Nikolaj Coster-Waldau dodges question about playing Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us show

Fans think Game of Thrones veteran Nikolaj Coster-Waldau would make the perfect Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us show. Is he hinting that it’s happening…?

Game of Thrones veteran Nikolaj Coster-Waldau went on Reddit the other day for an Ask-Me-Anything. Mostly, he was there to talk about a new app called Dandi, which is designed to connect potential donees directly to non-profit organizations so the orgs can start doing good work with all deliberate speed, but a few other questions did come up.

We’ll start with the obvious: “Were you happy with how Game of Thrones ended?” one Redditor asked. Coster-Waldau simply responded, “YES.” Okay, case closed.

He was also asked about HBO’s The Last of Us, HBO’s upcoming adaptation of the popular zombie survival video game. The first game tells the story of Joel and Ellie, a man and young woman who have to make their way across a ruined, zombie-infested United States. There’s been a lot of talk about how Perfect Coster-Waldau would be as Joel, and one Redditor had to ask him about it:

"From Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s recent AMA. Looks like source material research to me. from TheLastOfUs2"

“Are you going to play Joel Miller in The Last of Us show?” the Redditor asked. “I remember lost of people thinking you’d be the perfect cast[ing choice] for him.”

Coster-Waldau’s response? “I just got part 2. What a great game.” Ooh, how intriguingly vague…

Honestly, the non-answer doesn’t have to mean much — as we said, Coster-Waldau was here to talk about Dandi, so maybe he wasn’t giving this question much thought. Still, he doesn’t strike me as a guy who plays a ton of video games, so picking up The Last of Us: Part 2 could mean that he’s doing research for a new role…

He also could have just not answered the question. I’m sure we’re all reading too much into this, but he would be perfect as Joel. He’s got the look:

The only thing better would be if he were paired with another Game of Thrones veteran as Ellie…

Anyway, onto Dandi, Coster-Waldau talked about how it’s designed to cut through the red tape of donating to worthy causes. “Today, the average reaction time for NGOs is ~60 days, due to slow disbursement of funding, and lots of manual bureaucracy,” he wrote. “NGOs have major bottlenecks in raising and receiving funds.”

"At Dandi, we can already reduce the process down to 2 days. We are committed to fast, transparent delivery of funds.Gauging impact is a complicated endeavor, that can be analyzed differently across different issues area/ and geographies. Long story short: It’s all about going local.At Dandi, we work a network of small-but-mighty LOCAL nonprofits. they know best what their communities need.Our goal is to accomplish both crisis-response, and address systemic-level change."

Dandi is launching in the US and hopes to expand from there. If you’d like to learn more, look it up on the App Store or visit its website.

Before we go, a couple of other fun quotes from the AMA:

• Q: “Do you, Pilou Asbaek, Mads Mikkelsen, and Viggo Mortensen all gather in secret to plot the gradual Danish takeover of Hollywood?” A: “Yes. It’s not gradual..!”
• Q: “Hi Nikolaj, What was you favorite memory/favorite scene to film in Game of Thrones?” A: “When my brother pulled me in close, and said: ‘I always knew it was you, Fredo.'”

Five points to name the refernce.

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