Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Last of Us Part II.
Almost all the major voice actors from The Last of Us video games have roles in HBO’s TV adaptation, with some of them even reprising their original characters from the games. Video game adaptations have been notoriously disappointing because they usually have no respect for the source material. But HBO’s The Last of Us is an exception because the creator of the franchise himself, Neil Druckmann, is one of the showrunners. This has meant that the TV series is passionately faithful to the games it’s adapting — in more ways than just sticking to the story.
In casting the TV show, Druckmann brought over most of the main voice actors from the video games. Since the voice actors behind the lead roles of Joel and Ellie aren’t the right age to play them in live-action, those parts were recast with Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. However, the voice actors were recruited to play different roles in the TV adaptation. Meanwhile, other voice actors who were a physical match for their characters were brought in to reprise their respective roles on the show. Because of this, The Last of Us cast features great actors from the games.
7 Troy Baker
Troy Baker is a prolific voice actor who’s played such video game roles as Yuri Lowell in Tales of Vesperia, Booker DeWitt in BioShock Infinite, and Sam Drake in the Uncharted series. But his most iconic role, without a doubt, is Joel Miller in The Last of Us franchise. Baker is a little too young to play Joel in live-action, but he still portrayed a key role in the TV series. He plays David’s dubious right-hand man James in The Last of Us season 1, episode 8, “When We Are in Need.”
It was an interesting twist to cast the hero of the original game as one of the story’s most despicable villains. David is one of the most deplorable characters in The Last of Us universe — a cannibalistic pedophile who tries to imprison (and later tries to kill) Ellie — and James is his sidekick and enabler. “When We Are in Need” could explore the David and James characters in more detail than the game, and showed that James’ loyalty to David is more pragmatic than sycophantic, and Baker played the nuance of that brilliantly.
6 Ashley Johnson
Throughout her storied career, Ashley Johnson has played roles ranging from Chrissy Seaver in Growing Pains to Amber Ahmed in The Killing to Mel Gibson’s daughter in What Women Want. She’s also one of the stars of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. But easily her most beloved character is Ellie from The Last of Us games. Since Johnson is an adult, it wouldn’t have been feasible for her to reprise the role of Joel’s 14-year-old travel companion in the TV show, but she does have a key connection to Ellie in the TV series.
In the cold open of The Last of Us’ season 1 finale — season 1, episode 9, “Look for the Light” — a flashback shows Ellie’s mother, Anna, giving birth to her. In a stroke of beautifully poetic casting, Johnson plays Anna, who’s bitten in the midst of childbirth, which may explain why Ellie is immune to the Cordyceps mutation. On its own, this scene is a fascinating piece of Ellie’s backstory that was missing from the games. But on top of that, in a meta sense, it symbolizes the original Ellie passing the character’s torch to a new performer.
5 Merle Dandridge
Merle Dandridge played Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies, in The Last of Us video games — and she’s played other video game roles, like Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2 — but she’s primarily an on-screen performer. She’s played plenty of television roles, like Rita Roosevelt in Sons of Anarchy, Kim Hammond in The Flight Attendant, and Natasha Seo-Yeon Ross in Station 19. Given her vast experience in television and the fact that she’s a good physical match for the character, it was a no-brainer for the showrunners to bring back Dandridge to play Marlene in The Last of Us TV show.
Since the TV show was able to step outside Joel and Ellie’s perspective, it could explore Marlene’s character in more depth. The Last of Us season 1, episode 1, “When You’re Lost in the Darkness,” showed more of her leadership of the Fireflies, her day-to-day operations in the Boston Q.Z., and her initial skepticism about Ellie’s immunity. Episode 9, “Look for the Light,” shed some light on Marlene’s relationship with Ellie’s mother, which was only mentioned in the game. Dandridge handled all this extra material with aplomb, complementing her performance in the original video game.
4 Jeffrey Pierce
Although Jeffrey Pierce has played Jason Bourne in The Bourne Conspiracy, Lieutenant Commander “Mother” in the Medal of Honor series, and various roles in the Call of Duty games, The Last of Us franchise’s Tommy Miller is his best-known video game role by far. Since Pierce doesn’t have a physical resemblance to play Pedro Pascal’s younger brother, he wasn’t brought back to play Tommy in the TV series; that role went to Gabriel Luna, who knocked it out of the park. Instead, Pierce was cast in a brand-new role created just for the TV show.
In The Last of Us season 1, episode 4, “Please Hold to My Hand,” and episode 5, “Endure and Survive,” Pierce plays Perry. Perry is the loyal right-hand man of Kathleen, played by Melanie Lynskey. Neither Kathleen nor Perry appeared in the original game; they were created to give a face and a tangible motivation to the villains hunting down Sam and Henry. Kathleen will stop at nothing to kill Henry, whose reluctant snitching got her brother killed, while Perry desperately tries to appeal to her humanity. Pierce nailed the role and shared great on-screen chemistry with Lynskey.
3 Misty Lee & Phillip Kovats
Although The Last of Us season 1 was criticized for having far fewer encounters with the infected than the video game, it still had its fair share of clicker action. The clickers first appear in the TV show when they attack Joel, Tess, and Ellie in a dilapidated museum in a scene taken directly from the game. Since the unnerving sounds of the clickers’ echolocation are practically inimitable, the showrunners brought back Misty Lee and Phillip Kovats — the vocal wizards who voiced the clickers in the original game — to provide the clicking sounds for the TV show.
Lee is a prolific voice actor, having played other video game roles like Garland in Just Cause 4, the police dispatcher in Grand Theft Auto V, and the Ninth Sister in the Star Wars Jedi games, but she’s also a comedian and a magician. Kovats, on the other hand, is best known for his work as a sound designer. He worked in the sound department on such games as the Uncharted series, the original God of War trilogy, Insomniac’s Spider-Man franchise, and, of course, The Last of Us.
2 Laura Bailey
Laura Bailey is one of the most recognizable voices in gaming. She has played such memorable video game roles as Rayne in the BloodRayne franchise, Kira Carsen in Star Wars: The Old Republic, Jaina Proudmoore in World of Warcraft, Oriana Lawson in Mass Effect 3, Nadine Ross in the Uncharted series, and Mary Jane Watson in Insomniac’s Spider-Man games. But arguably her most memorable — and, sadly, most controversial — video game role is that of vengeful ex-Firefly Abby Anderson in The Last of Us Part II, who embarks on the road to redemption after doing something truly monstrous.
Although she received vicious backlash from players who can’t separate reality from a fictional story, Bailey was lauded for her performance and won the BAFTA Award for Best Performer in a Leading Role and the Game Award for Best Performance. Before Kaitlyn Dever took over the role of Abby in The Last of Us season 2, Bailey made a cameo appearance in the season 1 finale, “Look for the Light.” Bailey plays one of the horrified nurses standing by as Joel kills the Firefly surgeon and saves Ellie, the same role she played in the original game.
1 Jeffrey Wright
Jeffrey Wright is one of the most celebrated actors working today. He won a Tony Award for his role in Angels in America, an Emmy for his role in the miniseries adaptation of the same play, and he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in American Fiction. In The Last of Us Part II, Wright played his only ever video game role: Isaac Dixon, the leader of the W.L.F., the militia group that takes in Abby and all the other displaced Fireflies after Joel’s hospital massacre.
Since no one else could pull off the menace and gravitas required for this character, Wright is reprising his role in the TV adaptation, much like Dandridge. The recently released Last of Us season 2 trailer teased Wright’s return with a near-shot-for-shot recreation of Isaac’s introductory scene, torturing a Seraphite prisoner. Based on that moment alone, Wright’s turn as Isaac looks to be just as intimidating in live-action. Isaac only appears in a couple of scenes in the game, but The Last of Us season 2 has the opportunity to explore this character and his backstory in more depth.
