Josh Peck breaks down his 'pinch-me' guest role on 'The Last of Us'

For over a year, Josh Peck has had to keep a major secret: He is in The Last of Us Season 2.

The Drake & Josh and Oppenheimer actor joins the ranks of notable Last of Us guest stars, which include Melanie Lynskey, Nick Offerman, and Murray Bartlett, as well as actors from the original Last of Us game like Troy Baker, Ashley Johnson, and Jeffrey Pierce.

Before auditioning for The Last of Us, Peck had little familiarity with the show or its source material. "I knew how beloved the show was and how well done it was, but I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to intense shows like this," Peck told Mashable in a phone interview. "Honestly, my audition for the show made me give it a look so I could make sure I was honoring the tone and energy of it. Then of course, I watched the first episode and binged all of it in two days. I was like, 'Oh my God, this is excellent.'"

A particular stand-out for Peck? Season 1, episode 3, "Long Long Time," which focuses on the love story of Bill (Offerman) and Frank (Bartlett).

"That's a game-changing episode," Peck said. "I don't think I've seen a love story — a straight love story, a gay love story — that was that prolific and real and just honest in my life."

Peck's part in The Last of Us — which he described as a "pinch-me role" in the vein of Oppenheimer — looks very different from Bill and Frank's tender love story, though. Introduced in Season 2, episode 4, Peck plays a FEDRA soldier stationed in the Seattle Quarantine Zone in 2018. In the episode's opening moments, his character (who goes unnamed in the episode) spins a tale of FEDRA's oppressive brutality. But from his point of view, it's just another funny story — a chilling reminder of FEDRA's dehumanization of the QZ civilians.

For Peck, the key to getting in the soldier's mindset was thinking back to times when he and his friends shared stories of their own.

"Obviously, the subject matter is incredible intense and dark. I try not to judge the fact that this guy is getting a rise out of something pretty despicable. That doesn't serve me," Peck explained. "But what I can mine from my own life is telling a great story for me and my boys growing up, like something that tickles me still or a funny trip I can look back on. That's real, and the fact that this character is having that real moment about an experience that is totally unacceptable is not of my interest. I just need to make it personalized and connected to something that I genuinely get a kick out of."

Peck filmed the soldier's monologue for his audition tape. "It was a really great scene, and to [showrunner] Craig [Mazin's] credit, great writing," he said of the experience. "I had a great time making the tape, which is rare, because it's usually an agonizing time making an audition tape."

Peck also recalled worrying about how little the script changed from the audition to the shoot in Vancouver.

"I'll never forget, a day before filming my stomach dropped because I hadn't gotten any updates," Peck said. "In TV, over a month you can get six revisions, and on the day when you get there, they might say, 'We wrote all of this last night.'"

Not so for Peck's scene in The Last of Us. After double-checking with the assistant director that he hadn't missed any updates the night before shooting, Peck remembered meeting showrunner Craig Mazin on set. "He looked at me and was like, 'What if I had changed everything on you last night?'" Peck laughed.

Peck was in Vancouver for five days for the shoot, but learned nothing about the season beyond his own scene. Even the death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) came as a surprise to him when watching the show as it aired.

Another surprise for Peck? That he would be sharing the screen with Jeffrey Wright, who plays Washington Liberation Front (WLF) leader Isaac Dixon, something he learned when he saw Wright's headshot on set during a costume fitting.

"I was like, 'Oh damn,'" Peck recalled. "Jeffrey Wright is by far one of my favorite actors, from Broken Flowers to Basquiat, which is a movie that means so much to me. He's just one of our finest actors, and he couldn't have been a lovelier guy. Remember, we're spending like 10 hours doing this monologue over and over again, so eventually we would just start laughing about it, because it's an intense scene."

As Isaac, Wright ends up killing Peck's soldier — and the rest of his FEDRA squad — when he joins forces with the WLF. It's a brutal introduction not just to Isaac but to the world of Seattle, which Ellie (Bella Ramsey) enters in episode 4. And while the death of Peck's character means he won't be returning, he's very aware of the audience's love of the show.

"I want to stay away from the internet; I'm sure people are going to have opinions!" Peck laughed. "When you're entering into such a beloved thing, people are very protective of it, understandably. But I imagine it'll be a nice welcome."

New episodes of The Last of Us Season 2 premiere on HBO and Max Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.