Joe Pantoliano May Finally Get HBO, Thanks to ‘The Last of Us' Creator Craig Mazin: ‘They Never Gave It to Me When I Did The Sopranos!'
'I say ignorance is bliss. I don't have HBO. I hope nobody from HBO is here,' quipped Pantoliano, speaking during 'The Last of Us' panel at the Television Academy's Televerse festival on Saturday. HBO organized the panel, so of course they were there!
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It was unclear if Mazin had heard this anecdote before, but he appeared to be incredulous at the news: 'You don't have HBO?! We can get you HBO!'
Responded Pantoliano: 'I've been sulking for the last 25 years because they never gave it to me when I did 'The Sopranos'!' Pantoliano, of course, played Ralph 'Ralphie' Cifaretto in Seasons 3 and 4 of 'The Sopranos' until, well, he runs afoul of Tony.
'You're saying they wouldn't give Ralphie HBO?' Mazin said on stage. 'That's fucked up!'
'The Last of Us' executive producer — and video game creator — Neil Druckmann had another solution for Pantoliano, who admitted that he also never played the game: 'We're gonna get you a PlayStation before you get HBO.'
Pantoliano appears in the Season 2, Episode 6 flashback episode, where viewers learn what created a rift between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Pantoliano's character Eugene is the husband to town psychologist Gail (Catherine O'Hara). While on Ellie's first patrol, she and Joel find whoEugene, who's just been bitten by an infected and will succumb to the cordyceps fungus shortly. He begs Joel and Ellie to take him to the outer walls so he can have a last moment with Gail. Joel says no, but Ellie convinces Joel to break the rules to bring him back. But when Ellie goes off to retrieve her and Joel's horses, Joel — who had promised not to shoot Eugene — does so anyway.
'So Greg and Neil, we had a phone conversation, and they sent me two of the scripts, and then I read my scenes, and I remember thinking that there was more to this character and much more of a challenge for an actor than the last 20 years I've been in show business,' Pantoliano said. 'There was so much there to to test me. And then, the simple stuff of 'who am I? Where and I?' What spoke to me the most is the human element of like, 'this could happen toanyone.' It's happening every day. People die, and see their life in a blink of an eye. I woke up, I had coffee with my wife, I went on patrol and then I got bit, and I know I have to die. I have a last request. And so it was very emotional. But I gotta say, Neil [Druckmann] beat the shit out of me, and he knew what he wanted.'
Added Druckmann, who directed that episode: 'Joey was so fun to work with, because as long as we had ideas, we kept exploring and digging and finding. And it was such a joy to find the character in the moment. Because initially, the way it was written, there was some comic relief lines in there that were just excised in the moment. It didn't work the way you were playing it.'
As for what's to come in Season 3 as Kaitlyn Dever (who plays Abby) moves into more of a lead role, Dever said that 'we're getting to the real core of Abby in this season, and really giving her some context. Because in the game, she does sort of appear, and you don't know who she is, where she's coming from, why she killed Joel. I feel like we're really getting to the core of the why, and her grief is what fuels that rage. I have not been told with what we're doing for Season 3… I'm just so grateful to be a part of such a beautiful show. I've been such a fan of the game for so long. I played it twice all the way through with my dad. He's a big fan girl over this game. So I'm just grateful to get to continue that journey for Abby and dig even deeper to twhat drives her and just how broken she is. Maybe she's not all that different from the other human beings in the show.'
Hinted Mazin: 'Knowing that I've got this pillar in Kaitlyn that is going to anchor this cast, and knowing that I can turn again to [production designer] Don [MacAulay] to build this physical world around us, and it is going to be quite ambitious. We've had meetings already, he knows, and [VFX producer] Alex [Wang] is going to extend those beyond and there's creature work. If you play the game, you know there's something coming. We've done a lot of talk about basements, that's all I'll say.'
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