The enduring and beloved franchise Tomb Raider and its protagonist Lara Croft is heading in a fresh direction. After several video games and successful film takes, Netflix and Legendary Entertainment are bringing this adventurous world to animated form with Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Hayley Atwell steps into the role of famed explorer and archaeologist for an adventure that is unlike any other. A big reason for this is Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’s showrunner Tasha Huo, a major fan of the games who understands the intricacies of this universe. We caught up with Huo to talk about the show’s timeline, navigating other cultures, and humanizing this iconic heroine.
Nerdist: Tell us a little bit more about how this series fits into Tomb Raider‘s overall game universe and why this time period made sense.
Tasha Huo: This series takes place after the Survivor trilogy and really acts as a bridge between the origin story to the Lara that we fell in love with in the ‘90s when we first started picking up the games. That Lara was very quippy, very confident. I wanted to explore how she became that person.
And how do you think that this series will expand her as not only the heroine we know well but also as a human being?
Huo: That’s a great question. That was definitely a goal of mine. You can do that so much more in a TV show than you can necessarily do in a video game. And I think what we got in the Survivor game series was so much humanity from her that was very moving to me as a player, and surprising given the colder Lara that we met in the original series. So for me, it was really cool to be able to explore the more vulnerable aspects of her while still maintaining the strong superhero figure that she is.
Absolutely! After watching this series, I noticed that the storylines touch on grief and some of the tough emotions that a person must unwind in that space. Why did you want grief to play a role in this particular story?
Huo: Lara has been burdened with grief since the ‘90s, but I feel like she’s never fully gotten over it. And I wanted to move past it, to be honest, so that she could start working on other things, but it felt like we still had to address it. So in this first season, she is dealing with grief and we watch her power through to figure out how to become her best self after that so Lara can start working on other sh*t.
I look forward to her future! One of the tenets of Tomb Raider is seeing Lara Croft interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds. How did you strike that balance between maintaining her role as a hero while also exploring other cultures in a respectful way?
Huo: That’s a great question! I think one of the things I loved about the video games is how immersed you get in other cultures. I mean, they always would inspire me, at least in the Survivor series when we had finally had Google [for research]. Not so much in the early days when it was like, “Oh, what is this thing?” I was that player reading every single that you find and figuring out the history of it. Lara does embed herself in these cultures and it is a natural thing she does. While she may be our guide into it, I want people to feel like they’ve experienced another culture and then become curious about it. So please Google the stuff that you see and the same way we did in the Survivor series!
It’s cool to do that! And it is exciting that Hayley Atwell is portraying Lara Croft. What was your experience like working with her?
Huo: What’s great about Hayley is she knew who this character was. We had maybe a 10 or 15 minute conversation and she got it instantly. And a large part of that is because Lara is partly who Hayley is. Hayley has this incredible levity to her. She’s so naturally funny and buoyant, but on the other hand is a really deep thinker and is not only adventurous, but extremely dramatic and has that powerhouse spirit behind her, which is all the things that Lara is. She’s a perfect fit.
Well, she was also Agent Carter and those characters have some parallels, right?
Huo: Yes, exactly.
Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft hits Netflix on October 10.
Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks.