"The Last of Us" Features These Filming Locations in Canada
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HBO’s new series The Last of Us—based on a video game of the same name—is the latest TV show to obsess over. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the drama follows a survivor (played by Pedro Pascal) who is hired to get a 14-year-old girl (played by Bella Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone. Their dangerous journey involves trekking across the United States. But it turns out, much of the production was actually filmed in Canada. As you continue to tune into the nine-episode season on Sundays, take a look at everything we know about the filming locations that made every spectacular yet haunting scene possible.
Where was The Last of Us Filmed?
Much of the production was filmed in Alberta, Canada. “What really brings Hollywood to us, beyond our crew base and quality of crew and talent, is the quality of our vistas and backdrops,” Luke Azevedo of the Calgary Economic Development told CTV News Calgary.
Plenty of movies and shows—like Interstellar, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Brokeback Mountain, and Wynonna Earp—have made use of the province’s prairies, mountains, badlands, and streets. The Last of Us takes viewers to a couple of locations within the region including Calgary, High River, Fort Macleod, Edmonton, Canmore, and Waterton.
In the premiere episode, a street in the town of High River was reportedly used to portray Joel and Sarah’s neighborhood in Austin, Texas. They also run through Evelyn’s Memory Lane Diner in the same town as they attempt to flee the area. Fort Macleod was used for many of the small town street scenes—and there’s even one shot that’s sure to give Ghostbusters: Afterlife fans a major flashback. “Finding Western-style towns was actually not that hard because there’s a really interesting similarity between Canadian and what I’ll call frontier architecture, where they have cattle runs and stuff,” production designer John Paino told Vanity Fair.
Edmonton, the capital city of Alberta, was selected to play Boston with the Alberta Legislature Building acting as the city’s capital. Just west of Calgary is Canmore, a town that was used to portray Jackson, Wyoming. The snowy mountains of Waterton Lakes National Park were used for hiking sequences in Colorado. Other pivotal scenes in the show were filmed in Calgary’s Northland Village Mall, Mount Royal University, and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, Decider reports.
Of course, a mix of tedious set dressing, CGI, and built sets helped give all of these locations a deteriorating, abandoned feel. “It’s a very clean country,” Paino added. “No American, uh, grit.”
You love filming locations. So do we. Let’s obsess over them together.
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