No, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann didn’t kill Pedro Pascal. That was just one key messaging point delivered during Variety‘s A Night in the Writers’ Room on Thursday night.
Although this was the drama panel, many hilarious conversations came out of the discussion moderated by Variety‘s senior TV features editor Emily Longeretta. In addition to “The Last of Us” creators, panelists included “Severance” creator Dan Erickson, “Paradise” executive producer and showrunner Dan Fogelman, “The Pitt” creator R. Scott Gemmill, “Doc” creator Barbie Kligman, “Yellowjackets” co-creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson and “Cross” creator Ben Watkins.
While discussing the pressures of following a stellar first season with a second one — Mazin and Druckmann shed light on the ups and downs.
“There’s this thing that happens when you’re making the first season of something where you truly are just rolling down a hill on fire. If you stay alive, that’s a huge achievement. If a show comes out, that’s amazing,” Mazin said. “The second season comes with so many expectations, and we did learn a lot of lessons. And the problem with learning lessons is then you have to be accountable to those lessons. And you’re not allowed to make those mistakes anymore, which is tragic. You do feel pressure to somehow fulfill what people want but also surprise them. You’re now a topic of discussion, whereas before you were just new and surprising. I mean, the bar for video game adaptations was pretty low. We had that going for us in Season 1 — now we kind of fucked ourselves.”
Druckmann added that it “can feel very scary” doing a second season, just like it did when creating a second chapter of the video game. “People had very strong reactions to whatever controversial story decision we made,” he said, referring to the death of Pedro Pascal’s Joel Miller in Season 2.
“He did a thing. Everyone lost their shit, and then I had to do that same thing, because he did the thing,” Mazen says of the death. “The big complaint that I’ve gotten is, ‘Why did you kill Pedro Pascal?’ And I keep explaining, we didn’t kill him! He’s a man, he’s alive. He’s fine. And he’s in literally everything else. So I know what the problem is!”
Neil Druckmann, Ben Watkins, Craig Mazin, Barbie Kligman, Dan Erickson, Ashley Lyle, Dan Fogelman, R. Scott Gemmill and Bart Nickerson
Variety via Getty Images
The group also discussed planning ahead when pitching a season and knowing how many seasons their shows will last. Fogelman said he pitched “Paradise” as a three-season show since he has a three-year plan — and always does that in the room — but the plans could always change.
“I know, generally, how many episodes I want to do, but then once you have those markers, you say, ‘that’s act one, that’s act 2, that’s act 3,” he said. “If you set that, it’s a really lucky place to be, but it can be really helpful, even if it’s 10 seasons.”
One of the bigger themes that the writers dove into was just how difficult it is to launch a successful show, continue a successful show and not become overwhelmed. However, Gemmill, who worked on “ER” and showran “NCIS: Los Angeles” before creating “The Pitt” seemed to have it all figured out — much to the others’ chagrin.
“I’ve been doing it a long time, and I also think, at the end of the day, I’m not saving kids’ lives. I’m making a fucking TV show. It’s ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ If it’s still on the air 50 years after I’m dead, wonderful,” said Gemmill.” I’m just so damn lucky to get paid not to have people shoot at me or run into a burning building.”
When Nickerson noted that of Gemmill is right, he also had a follow up question: “The thing that we need to know is how you hold onto that perspective and frame when the void that lives inside you is threatening to eat everything you ever thought you could be, would be or should be.”
Gemmill had the perfect response: “You’ve never tried ketamine?”
Watch the full panel above.
