Tommy, Can You Hear Me? All Roads Lead to Gabriel Luna’s Character in THE LAST OF US

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede In the very first episode of HBO’s THE LAST OF US, Tommy, played by Gabriel Luna, drives the action, both literally and figuratively. Tommy’s brother Joel, played by Pedro Pascal, has spent the better part of the past four episodes looking for his brother Tommy, heading into Episode 6, which drops Sunday, Feb. 19, only on Crave. So it was put to Luna that there’s only one logical conclusion: Tommy is clearly the main character on THE LAST OF US. “You know what? I’ll take it,” Luna said with a laugh during a telephone interview. “It’s funny, when my wife and I were watching the first episode, she was saying, ‘I think they should just make the show about Tommy.’ And I was like, ‘well, you’re kind of biased.’ But she said, ‘it should be called THE LAST OF TOMMY.’ And I was like, ‘well, how about THE TOMMY OF US?’ But then we both took a quick pause and said simultaneously, ‘no no no … just TOMMY.” Hmmm, there’s a legendary British rock band that may already have laid claim to that title. “Hey, I love The Who,” Luna said. “Hopefully Pete Townshend doesn’t come after me.” Famous rock operas titled Tommy aside, THE LAST OF US continues to be one of the most talked-about TV shows in recent years. Based on a popular video game of the same name, Luna knew there was never any chance of the television adaptation slipping under the radar – in fact, he has a few of those types of big-name projects on his resume, so he understands the potential ups and downs of such endeavours. “When I did MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., where I played the Ghost Rider character, there was a lot of anticipation for that, and there was a very loyal, passionate fan base, so you knew people were going to see it,” Luna recalled. “Then you have stuff like Terminator (specifically 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate), which is a massive and wonderful film, and critically everybody loved it, but they just hit it at a time when not many people saw it. But this one (THE LAST OF US) feels very different. You’re always hopeful that it’s going to catch fire, but you never expect it. This one has definitely caught fire.” Professional actors always try to do good work, no matter the size or scale of the project, but is there a different level of pressure that one feels with something as big as THE LAST OF US? “The biggest fear is not meeting the bar,” Luna acknowledged. “That would have been devastating, because we certainly worked our butts off trying to make a great show. We had a sense in making it that it was going to be great, because there was a lot of fun on the set, a lot of levity – which sometimes can be a curse! Sometimes if that happens on set, then you know it’s going to be a bad product, because people were having too much fun. But there was the perfect balance of fun and fear, and just the intensity of having great source material, and some of the best artists in every department. It was a worldwide effort. And for those people to love it as intensely as we did, but also always feel a sense of dread at how daunting the task was, it kept everybody on their toes, and I think it kept everybody’s work alive and focused.” Trying to stay alive and focused is essentially the job of all the characters in THE LAST OF US, which exists in the aftermath of a fungal outbreak that has destroyed society. And Gabriel Luna’s Tommy is in the eye of the storm. What if there were a way to combine the rock opera Tommy, and Luna’s TOMMY? Would Luna be willing to sing? “I’ll sing,” Luna promised, “but I need a giant pinball machine on stage.”   billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv