New Delhi, Writer-director Craig Mazin says he still sneakily loves comedy, a genre that helped him hone his skills and eventually explore darker stories like the critically-acclaimed “Chernobyl” and “The Last of Us”.
Mazin started his career in the entertainment business by writing comedies like “RocketMan”, “Scary Movie 3”, “Senseless” and “Identity Thief” and the last two movies in the “Hangover” franchise
The writer said it was not easy to take risks in the initial years of his career.
“I always wanted to tell stories like this . The thing about the entertainment business is, it’s very hard to get into, and when you do get into it, someone says, ‘Hey, you seem like a funny guy, you can write this funny thing’. And you do, and they pay you for it, and you have a wife and a baby and you need to keep working, you just kind of keep going down that road,” Mazin told PTI in a roundtable interview.
“I think what happens is you get to a place where you’re comfortable enough in your career and you feel like, okay, I’ve got enough security and I’ve taken care of my family. Let me try to take some risks and show people this other side of what I’ve always wanted to do.”
After years writing comedies, Mazin said he amassed enough security to break the mould and tell stories that were tonally different to his earlier work.
In 2019, Mazin came out with “Chernobyl” , the critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries that revolved around the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the cleanup efforts that followed. He was praised for turning a historical tragedy into a gripping human drama, which ultimately earned him a Primetime Emmy award.
“I was very fortunate to have HBO show me enough faith to say, ‘Yeah, go ahead. Let’s, let’s show us what you got on ‘Chernobyl’. I’ll also say as we get older, we kind of change a bit as time goes on.”
Mazin credits his time working as a comedy writer for shaping his storytelling instincts.
“I still sneakily love all the funny parts… And they’re very hard. Comedy is technically far more demanding than drama. I think comedy requires more intelligence. The smartest writers I know write things that are funny. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re only comic writers, but they understand what funny is.
“Vince Gilligan, who made ‘Breaking Bad’, famously said he loved hiring comic actors for dramatic parts because they just had a depth of soul to them. And I think you see this more and more. I mean, look what Ben Stiller’s doing with ‘Severance’.”
With “The Last of Us”, Mazin, in his role as a writer and co-creator, brought the beloved PlayStation video game to life with emotional depth and character-driven storytelling.
Set 20 years after the destruction of modern civilisation, the first season of the HBO show, which came out in 2023, followed Joel , a hardened survivor, who is tasked with escorting a teenage girl named Ellie across an post-apocalyptic America ravaged by a deadly fungal outbreak.
The series is now returning with the much-awaited second chapter, which is set five years after the events of the first season.
If the first season was about love and how it could hurt and harm, Mazin said the second part is about figuring out how “love helps us define who we are”.
“We always think about our family. If you are a child, your love for your parents is profound. And if you are a parent, your love for your child is even more profound. And we do extraordinary things for each other.
“And when you introduce personal heartbreak into that, there is a danger that those small disruptions can cycle into enormous disruptions that take on terrible dimensions. That is what I really wanted to dig into this time.”
“The Last of Us” has been praised for incorporating some deeply political themes like authoritarianism, fear-mongering as well as exploring issues of race, identity and representation.
But as a storyteller, Mazin said he doesn’t believe in drama commenting directly on what is happening around the world.
“Rather, we look around at how human beings and human behaviour leads to what is happening in the world, and talk about how to reflect those things within the characters and the relationships of the show. Drama, at its best, is universal. It doesn’t try too hard to be an allegory for one thing or another. If it does, it begins to feel a little bit like a school assignment.”
According to Mazin, what actually does make into people’s hearts is seeing the human flaws as well as beauty.
“This is why the Greeks sort of invented the modern dramatic format in the first place to experience these things safely, to have some sort of catharsis. And the best dream of all would be that maybe some people who aren’t empathetic to their neighbour, who are feeling scared, overprotective and defensive, might open themselves up and reach out to other people and maybe find some connection. Maybe that on a person by person basis stories can help us be a little bit better.”
About the changes that happened between season one to two, Mazin said the team tried to maintain a balance where the show would appeal to both the fans of the video game as well as those who will never play it.
“It’s probably the case that, given how many people watch it around the world, do come to it without any foreknowledge.
“The challenge is to maintain the level of quality that we found in season one and then, hopefully, exceed it. It’s not enough for us to just try and be as good as we were. We really want to be better. We want to take risks. We want people to feel how audacious, unafraid and challenging we are… because it makes the story better.”
“The Last of Us” will also feature Gabriel Luna and Rutina Wesley reprising their characters of Tommy and Maria, respectively.
The new cast members include Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, Isabela Merced as Dina, Young Mazino as Jesse, Ariela Barer as Mel, Tati Gabrielle as Nora, Spencer Lord as Owen, Danny Ramirez as Manny, and Jeffrey Wright as Isaac.
Veteran actor Catherine O’Hara will guest star in the series.
Produced by PlayStation Productions, Word Games, Mighty Mint and Naughty Dog, the series will premiere on JioHotstar in India on April 14.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
