The Times of Pedro Pascal
Whether it be the character of Whiskey in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, or Javi Gutierrez, in the recently-released The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, or even the rugged (yet deeply likeable) Joel in video-game-turned-TV-hit, The Last of Us; Pedro Pascal is, with hope of not sounding too obsessed, a goddamn legend. No actor has tapped into audiences as much as he has.
Born José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal in Santiago, Chile in 1975, Pascal was bred into hard-working, passionate stock. The son of a child psychologist mother and fertility doctor father, Pascal’s parents also fought boldly in the opposition movement of the then dictatorial government led by Augusto Pinochet. From a young age, Pascal was surrounded by various political figures, such as Chilean President Salvador Allende, whom his parents were proud supporters (and close associates) of. Pascal’s mum, Verónica was the cousin of Andrés Pascal Allende, the leader of the urban guerilla movement known as the Movement of the Revolutionary Left.
“It was the mid-’70s and my parents were young and liberal,” recalled Pascal in an interview with Orange Coast Magazine in 2014. “It was a dangerous time, and they were lucky they got out with their lives.”
As a way to keep the family safe amongst the political friction, when Pascal was but a wee nine-month-old baby, his family sought out political sanctuary in the Venezuelan Embassy in Santiago. Furthermore, the family then moved to Denmark where they lived in a community of Chilean exiles. They lived in Denmark only briefly, however, and the family moved yet again to the USA where they initially settled in San Antonio, Texas. His father had been offered a job over there, working as a tutor in medicine. Eventually, however, they ended up in Newport, Orange County in California. A family of travellers, some might say.
“It’s really strange to me when I think about it in retrospect,” Pascal told fashion and culture magazine, FLAUNT, “because, as a kid, that’s what was normal to me: a completely unsupervised childhood with socialist political refugees.”
It was in San Antonio that a key childhood ritual was implemented to Pascal by his parents. To offer their kids a stable-enough childhood, the entire family often went on outings to the local cinema multiple times a week.
“My dad was a doctor and he loved movies,” Pascal continued to FLAUNT. “He would take us to movies and [we would] watch loads of TV together as a family. That became my primary socialisation, and the cliché of my wanting to be in movies from childhood.”
There was one movie that was banned from the Balmaceda household, though; The Breakfast Club. The reason? The film centres around a group of kids that constantly complain about their mother and fathers. Pascal’s dad believed that that would cause him to become unruly, rebellious and anti-establishment.
Funnily enough, The Breakfast Club should’ve been the least of his father’s worries. As the cult-classic film was released two years before the Motion Picture Association started adding PG-13 ratings to its content, Pascal would leave his mum studying for a PhD at home (and looking after his new baby brother, Nicolás), and watch quite ‘adult’ films by himself, like horror classics, Poltergeist or Cujo. He even acted out specific scenes in his room as a kid from Poltergeist. Pascal remembered those times fondly in an interview with MySA in 2022. “I was able to say: ‘It’s PG, mum! Steven Spielberg’s name is on it!’”
As well as being a bit of a cinema nerd as he grew up, Pascal also tried to find his own clique by joining all the after-school groups he could. He participated in competitive swimming all the way up to his last year of primary school (even reaching a state championship in Texas, aged 11), yet stopped when he discovered an interest in drama and performing onstage. He played small parts in local productions in Costa Mesa and summertime acting programs.
“My mum didn’t put up much of a fight,” he recalled in an interview. “Anything to stop me from watching 13 hours of television a day.”
It was the passion he felt when he stepped on stage was nothing like anything he’d experienced before. Pascal insisted then, to his parents, that he switch schools to the Orange County School of Arts. His pleading was successful, after a few attempts at pulling on the familial heart-strings he attended the prestigious college, eventually graduating in the class of 1993. A year earlier, his young sister, Lux, was born and he decided to move to New York where he attended NYC’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Being in New York around this time and living so far apart from his family, Pascal developed a close relationship with recent LaGuardia High School graduates, a group that included fellow wannabe actor, Sarah Paulson.
It was this friendship that Pascal had with Paulson that really helped him through the early stages of being in New York. While he waited on tables with hopes that he’d land acting auditions, Sarah split her weekly pay with him to make sure he had enough to eat.
“There were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself,” Paulson told Esquire magazine in an interview earlier this year on the special friendship she has with Pascal. In ‘96 and ‘97 consecutively, with the help of Paulson, Pascal landed his first two screen roles in indie short-films, Burning Bridges and Window Shopping in which he was credited as Pascal Balmaceda.
In 2000, when Pascal was 24 years old, hustling his way through New York and trying to land another role, he unfortunately got news that his mum had sadly taken her own life. After her death, he changed his stage name to Pedro Pascal, to honour her.
“The circumstances of my mother’s death made it very hard for us to remember her as the person she was,” he told Spanish magazine, Paula, in 2017. “It hurts so much…Sometimes I feel anguished and I try to deal with it in the best possible way, because I know that my mother would not want me to do it any other way.”
It was at this stage in his life, with the death of his mum still weighing heavily on his mind, he chose to push through, tighten his bootstraps and he got to work going to every screen audition he could land. He had decided that New York wasn’t working for him anymore, so moved all the way to LA for a fresh start. The thrill of following his passion was what drove him, as well as the memory of his mum. His first role to land in LA was in late 1999 for the USA Network’s Tarantino’esk comedy sci-fi series, Good vs Evil, where he played Gregor New. Receiving positive reviews for that role, he started getting calls for more acting work. His first ‘big’ role was Eddie in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where he played an eager freshman. He proceeded to book an avalanche of different gigs, ranging from small ones to quite big roles. He appeared on award-winning police and law series, Law & Order (several times, might I add) and six episodes as assistant-state attorney Nathan Landry on The Good Wife, to name but a few. He even returned to the stage playing Phillip in the International City Theatre’s run of Orphans. For that role he was awarded the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and Garland Award.
After hustling for years, it was in 2013 that Pascal was catapulted into the TV limelight in a little micro-budget indie-franchise that no one has heard of—*cough, cough*.
He landed a dream role, nonetheless, in the fourth season of the hit HBO show, Game of Thrones, where he played the Red Viper, Prince Oberyn Martell. Luckily, Pascal was a massive fan of the book series before even hearing of the audition. After recording a pretty-average audition tape on his friend’s iPhone, where he had hardly any of the lines memorised, and sending off the tape to showrunners, David Benioff and D.B Weiss, he tapped the shoulder of Sarah Paulson who was close with Benioff’s wife, Amanda Peet. Paulson put in a good word for him, and Pascal (whether it be his average audition tape, or a word to the execs from Paulson) got the job.
“Game of Thrones was this incredible, ideal experience really of getting to play this beautifully written, iconic character, who has a big in and a big out in one very, very solid season of the series,” Pascal said to Entertainment Weekly last year. “All I can really say is, I had the time of my life and I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for that role.”
Though his character didn’t last long in the season, his willingness to offer audiences his showboat personality and unapologetic awesomeness really let Pascal own all the praise he was given over portraying the character. He went on to be nominated and received multiple awards for his job on the HBO-hit, such as the NewNowNext Award for Best New Television Actor, and, as part of the ensemble cast, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.
It’s with this role that Pascal became one of the hottest actors out. It just takes one good break, right?
Hot-off-the-heels of playing Oberyn, Pascal took up the character of DEA agent, Javier Peña in Netflix’s crime drama, Narcos. Set and filmed in Colombia, the series is based on the rise and fall of narcoterrorist and drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar. Narcos had three successful seasons and has won a raft of praise and awards. They were even thinking of creating a fourth, but Pascal respectfully bowed out after an unexpected event shook him to the core.
In 2017, Carlos Muños Portal, a Netflix location scout who was looking for places for the new series, was found dead in a remote location near the Hidalgo state border. A chilling message was sent to Netflix by Pablo Escobar’s brother, Roberto, instructing them to “take your little show down…” Pascal (because he’s a very smart man) decided to tap out. Regardless of the horrible death and threats from possibly one of the scariest men on the goddamn planet, Pablo owned the role and was given huge praise for it. He was even awarded the Imogen Prize for Best Actor in 2016.
That’s when the phone continued ringing for Pascal, with offers flooding in for film, TV and a couple more for stage. He even took his hand to script-writing, creating a play with comedian Sarah Silverman, Flaca Loves Bone. He lends his acting talents (even now) on stage in contemporary shows, as well as Shakespeare.
As well as being one of the best actors out, Pedro Pascal is also a deeply passionate activist for multiple causes. He is outwardly supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement, for which he is frequently seen attending various protests and rallies showing his support. Similarly, he posted on his social media when Roe V. Wade was overturned, advocating for access to abortions and women’s rights for all.
But it’s his devotion and personal connection to the LGBTQIA+ community that really hits home for him. His sister, Lux, publicly came out as transgender in February, 2021 and told Spanish magazine, Ya that “[Pascal] has been an important part of this. He is also an artist and has been a guide. He was one of the first people who gave me the things to form my identity.”
What a good sort. Shows that you don’t have to be in a galaxy far, far away to do the right thing for trans lives.
Talking about galaxies far, far away, it would almost be remiss not to mention the elephant in the room. Heralded as the role that offered him the meteoric fame he now enjoys, The Mandalorian was introduced to the world in 2019 to rapturous acclaim. Created by Jon Favreau for Disney+, Pascal made his name behind the mask of Din Djarin’s gleaming armour. According to online articles, Favreau had approached Pascal for the role, and his buddy, Oscar Isaac (who plays Poe Dameron in the Star Wars universe), urged him to accept the part.
The series, wildly successful, made an absolute goldmine for Disney+, and for Pascal too. The show has ranked up millions of dollars in profit, a whole raft of merchandise for the franchise and billions of minutes of airtime, an estimated 1.336 billion, and was named the most watched show of all time in the US in the first week.
It’s all part of Pascal’s charm; soft-spoken with a quiet gratitude for his art. The Mandalorian has been running successfully now for a total of three seasons, the latest dropping recently.
“I’m paralysed at the thought that five years have gone by,” Pascal joked in an interview. “And then pretty soon five more.”
The fact still stands, though, that The Mandalorian was a stunning character for him to play, and he certainly offered his whole being to the role.
The excitement of Pascal only grew, with him taking a role that has certainly cemented his place among the best in the business. Based on the mega-hit post-apocalyptic PlayStation game, The Last of Us hit streaming services worldwide earlier this year. Following the tough-guy survivor, Joel Miller (played by Pascal) as he escorts a teenage girl called Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey) across a zombie-filled America decimated by a fungal pandemic. As Joel and Ellie cross the putrid wasteland between Boston and Salt Lake City, they come across some terrifying characters. It depicts a world in which all of the surviving humans are doing anything they can to stay alive. Millions of viewers streamed in for the final episode of the first season—8.2 million, to be precise. Creators have even hinted that the series will “be around for a while”, meaning that potentially more seasons are planned, on top of the upcoming second and third.
As well as playing Joel in The Last of Us, we’re also seeing Pascal on screen alongside Nicholas Cage in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and are very excited for his upcoming projects, Strange Way of Life, alongside Ethan Hawk, and the two TV shows, Drive Away Dolls and Freaky Tales.
When you look at the trajectory of Pedro Pascal, you can’t help but be impressed. From escaping his home country at a young age, to moving to New York and hustling through as a struggling actor to now being one of the biggest stars of the planet, Pascal deserves his god-like status.
Whether it be tackling big film roles, to creating safe spaces for people, or changing the world for the better with activism, one thing holds true…Pascal deserves every success he’s getting.