If you teared up during the third episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, imagine experiencing 45 more minutes of waterworks from Bill and Frank’s story. That’s what happened to showrunner Craig Mazin when he watched the first director’s cut of Sunday’s installment of the show, titled Long, Long Time.
Mazin, who wrote the third episode, chatted with Deadline about creating Bill and Frank’s story with director Peter Hoar. Mazin explained that he knew the cast and crew nailed it after initially watching a two-hour cut of the episode for what ultimately got sliced down to 73 minutes.
“When they sent it to me, I think it was almost two hours or something like that,” Mazin said. “So, I was like, oh, that’s probably not good. And I sat down, but I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll watch the two-hour version of this episode.’ And I cried so hard that at one point, I actually said out loud, ‘Ow.’ I mean, it hurt. I cried so hard; it hurt. And I thought, ‘Well, if these guys can do this to me and I wrote this f**king thing, then I think it might work pretty well on other people.”
When asked about potentially seeing this version of the episode, Mazin just expressed gratitude for HBO letting them go a bit long. Plus, he added, “I never want to overstay my welcome.”
GameSpot also got a chance to talk with Mazin and Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann. The Last of Us writers broke down Bill and Frank’s story, even exploring how it deviates from the beloved game. For those unfamiliar, this episode of The Last of Us also confirmed a popular fan theory.
For more, check out GameSpot’s The Last of Us (HBO Show) review. The series has already been renewed for Season 2.
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