Exclusive Q&A: Gabriel Luna discusses ‘The Last of Us,’ Austin roots
Gabriel #Gabriel
Season one of HBO Max’s hit show “The Last of Us” ends Sunday, but Austin-born-and-raised actor Gabriel Luna is just getting started with his performance as Tommy Miller.
Earlier this week, Luna sat down with the Statesman to discuss his role as actor Pedro Pascal’s fictional brother and, of course, his Austin roots.
Editor’s note: Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview. I know that our readers will be super excited to hear from an Austin native.
Absolutely, absolutely. When I was a kid — well not a kid, but when I just started acting, I was 18 — I did one play in high school at Crockett High School, and then was privileged to be able to go to St. Edward’s on scholarship and do some theater there. And my grandfather, before he passed, started a scrapbook… I guess from the St. Ed’s days, like reviews and things from the Statesman. And so my grandpa has… a whole scrapbook of all my movies, all my plays, all the way going back to 2001 when I started at St. Ed’s, so the Statesman has a special spot in my heart.
That’s so awesome to hear. And you were just at St. Ed’s again to talk with some students, right?
I was, I was. I came back a couple of weeks ago at the invitation of Dr. Fuentes, the president of the university, and Steve Salas, the coordinator there. And, yeah, got to go back and walk the boards of my old theater and speak with the incoming students and some of those who are auditioning for a spot there at St. Ed’s and try to impart whatever knowledge I have. Do my part recruiting Hilltoppers.
Well, St. Ed’s might tie into this first question I have for you, which is how did your upbringing here in Austin shape the man and the actor that you are now?
Well, I guess you got to start from the beginning, and that’s a story I’ve told many times when people ask how I got started. I was raised in East and South Austin. My mother was a 15-year-old widow when she had me. My father passed before I was born. They met in church. My primary focus because my mother had me so young and had to get her GED and has been working for the state of Texas for as long as she’s been old enough to work, it was all about school, number one, and athletics. Football and basketball, primarily. And track because it was compulsory for us to run track. Didn’t really want to, but it was a conditioning thing for football.
And so it was really just all about school and sports. And then when I got to high school, it became about trying to get to college for free because my mom couldn’t pay for it. But I had all the marks I needed to make that happen and was also excelling in sports and had offers there. But when I dislocated my left shoulder twice, I had to pivot and somehow found myself in the arts. I owe so much of it to Gil Sharp, who was our theatre director at Crockett High School who saw something in me that I had previously not been aware of. And then of course Dr. Melba Martinez, who is the artistic director at St. Edward’s who saw me in that one play in high school and thought, “Hey, this kid, we should give him $75,000 to come to St. Edward’s and be an actor.” So yeah, I’m a product of South Austin. Very proud. It’s my birthplace in the arts.
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Now you’re in LA, right? Do you get to visit Austin pretty frequently?
I moved to Los Angeles in 2011. But, you know, my mom and grandma wouldn’t be happy with me if I didn’t come visit at every opportunity, so I try to get back every April for my grandmother’s birthday. She’ll be 91 next month. She’s great. And of course, every September for my mom’s birthday, and every third Christmas because my wife and I decided that we always take one for her family in Europe, one for mine in Austin and then one for us somewhere warm and tropical. But every third Christmas I find myself in Austin, and then whatever work calls for. In this case, South By (Southwest). We have some promotions to do there for the festival.
So pretty frequently I get back home, and it’s always really surprising how quickly the city evolves, even over sometimes a three-month stretch. All of a sudden, places that were there are not there anymore. The south side is still pretty much preserved, still well intact. So, I usually just kind of hole up down there in my own little sanctuary, but every now and again get out and go do some things. I always go to Antone’s with my buddy Gary, so that’s kind of my home base. Go to Dan’s Hamburgers, go to see C Boys. Great place, really love that place. Usually keep it to the south side though.
I’ll have to check those places out. I’ve been here on-and-off for four years because I was just at UT Austin, just graduated, but I feel like I’m just now getting to know the city.
Hook ’em. We don’t have a football team at St. Ed’s, so they don’t mind. And I’m also an honorary longhorn because I did a UTFI (University of Texas Film Institute) picture called “Dance with the One” back in the day. I’ve got my Hilltoppers on one side, I got my horns on the other.
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So with “The Last of Us” — that’s kind of taken over the world. You played the games, and I was wondering how you went about balancing this established character with having your own performance and bringing your own interpretation to the character.
I think my experience running through the game, it was a matter of just “learn the characters, learn the relationships.” I quickly fell into just playing it for fun just because it was an interesting position to be in to play video games for work. But it was just absorbing what was there but also feeling very confident in what I was going to be able to bring to the character as a native Austinite, someone who has truly lived the experience of Tommy Miller. And so I was excited by that and found that it was not only helpful for my experience in my process, but it ended up being the kind of hint of authenticity that I think a lot of the departments up there in Calgary really invited and somewhat leaned on in moments, just having me there as the guy with the roots in Austin and with the experience. So they would call on me to point things out if things were a little bit off.
There was one moment when we were pulling up to drop (the character) Sarah off at school. That scene ended up being changed and rewritten into a breakfast scene, which everyone saw in the first episode. Very upset they didn’t have my pancakes, but as we learn, it was for the better. We dodged a bullet there. But anyway, the scene was originally written as a discussion that happens in the truck on the way to school. And we were pulling up, and all the kids were milling about, all the extras. And there was a really uncomfortable amount of maroon sweatshirts and a lot of like A&M Aggie sweatshirts. The ratio was really off. It was almost 50-50. I told them, “This isn’t accurate. There would be many more Horns fans around here and incoming freshman who are excited about going to the University of Texas. So I’m going to need all these kids wearing maroon, I need you guys to take those sweatshirts off. Switch them out.” And I was joking — well, kind of halfway joking. But they actually did it.
I saw you post something on Instagram saying that you have a little surprise coming soon. I was wondering if you maybe had any more hints you could give? Is it maybe something music related?
I might just end up dropping it whenever, just kind of willy-nilly. I went to do that thing at St. Ed’s, and in the process, my family, my cousins… their band called Del Castillo… they stayed with me here in LA one time when they were at a music conference, and I played Mark (Del Castillo) a bunch of my songs. He was like, “Man, those are so good. You need to record them.” And I was like, “Yeah, maybe next time I come into town we’ll do it.” So a couple years ago, went to his studio and recorded a song called “Edge of Town” that I wrote and then another song called “They’ve Got Us Surrounded,” which actually was kind of inspired by “The Last of Us” and my preparation for “The Last of Us.” Released those on Spotify and Apple Music or anywhere you can stream your music. But yeah, I mean, that’s something I love and I always love to do. Not only here at home for my own mental health but at work between takes, I always like to play music and write songs. And when I went back to speak with the St. Ed’s kids, I went back in the studio with Mark and laid down some other stuff, so we’re going to give it to the people. Not sure when, but it will be a surprise for all of us. Got some new songs coming out.
Editor’s note: One of Luna’s new songs, “Too Proud to Run,” dropped just a few days after this interview.
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I can’t wait to hear it. My last question for you is what has it been like to see the positive response to Tommy?
I felt good about it on the day. Felt good when we were working. I thought we were hitting the mark. I thought that we were all really, really deeply invested in what we were doing. So I had hope, and I had a good feeling that perhaps we would get a positive reception. Of course, you never expect, “Yeah, it’s going to be the biggest show in the world, and everybody’s going to watch it, and then they’re going to tell their friends, and every single week it’s going to be millions more people in the audience. You can’t nor should you ever expect something like that because 99.9999% of the time you will be disappointed. But in this .0001% of a chance, it happened. And not only were people responding so favorably to the show as a whole but they all really, really took a shine to Tommy Miller just the way I did when I first learned about the character and learned what he’s all about. You’re always happy when you make the audience happy. And to know that we have so much more ahead of us with the next season in the show and our exploration of part two of the game. I’m really, really kind of chomping at the bit for the chance to show everyone all the sides of Tommy, including some of the darker parts of himself that he thought he left behind. Very excited, very happy that people love Tommy. I love him, too. And there’s going to be a lot more of him to come.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Exclusive Q&A: Gabriel Luna discusses ‘The Last of Us,’ Austin roots