Pedro Pascal opens up about his "unhealthy mindset" going into The Last of Us season 2: "I kind of feel their pain"

The Last of Us season 2 is almost here, and it seems like viewers are not the only ones feeling the characters' pain very deeply. The show's star Pedro Pascal recently talked about his "unhealthy mindset" coming into the new episodes, which are packed with shocking and dramatic moments that have nothing to do with the infected.

Pascal joined his co-stars during a press conference in Los Angeles, attended by GamesRadar+ and other media, where the team discussed the highly-anticipated new season and what fans can expect next. The show is set to premiere on Max on April 13.

"I think there's something really exciting about giving everyone another season of a show that everyone loved and that everyone has worked so hard on and has put so much into," Pascal said.

"My mindset was grateful to be back and yet, at the same time, this experience, more than any other I've had, is hard for me to separate what the characters are going through and how it makes me feel, in a way that isn't very healthy. And so I kind of feel their pain," the actor added, jokingly saying he was "in an unhealthy mindset" during filming.

As fans of the game know very well, the next part of the story includes some difficult moments for Pascal's Joel and Bella Ramsay's Ellie, following the events of The Last of Us season 1 ending. There is a five-year time jump between Season 1 and 2, which sees both characters growing apart.

"I feel like it was a beautiful setup by Craig [Mazin] and Neil [Druckmann] that the first thing that I got to shoot was just you [Ramsey] and I and in kind of an intimate setting," Pascal recalled. "There's incredibly painful distance between the two of them and the playing of the scene, but we still got to be on set and fuck around and laugh and stuff like that. And that was incredibly comforting, that was like coming home," he continued.

Although the personal relationships between the main characters are the heart of the show, The Last of Us is also known to offer echoes to our reality. "There's a very healthy and sometimes sick pleasure in that kind of catharsis and a safe space to see human relationships under crisis and in pain and intelligently draw a political allegory, societal allegory, and base it off of the world that we're living in," teased Pascal.

The Last of Us season 2 begins on April 13 on Max and April 14 on Sky and Now. For more, check out all the new TV shows on the way in 2025 and beyond.