The Last of Us’s Young Mazino Unpacks Jesse’s ‘Burden of Responsibility.’
Spoilers follow for The Last of Us’s season-two finale, “Convergence,” which premiered on HBO on May 25.
After “Through the Valley,” maybe you thought The Last of Us was done killing off its nice guys (or whatever counts as a “nice guy” in this world). Not exactly! Jesse’s abrupt death in the finale, “Convergence,” is another bit of senseless violence in a season full of it. Jesse has been trained to one day lead Jackson, is excited to have a baby on the way, and doesn’t hesitate to rush into an unknown situation to try and save his mentor, Tommy (Gabriel Luna). None of that matters when Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) shoots him in the head and cuts his promising life short.
“If I was in Jesse’s shoes, I would be running to Mexico. I wouldn’t look back,” Young Mazino says of his character’s choice to chase Ellie down in Seattle. “But Jesse really understands the nature of self-sacrifice and doing things for the greater good. When Dina is talking to Ellie and she’s like, Do you ever think that Jesse is a little sad?, I think it’s not sadness but a deep-seated melancholy, knowing that this burden of responsibility comes with these personal costs.”
Mazino exuded a similar pensiveness in the first season of Beef as the aimless gamer Paul, a role for which he received his first Emmy nomination and found himself referencing when reflecting on Jesse, whose absence looms large in the finale’s closing minutes. Jackson has lost one of its most reliable defenders, and Ellie’s circle of people who care for her has shrunk even smaller. “It’s so complex, the way Ellie is experiencing love while also chasing murder and vengeance,” Mazino observes. “It wears her down so much by the season finale, and she gets to her breaking point once Jesse goes.”
You played the Last of Us Part II before meeting with series co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. Did you play through and know about Jesse’s death beforehand?
I played the game up until Jesse died. As soon as he died, I put the controller down. I wanted to have reference material in case I needed it, but Craig mentioned he wished I didn’t play the game, and I understand that. It’s not about emulating or imitating. It’s about bringing my own truth to the character under that framework that they’ve provided. Even after Craig told me that, I went back to the game and rewatched Jesse’s stuff. Stephen Chang’s rendition of Jesse was great. There is a huge audience of people that have played the game, and they really liked that character, so what is it they really resonated with? He was cool, calm, and collected. He was that safe battle buddy you would need in a dire situation.
I was also starting to reference somebody I know, this Korean American guy who is an extreme outdoorsman, prior military, jumps off of helicopters, climbs ice mountains. Crazy stuff like that. He’s like a massive dude, a dependable survivalist, and yet he’s also the chillest dude you’ll meet, a hippie. I was building upon that, and knowing that this Jesse, they call him Captain Wyoming. He does things by the book, but it’s because he has that burden of responsibility impressed upon him by Maria and by Tommy. How can I capture that? I really thought it was through the physicality. There’s parallels in Beef, but in Beef, Paul was building muscle because he was masking this deep-seated insecurity. Jesse, his strength is coming out of necessity, to protect and to lead. Both had nice physiques, but I think the preparation and intention behind it was different.
You grew up playing video games, played a gamer in Beef, and now you’re playing a video-game character in The Last of Us. Does it feel like a weird serendipity thing is happening?
I never connected it like that, but you’re so right. I will say, The Last of Us as a game, it’s so visceral. I’ve played all kinds of games, but particularly with shooting games, in Call of Duty or something, there’s infinite ammo. You have 240 bullets, 20 mags on you. But in The Last of Us, you’re scrounging around for bullets. That was a shock. I would run out of bullets within the first two minutes of the game, and then I’m fighting a horde of Clickers with a brick and running for my life half the time.
In the finale, you have a scene where Jesse is talking to Ellie about how he was taught to put other people first, and how he didn’t go to Mexico with a woman he was in a relationship with because of that responsibility. It’s a really enlightening moment in which we learn how conflicted Jesse feels about shouldering all this. How did you approach that scene?
He’s using that to try to get to Ellie and to convince her: “This is what one must do to keep the people around you safe — make that sacrifice and be selfless.” But that comes from a selfish part of him. That’s something he doesn’t want to admit, but he figures, Shit, I might die any minute. Might as well get this off my chest. Compartmentalizing the irrational part of yourself is a tough thing to do, but he was able to do that. Sometimes that needs to happen in order to be the glue that holds things together. There’s not always a reward at the end of that tunnel. Sometimes it’s just a bullet.
How did you want to convey Jesse’s melancholy?
I noticed that Jesse has this little tight-lipped smirk a lot — it was unconscious, but I think that’s a layer of him having reservations. That’s why Dina is making fun of him when they’re about to go on patrol, because she knows he’s going through the motions of being this stalwart, follow-the-rules guy. He probably smoked weed with her a few days before that.
There’s a gradual change from episode three to episode five, where he’s not joking. He’s pissed off. I used the circumstances to really lean into my lines, and when I was walking through Seattle with Ellie and revealed that I had a feeling Dina was pregnant, I played that in different ways. Personally, if that was me, I would be filled with dread and terror. But the take we settled on was a lot more contained. All of it just simmered down into a tight feeling of Let’s get this done so I can get the fuck out of here. The whole situation where that kid is dragged through the streets to get lynched — every fiber of Jesse’s being, he wants to go out and kill all those guys. But he has that damn compartmentalization. When Ellie is giving him shit, saying, “You watched a kid die today,” that eats away at Jesse, and yet he knows why he did that. He knows that would have ended them right then and there, if they took on that kind of fight, and now he has a baby to look after. That kind of irrational response, that’s bloodthirst. Where he’s like, “I really hope you make it,” I meant that genuinely.
When we spoke about Beef, you talked about the specific emphasis on family within the Korean American community. Did you want to bring that kind of cultural specificity to Jesse too?
For sure. A lot of Korean people, when they moved to the States, the environment was quite hostile. They formed a community through a network of churches. I grew up with a strong emphasis on community, even though as an artist growing up in the suburbs, I had difficulties finding my community. For a character like Jesse, to have found a community that he can be a part of in the postapocalyptic world that’s so incredibly dangerous and barren, that’s everything. I understand why Jesse could make those difficult decisions that I don’t think I could make. There’s such a connection between finding community and family, at least in my experience.
I watched you play guitar so beautifully on The Tonight Show. You grew up playing the violin and piano, too. Did you ever want to play guitar on camera as Jesse?
No, no, no. That’d be cool, but music for me is a very personal escape and my way of expressing things I don’t talk about much. Even playing guitar on The Tonight Show, I had strong reservations. I told my team, “I don’t think I’m going to do it.” That song is lovely, but I still feel strange about doing it. But I think Jesse, Ellie, Dina, and Tommy would make a terrific band. We actually all play. Sometimes when I was with Bella and Isabela, I would play some chords or a song, and they would be harmonizing and singing together. One day at the theater we were shooting at, there was a bunch of music equipment on stage, and half our crew all knew how to play different instruments, so they had a whole full band playing. Our first AD Paul C. Domick was just ripping it on the guitar. It was so cool to see.
Jesse’s death scene is so abrupt. Talk to me about filming that. Did you film the conversation between Ellie and Jesse and the death scene itself on the same day?
It was all in the same location. The scene where Ellie sits down at the stage edge and we have the conversation, it was hitting me hard because we were closer to the end of the season, and a lot had happened. The specific moment of getting shot and hitting the ground was a separate day. That moment with Ellie, it’s one of those dualities of people where the thing that I find so endearing about you is also the most damning thing in certain situations, like this suicide mission. But there’s a brief moment where there’s almost a smile, despite it all — almost an “Oh my fucking God, whatever.” [Laughs] But it gets so cut short, and next thing you know, he’s gone. That ties into the second episode, when Ellie and Jesse are talking about Eugene and how he got killed by Joel. Jesse’s like, “What are you gonna do? Couldn’t be saved.” When I was shooting that specific scene, I was thinking about my death. I knew it was happening. I was anticipating it. And when I’m thinking about the nature of the lives they live, I was thinking, me and Eugene, we’re in the same boat. “What are you gonna do? Couldn’t be saved.” Sometimes you’re just there, and then you’re not.
I got really good at dying, hitting the ground and rag-doll-ing, but falling in the same blocking — free-falling with specificity, so that the gun and my head are all landing the same way. We did a reshoot for that because Bella’s lip got busted during one of the action scenes, so we had to come back. It was optional for me; they said they could use a stunt double. But I implored them to have me be there, because when Ellie sees the lifeless Jesse, she just was beginning to get into the process of mending what happened, and now he’s gone forever. It’s a catastrophic moment.
Do you think Ellie was as good of a friend to Jesse as Jesse was to Ellie?
Of course not. Of course not. But that’s the nature of friendship. It’s not always about breaking even. Friendship is greater than that. It’s not about what you can receive. It’s more about what you give. There is a selfishness to Abby’s rage and revenge, but I think that’s a brilliant point that the showrunners were making: Death begets death begets death. The collateral just keeps on building, and you see it not just through the people in Jackson, but through the Wolves and the Scars. Ellie is not impervious to that. When she walks out of the hospital in episode three, she’s walking out with a smile — and then the light darkens and her spirit darkens. You can have moments of love and happiness, but it will always be there, that pocket of darkness, that little well of darkness, and it flares up. It’s so complex, the way Ellie is experiencing love while also chasing murder and vengeance. It wears Ellie down so much by the season finale, and she gets to her breaking point once Jesse goes. That was beautifully built up.
Did you see Jesse as having that “pocket of darkness” too? What did you imagine as his backstory that would allow him to also be that way?
I’ve read in books and seen in interviews with people who have killed people that the first one’s the hardest. After that, it gets easier. Getting to Jackson, I imagine Jesse has had to reach into his savagery, otherwise he wouldn’t be there. I’ve been in moments where I felt like it was fight or flight. I’ve been in physical altercations that I didn’t expect. You go into autopilot, and that lizard brain kicks in. You feel no pain, just shock waves, and then like an hour or two after, you’re shaking with so much adrenaline. Tommy, Dina, Ellie, Jesse — they all share that. Jesse has had that switch for some time. We are greater than our impulses and our survival instincts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.