The Last of Us: Gabriel Luna Reveals Funny Connection to Tommy's Travis County Jail Moment
HBO finally released the highly anticipated live-action adaptation of The Last of Us video game, and it's an absolute hit. The Last of Us is being praised by critics and fans alike, making it one of the first video game adaptations to receive such a response. The series became the second biggest launch for HBO since 2010, with House of the Dragon holding the crown. HBO takes a lot of liberties with the series and changes a lot from the source material, but what comes from it is pretty amazing. ComicBook.com and ET recently launched a companion podcast for the series that is hosted by our very own Brandon Davis and ET's Ash Crossan, and their first guest just so happened to be Gabriel Luna, who plays Tommy in the series. During his appearance, Luna revealed that he has more in common with Tommy than we thought. Tommy gets arrested during the episode and calls Joel (Pedro Pascal) to bail him out of the Travis County Jail, and it seems that the actor is familiar with the jail in real life.
"No, that's funny you mentioned that call. We did that on the sound stage, just in the corner of one of the sound stages, when we were doing additional photography for the show," Luna told us. "That was a late edition by Craig and it was great and it brought back a few memories. Yeah, it was funny. We were at the premiere the other night and I had my whole crew from Austin were here. A lot of my friends, a lot of my day ones moved to LA a few years ago. I have a lot of close friends that I call family and they were all there. They were all there to support me."
"I hear that scene comes on, the call from jail letting Joel know that I got into a bit of an altercation at the bar and some guy starts swinging at a waitress and I had to handle business. But I turn over to my buddy Nick and my buddy Valon, both seated just across the aisle, same row across the aisle. They were looking right at me, because unfortunately we're all very familiar with Travis County jail on 10th. We were all 18 years old and our buddy, Kyle's dad was a real estate guy and he was like, 'Oh, my dad bought me in this house. We should go and there's a volleyball court in the back. Take some girls and go drink some beers there'. We did. We got some beers, we got a little weed, took some girls and we were all sitting in the back playing volleyball and I guess some nosy Nellie from down the road saw a bunch of cars in that driveway that she hadn't seen prior, and decided that she was going to call the police. The police come, they hemmed us all up for trespassing. We all went in, they took us to the drunk tank and we were there for about six hours. I'm very familiar with Travis County jail on 10th." The Last of Us star added.
Mazin, the Emmy-winning creator of HBO's Chernobyl, produced the series alongside Neil Druckmann, the creator behind the hit video game series. In an interview earlier this year, the writer said The Last of Us is the "greatest" video game story ever told. "It's an open-and-shut case: this is the greatest story that has ever been told in video games," Mazin said in an interview with Empire Magazine. "[Joel and Ellie] didn't shoot anything out of their eyeballs. They were just people. And that, in and of itself, is remarkably rare in games. The fact that they kept it so grounded, and really made you feel – I had never experienced anything like it, and I've been playing video games since 1977."
Joining Pascal (Joel) and Bella Ramsey (Ellie) include Gabriel Luna as Tommy, Anna Torv as Tess, Nico Parker as Sarah, Murray Bartlett as Frank, Nick Offerman as Bill, Melanie Lynskey as Kathleen, Storm Reid as Riley, Merle Dandridge as Marlene, Jeffrey Pierce as Perry, Lamar Johnson as Henry, Keivonn Woodard as Sam, Graham Greene as Marlon, and Elaine Miles as Florence. Original game stars Ashley Johnson and Troy Baker, having played the part of Ellie and Joel in both video games, are also set to appear.
The first episode of The Last of Us is now streaming on HBO Max. The show's first season is set to last nine episodes in total with new episodes rolling out on a weekly basis.
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