Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey cast as Joel and Ellie for TLOU HBO series

[TruckOSaurus]

Dante9 said:

I can see her, but him? I'm not sure. Pedro gives me just a tad too much of sensitive guy vibes, whereas Joel needs to have an undertone of danger, a man that can be absolutely ruthless if need be. Well, maybe Pedro has done something to that effect that I haven't seen. I'm willing to be positively surprised.
And Mahershala Ali, what the hell? I think he could actually pull off Joel's character, but Joel was created as a white guy, so he simply should be white. I guess the Neil Druckmann of the 2010's didn't have the foresight that in the 2020's it would be hip for characters to be anything other than white. I'm sick of everybody playing fast and loose with races and genders of original characters. Although I guess Pedro is technically latino, but he passes as caucasian.

Joel's race in The Last of Us doesn't impact anything so I wouldn't have had a problem with Mahershala Ali being cast as Joel. The way I see it, if the casting call was specifically for a black Joel then I would have had reservations because that frames it as a deliberate move to add diversity for diversity's sake but seeing as they ended up casting Pedro Pascal my guess is all they wanted was a talented actor that could play Joel on screen no matter the race of the actor.