Actor/musician Troy Baker plays James on the show.
Naughty Dog/HBO
Troy Baker, the actor and musician who played Joel Miller in The Last of Us video game and its sequel, has finally appeared in the HBO adaptation. He is one of several actors from the game to appear, though Merle Dandridge is the only one to reprise her role so far. In Baker’s case, Entertainment Weekly was the one who announced that he’d be playing James in the same article that revealed Ashley Johnson would be Anna.
In the games, James (Reuben Langdon) is part of the settlement of cannibals that Joel and Ellie encounter during the fall and winter portion of the game. Their leader David (Nolan North in the video game, Scott Shepard in the TV series) wants to capture Ellie alive because she’s “special.” James wants to kill her in revenge for her and Joel killing so many of their men and is high enough in the hierarchy to override David’s orders.
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Baker previously told Deadline Hollywood this about his character:
“They will hate me, but hopefully they’ll understand me. I don’t know. I believe that all characters are the heroes of their own story, so that’s how I kind of approach everything. I never really like to play the bad guy. But this was a role that was smaller in the game and Neil [Druckmann] and Craig [Mazin] were kind enough to kind of put some meat on the bones and let me really chew and it was a lot of fun. It was a big challenge. It was an opportunity to flex and it was such a fun time.”
The HBO version of James is less vengeful and more concerned with the community’s survival. He rightly points out that taking Ellie alive will mean just one more mouth to feed and suggests to David that they let her go. Then, when Ellie does find herself at his mercy, he points a gun at her, but it’s unclear if he would have tried to kill her before David steps in. James is also shown to be more uncomfortable resorting to cannibalism than he is in the game.
Humanizing Villains
HBO
The show also shows how David retains control of his “flock.” A preacher in the series, the episode starts with him performing a eulogy for the man who was killed by Joel and comforting the man’s daughter. Then later, after that same daughter expresses her wish to kill Ellie, David goes up to her, and it initially seems like he’s going to preach about forgiveness. Instead, he slaps the daughter across her face.
“We talked about this a lot. When we expanded this out, we thought it was important to humanize David. Humanize the world around him. Make us feel, at least when he was initially with Ellie in that sawmill, that he’s a good guy. You know what, he’s forgiven her, which is a very Christian thing to do. In fact, he’s given her medicine, so she can save Joel. He’s been honest with her the entire time. And we need to make it clear that isn’t the complete truth, but we don’t want to go all the way in showing who he fully is yet, and this is the product of that. It was important to us to show that he’s not the nicest guy in the world,” said Mazin during The Last of Us official podcast.
During episode four’s behind-the-scenes featurette, Druckmann said, “I love humanizing villains. And so much of The Last of Us is about people who have to make choices. And whether they are heroes or villains really depends on your perspective.” Something that we see with Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) and the rest of the Kansas City revolution.
Who the villain is being a matter of perspective will be a huge part of the second season, when the show adapts the events of The Last of Us Part II. Without going into any spoilers, there’s a character named Abby (Laura Bailey) who belongs to the Washington Liberation Front (WLF), aka the Wolves, who initially seem villainous but are later revealed to have sympathetic qualities.
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