One of the coolest and scariest things we got in The Last of Us Episode 5 was the gigantic Clicker known as the Bloater. Not surprisingly, even the cast members were terrified of the Bloater especially young Keivonn Woodard who played Sam. Still, Woodard eventually got used to the monster and even shared an adorable moment with the actor behind the creature.
In The Last of Us Episode 5, the Infected finally emerged from the ground after a crashed truck erupted in the suburbs. One of the Clickers happened to be a Bloater which was somehow different from the video game because it moved fast.
Interestingly, the Bloater was not CGI and was played by an actor in heavy prosthetics. Although it was all just makeup, Keivonn Woodard admitted to Variety he was terrified of the actor until he finally spent some time with him.
“I felt really scared,” the deaf nine-year-old actor related in ASL through an interpreter. “And I didn’t want to go at first, because I’m not really into monsters or scary things. I went into this big place and met a few of them, and I felt more comfortable. I felt fine. He took his head off and he took his teeth out. And then he put it back on. He showed me what it looked like, so I felt more comfortable after that.”
While Woodard was scared of the actor, Melanie Lynskey had a different reaction to the Bloater.
“Somebody’s helping him move around and holding a bottle of water with a straw up. That makes him a little bit less scary when you see him with his Fiji water,” the Kathleen actor said with a laugh.
It might be the first Bloater we see on the show but it's probably not the last. In the game, Joel and Ellie encounter another Bloater in a hospital and there's a possibility we'll see that scene in the series.
The Last of Us Episode 5 is now streaming on HBO Max.
Related: The Last of Us Finally Debuts First Terrifying Giant Clicker
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