The Last of Us: Makeup Designer Says Bloater Costume Is "Like Wearing a Sofa"

It took a lot of work for stunt performer Adam Basil to become the bloater in TLOU.

By Jamie Jirak

The Last of Us' first season was released on HBO earlier this year, and it became an instant hit. In fact, the series was recently nominated for 24 Emmys, including ones for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series (Pedro Pascal), and Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series (Bella Ramsey). The show also earned some nods for its impressive makeup work. The series is up for Outstanding Contemporary Makeup (Non-Prosthetic) and Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup. One of the nominees for the show is prosthetics designer Barrie Gower, who recently spoke with Vanity Fair about working on the series. During Gower's video, he spoke about bringing the "infected" to life and talked about creating one of the most iconic creatures: the bloater. 

"The Bloater is potentially the most extensive infected character that we have in the first season," Gower explained. "We had the task to create a full body suit for a UK stunt performer called Adam Basil who, I think Adam's about 6'8. And we took a complete body scan of Adam and a life cast of his head and hands, and assembled it here in the workshop. So, we had a duplicate copy of Adam, and we sculpted the entire Bloated suit over his body former in a modeling clay."

He continued, "It's basically like Adam wearing a sofa, and walking around in this huge, massive rubber sofa. The weight is pretty extensive, but it's very elastic, it's very stretchy. It gives him a lot of freedom of movement. The build in total from start to finish, creating the Bloater suit, was probably the best part of about nine to 10 weeks. They scanned Adam fully and had a three-dimensional file, and, as an asset, that they were able to work with the digital company, Weta Digital, who created a fully digital Bloater for the final sequence."

When Is The Last of Us Season 2 Being Released?

The Last of Us' second season is currently one of the many productions that has been put on hold due to the WGA and SAG strikes. Showrunner Craig Mazin recently appeared on Entertainment Weekly's The Awardist podcast, and spoke about preparing for the new season ahead of the strikes. 

"We were able to map out all of Season 2," Mazin said. "And I also wrote and submitted the script for the first episode and sent it in [to HBO] around 10:30 or 10:40 PM right before the midnight [makes a "kajoomph" sound] and the strike began."

Mazin noted that by getting The Last of Us Season 2 mapped out and the first script finished, the show would be able to keep "below-the-line crew members" employed and working through the strike. 

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"To the extent that we can keep anybody below the line working, that's fantastic," Mazin explained. "I think it's becoming essentially a near certainty that we won't be able to start [filming] when we were hoping to start, which is upsetting. We are all raring to go. This is what we are born to do. This is how we not only choose to live our lives, but I believe [how we] are compelled to live our lives. Otherwise, why the hell would we do this insane job? I can assure you it's not for money."

Stay tuned for more updates about The Last of Us. 

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