the real world was emerging from a pandemic.
Part of the show’s strength is its ability “to see human relationships under crisis and in pain, and intelligently draw political allegory, societal allegory, and base it off the world we’re living in”, said the actor, who plays lead character Joel.
“Storytelling is cathartic in so many ways … I think there’s a very healthy and sometimes sick pleasure in that kind of catharsis – in a safe space,” he said.
In the first season, smuggler Joel is forced to take teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey) – seemingly the one human immune to the deadly cordyceps fungus – with him as he crosses the United States seeking his brother.