Casting continues on HBO‘s “The Last of Us” television series, with Deadline reporting today that Anna Torv (“Fringe,” “Mindhunter”) is the latest actor to come on board.
Deadline details, “Torv will recur as Tess, a smuggler and hardened survivor in a post-pandemic world. In the original video game Tess works with Joel to survive and smuggle weapons in and out of Boston. She also accompanies Joel on the seemingly impossible mission to smuggle Ellie to the Fireflies.”
Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole) will be directing the pilot episode of HBO’s “The Last of Us” series, with Jasmila Žbanić (Quo vadis, Aida) and Ali Abbasi (Border) also directing episodes.
Pedro Pascal (“The Mandalorian”) is Joel and Bella Ramsey (“Game of Thrones”) is Ellie, with Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate) playing Tommy, the brother of Pascal’s Joel.
Merle Dandridge is back as “Marlene, the head of the Fireflies, a resistance movement struggling for freedom against an oppressive military regime.” She voiced the role in the games.
Nico Parker (Dumbo) will be playing Joel’s daughter Sarah, who we briefly met early on in the original video game. Jeffrey Pierce, Murray Bartlett and Con O’Neil will also star.
“The series takes place twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.”
Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) is developing the series for HBO, and he’ll be working with Neil Druckmann to write and executive produce the small screen adaptation.