‘The Last of Us’ Tells a Hauntingly Beautiful Story of Gay Survival in … – Them

Life can be that tough, but what shines through is the humanity and the hope. There has to be hope somewhere. You have to go looking for it, but it has to be there.

And I think that was their pitch, basically: This is a show about survival. This is a show about people. This is a show about the length we go to and why it’s actually worth it, why it’s worth surviving. So, that was a good pitch. And then, it was the first opportunity for Craig to say, “OK, the pitch I’ve given you, HBO Max, HBO, Neil Druckmann, here’s why I can really show it to you. Because I’m going to tell Frank and Bill’s full story.” I mean, it was just a beautiful script, a beautiful piece of work. So, I don’t think he had to persuade anybody that it was going to work. I felt like it was a gift to be able to do the first big episode that goes off on a little journey.

I was rewatching some of those cutscenes with Bill in the game. And when you meet him in game, I think he very much echoes Joel’s belief at the time like, “Oh, it’s not worth it to find that purpose in other people.” But his arc in the show is quite the opposite of that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he says at the end to Frank, “You were my purpose.” And it’s just so beautifully simple, and it stays with Bill. That’s what I think Craig did so well. He didn’t create a different version of Bill in order to tell the story. It’s the same Bill from the game. We thought about, “Well, what sort of look should we go for?” In fact, when we got Nick, he had short hair and no beard. I mean, Nick’s had beards of his own in real life, but he didn’t have that. So we are like, “Okay, should we do the long hair thing, should we do the beard thing?” We did in the end, and it was the right thing to do, because it helps everybody realize it’s not a different Bill; it’s just we are telling more of a story. We’re telling more of a story about who Bill is, how he got to this place in his life, how he’s never been able to express himself.

But I think most importantly, [we show] that he finds love with Frank — not just anybody, not just any man, but with Frank. And I think, I’m not suggesting for a minute that… Well, basically if Bill had lived in better times, and a better part of the world maybe, he might have been able to express himself, and he might have been able to try fumbling with a boy in the back of class or whatever else we all get up to. He might have done all of those things, but he never was allowed to, he was never encouraged. His mother was probably very difficult. I mean, he’s still in her house, so she must have had some hold over him. I think there are loads of reasons why he didn’t get there. But I think it’s not just as simple a story as him saying, “Oh great, here’s a man, here’s a gay man, and we can have a good time together.” It’s Frank. That really matters.