Showrunner Tasha Huo has always been a “Tomb Raider” fan. In fact, when she was a little girl, her mother told her to stop playing the video games and go outside. Instead, she continued to play in secret. So when Huo was approached by one of the producers for Netflix’s “Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft” after they saw her posts about “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” she was thrilled.
“I was really fascinated by what this woman’s daily life might be behind-the-scenes of going in and raiding tombs. What is she dealing with beyond that?” Huo told TheWrap.
Lara Croft was first introduced to the world in 1996 with the first “Tomb Raider” video game for the Sega Saturn. In the ensuing decades, the mythology and backstory around Lara have changed, but the central beats of her games have remained the same: Lara is a confident and quippy archaeologist-adventurer who solves puzzles, dodges obstacles and shoots nefarious crooks all in search of ancient artifacts.
The series showrunner, developer and executive producer noted that the “Survivor Trilogy” of games showed some of the “emotional distress” within the character, but she wanted to push beyond Lara’s action star exterior. “What are her friendships like? What is her relationship with her home? How does Lara drive a car down the street in Surrey?” Huo questioned. “It was really nice to be able to expand on the parts we don’t usually get to play in the games.”
This also meant diving deeper into Lara’s interpersonal dynamics. That plays out in the series as Lara desperately tries to protect her friends from the dangers that follow her and her line of work. But in Episode 4, “The Legend of Lara Croft” also touches on her romantic life. After reuniting with her longtime friend Camilla Roth (Zoe Boyle), the two have a conversation that wouldn’t feel out of place in a rom-com. The ensuing scenes involve Camilla asking Lara if she’s dating anyone and Lara talking to her friend while naked in a bath.
Though Huo did not comment on Lara’s sexuality, she noted that it was important to walk the fine line of making Lara feel like the sexual character she’s always been without defining her by her love life.
“[Her romantic life] never informed how she made decisions. It never made her emotionally distressed,” Huo said. “It’s a part of her life, and we can imagine that it is. But just like with any male action hero, that’s not what drives her on her day to day … she has a million other things she cares about before that. It was important to me that we see that she has a much fuller life than her romantic interests, particularly since she’s this badass female superhero.”
From the very beginning, Crystal Dynamics, the video game developer behind the “Tomb Raider” series, was involved in the project. Huo decided to use the “Survivor” trilogy of games as part of her Lara’s origin story. The last game in that trilogy, 2019’s “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” was the most recently released “Tomb Raider” game. “There are going to be future games ahead of us, so to be able to tell that in-between story was really appealing to me,” she explained.
When it came to finding her Lara Croft, Huo had only one name at the top of her list: “Agent Carter” and “Mission: Impossible” star Hayley Atwell.
“There’s a gravity to her, but also a levity at the exact right points, which to me, very much speaks to who Lara is,” Huo said. As she started working with Atwell more and more, she realized “she is Lara Croft in real life.”
“She’d come in and be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I did this stunt in real life just last week,” Huo said. “It was just such a pleasure. She’s awesome.”
As important as it was to land the perfect action heroine, Huo also knew it was vital to perfect the action of “The Legend of Lara Croft” itself. Every episode was intentionally outfitted with one big action set piece that is intended to feel organic to the episode’s environment. The animated series also tried to mimic the feeling of repeatedly trying and failing a challenge that is inherent to playing a video game. To do that, the team made sure to show Lara scrambling over falling ledges and barely making risky stunts.
“It’s similar to Indiana Jones. He’s not a perfect action hero, neither is Lara,” Huo said. “But what makes her amazing is she gets back up anyways. We definitely wanted to bake that into the action.”
“Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft” is now streaming on Netflix.
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