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Posted in: HBO, TV | Tagged: anna torv, craig mazin, HBO, neil druckmann, the last of us
The Last of Us Creators Wrote But Never Filmed Backstory For Tess
HBO's The Last of Us creators Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann revealed that some backstory for Anna Torv's Tess was written but never filmed.
When Craig Mazin signed on to co-create The Last of Us for HBO alongside Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann, they tackled the Herculean task of compressing 15 hours' worth of content into a nine-episode season while expanding the PlayStation game's mythos. Among the missed opportunities the duo had to scale back was Tess, played by Anna Torv. The two opened up about what more they had planned for the character on the show before it ended up on the cutting room floor. The following contains major spoilers for episode two, "Infected."
How 'The Last of Us' Planned to Expand Tess's Backstory
"We wrote it, but we never shot it: it was a little bit of a backstory for Tess," Mazin revealed on the HBO show's official podcast (via SFX Magazine). "Tess had a kid. She had a husband, and she had a son, and they were infected. She had to kill them. She killed her husband, but she could not kill her son. She couldn't do it. She locked him in the basement, where theoretically, he's still a clicker." "We had a cold open where the camera pushed on this door, and you hear the pounding coming from this basement," Druckmann added. "Later, Tess would tell the story of how she couldn't kill her son."
In the original PlayStation game, Tess sacrificed herself by blowing herself up with militants on her, Joel's (Pedro Pascal), and Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) tail after revealing her infected bite. The HBO series changes that to a band of infected ambushing the trio after Tess reveals her infected bite, and the final shot of her locked in a tendril kiss from an infected struggling to ignite the lighter before she drops it and the building explodes incinerating the local horde, but not before Joel and Ellie escape. The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO.
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