<p><strong>Photo Credit:</strong> The Last Of Us/ Facebook</p>
<p>Troy Baker, the original actor who played Joel in the video game &ldquo;The Last Of Us&rdquo;, was originally not a part of the TV series, &ldquo;If there was a role for me, then I would have been happy. But if not, I was completely content to just be an observer for this one,&rdquo; he says.</p>
<p>The unexpected surprise is that Baker will actually take part in the TV show as James, who is a cannibal.</p>
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<p>&ldquo;I thought I was gonna get a walk-on role. And then I got the script, and I was like, &ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s meat here.&rdquo; Pardon the pun. I got this opportunity to challenge myself. I&rsquo;ve gotten very adept to walking onto a performance capture stage and acting inside of that environment; boxing in that ring, if you will. This is something that, while I&rsquo;ve done on-camera before, it still is like, how does this translate? Can I do this? And I was lovingly guided through not only by Neil and Craig, but everybody on our cast, everyone in our crew that just worked so hard for this,&rdquo; Baker explained.</p>
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<p>He explained that he has faced a lot of challenges as he didn't want to be a villain, &ldquo;So how do I make this guy not a villain? And to me, we&rsquo;re all the heroes of our own story. To me, we&rsquo;re experiencing James&rsquo; story. &ldquo;The Last of Us&rdquo; is the story of James. It&rsquo;s a very short-lived story! So what I wanted to do was find some level of truth to him and empathy. And if I can make you care about him a little bit, that makes you hate him even more.&rdquo;</p>
<p>He explained how different it is to act next to Ashley Johnson, who plays Ellie in the video games, and to see Bella Ramsey, who is Ellie in the TV show, &ldquo;That was probably my biggest challenge, not being in protector mode for Ellie... Both Bella and Ellie are incredibly fierce, adept, talented, powerful people. That&rsquo;s the threat that James sees. He&rsquo;s a pragmatist.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Baker also highlighted what Pedro Pascal added to Joel as a character and how refreshing it is to see a new take on a character he worked on for so long, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s [Pedro] so confident in his grasp on the character that it allows him to just sit comfortably in his own conviction. He does everything on a knife&rsquo;s edge. There&rsquo;s nothing that&rsquo;s wild. If you watch all of his choices, there&rsquo;s so minimal, and because of that, they&rsquo;re profound. And it makes Joel, in a lot of ways, more dangerous. There&rsquo;s a physicality that he brought to this that we couldn&rsquo;t have done in the game,&rdquo; Baker explained to <a href="https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-last-of-us-troy-baker-james-david-joel-1235541775/">Variety</a>.</p>

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