Troy Baker has had many video game roles over the years. He is Indiana Jones in The Great Circle, he is Sam Drake in the Uncharted series, he is Booker Dewitt in Bioshock, he is Higgs in Death Stranding… The list goes on (and on and on and on).
One of his most famous roles, though, is Joel in The Last of Us. Baker portrayed the cynical smuggler turned surrogate father in 2013’s original release, before reprising his role in 2020’s sequel. But, while Joel may have elevated Baker’s career, the actor has admitted he was “woefully unprepared” for the part.
During a Q&A at GalaxyCon New Orleans 2025, Baker was asked if playing Joel had affected him personally, to which Baker jokingly quipped “you’re trying to make me cry”. He then elaborated on his role further, saying it had affected him “deeply” in many different ways.
“There’s nothing worse, and I hope that no one ever feels this… [but] do you ever show up to something and go ‘I am so woefully unprepared for this’? And, it’s not imposter syndrome, it’s a fact. You are not equipped to do the thing that you are about to do,” Baker said. “You could be like, ‘let’s go bungie jumping!’, and then you get on the platform and you go, ‘I can’t do this’. That was The Last of Us for me. You get the gig, and then you go, ‘oh no, I have to deliver this’.”
Baker recalled going through the script and pitch in the early days of The Last of Us with the development team and his co-star Ashley Johnson, who plays Ellie in the games. During a break, Baker turned to Johnson and said: “‘Do you realise that if this thing sucks, it’s our fault?'”
He noted Naughty Dog already had had great success with its Uncharted games, and the studio now knew the story it wanted to tell next. “We knew that what they were going to make was going to be good,” Baker recalled, so now the pressure was on him and Johnson to deliver a worthy performance.
The Last of Us “taught me how to be a better actor”, Baker continued. “It taught me how to stop trying to convince people that I could act, and just realise that Joel has no idea that he’s in a game, and he’s just in a moment in his life. And, I took that lesson, and I apply it all the way across.”
Baker more recently starred in Death Stranding 2, where he reprised his role of Higgs. Earlier this month, he was also announced as the voice of Jack Pepper, the lead protagonist of Mouse: P.I. for Hire.
As for Naughty Dog and The Last of Us, the studio recently announced a book containing the video game scripts for both of Naughty Dog’s games, including the first game’s Left Behind DLC, is being released. Away from its post-apocalyptical series, it also working on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which stars Tati Gabrielle as bounty hunter Jordan A Mun.