‘The Last Of Us’ Co-Creator Craig Mazin On “Mixed Emotions” Celebrating Emmy Success Amid Strike As Studios Are “Hurting People With Their Intransigence”
15.07.2023 - 00:13
/ deadline.com
Part 1 of two-part interview with The Last Of Us creator Craig Mazin about series’ 24 Emmy nominations, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and Season 2 of the hit HBO series.
In 2019, Craig Mazin’s Chernobyl landed 19 Emmy nominations and converted 10 into wins, including two for Mazin, Outstanding Limited Series and Writing. Four years later, Mazin’s followup for HBO, The Last Of Us, received 24 noms on Wednesday, including Outstanding Drama Series and Writing for Mazin’s standout Episode 3 script, Long, Long Time.
Despite the massive nomination haul, bringing the first major awards recognition to a live-action series based on a video game, Emmy glory was not on Mazin’s mind when making The Last Of Us, an adaptation of what he calls “in my opinion, the best story ever told in the video game genre.”
“Anybody that expects any of these things when you start is nuts because making things, it’s just really hard. And making a show like The Last of Us is especially difficult because it’s so big, and it takes so long, and the longer you work on something, the more chances you have to mess it up, basically.
“For The Last Of Us, we shot for 200 days,” Mazin continued. “You get to the end of that and you’re just desperate to get in the editing room and make something out of it that will not make you feel terrible. So, when you have between 30 and 40 million people watching the show every week in the United States alone well, okay, now I’m happy. And when this happens with the Emmys, that to me is all about the joy of seeing the people that I worked with being celebrated because so many of those people just never get recognized for the work they do, but they’re with me every day. That part has been fantastic.”
Mazin, fellow The