The Last of Us crew reveals behind-the-scenes word 'banned' on set

Virgin Radio

16 Feb 2023, 13:06

Can you guess the one word that wasn't allowed on set of HBO’s The Last of Us? Cinematographer, Eben Bolter, who shot four episodes of the first season has revealed the specific word banned during filming — and, surprisingly, it's 'zombie'.

Speaking about the video game adaptation set in the post-apocalyptic world, Bolter told The Credits: “We weren’t allowed to say the Z word on set. It was like a banned word. They were the Infected. We weren’t a zombie show. Of course, there’s tension building and jump scares, but the show’s really about our characters; The Infected are an obstacle they have to deal with.”

The cinematographer explained about the series based on Naughty Dog’s 2013 video game: “There’s a lot of things The Last of Us is not. It’s not a cliché zombie movie, it’s not Hollywood backlit where everyone’s close-up is perfect. It’s a world of organic cinematic naturalism, and that’s something I could just feel.

"For example in Episode Three, Ellie hears an Infected trapped under some rubble. Initially, she’s scared, but then you see her grow in confidence, cutting open the Infected and looking at the fibers. Through that interest, you see what the Infected means in Ellie’s own life. She was born into this world that’s completely gone to hell because of this thing and now, maybe she has inside her a solution to this thing. We see Bella’s performance as she goes from wonder to hate and you start to think, wow what is this girl capable of? There’s darkness and anger in there. So [even in scenes featuring the Infected], it’s character first and then just tell the story."

The series follows Joel (Pedro Pascal), a smuggler tasked with escorting the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across a post-apocalyptic United States, 20 years after a fungal outbreak.

Prosthetics designer Barrie Gower recently told Variety: "We had a whole copy of his body that we modelled the bloater prosthetics over in modelling clay. We cast it out of a foam rubber and foam latex, which is very lightweight. It’s almost like an upholstery foam, a very spongy sort of material. That was all molded and cast in separate sections: top half, head, arms, legs.

"We had a team who fabricated all these parts together. We had a zipper up the back and around the waist that we could zip them together. He had all these pendulous folds of fungus which hid zippers and poppers.”

Read here about The Last of Us video game creator on future of Part 3.