Issue 27: The Year of Pedro Pascal

He’s everywhere, we all love him, and he’s here to let you know why.

Where did you first see Pedro Pascal? I think it was Game of Thrones for me, where he stole every scene he was in as Oberyn Martell, although I also recognized him in Narcos, which my dad watched religiously. Wherever you first spotted him, the chances are you've seen him in a dozen things since, for this is truly the era of José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal. He's the Mandalorian, Reed Richards, and Joel Miller. He's worked with Pedro Almodovar, Barry Jenkins, Ridley Scott, and Ari Aster. This year alone, he's headlined three Summer movies and a smash hit HBO series. Truly, he is everywhere, and it is wonderful.

Vanity Fair. "Everyone Wants a Piece of Pedro Pascal." June 24, 2025. Karen Valby.

(I volunteer as crowdsurfing hands. Image via Vanity Fair.)

Of course Vanity Fair had to put Pascal on their cover for this season, since he’s the patron saint of Summer 2025. He had three films in theatres at once: the romantic drama Materialists, the COVID Western Eddington, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, arguably the first movie to truly nail Marvel’s first family. On TV, there was the second season of The Last of Us, wherein his character was (spoiler) killed off, shocking everyone who hadn’t played the game. Pascal is now an undisputed megastar, and it’s happening to him as he turns 50.

For people in the industry, this was a long time coming. Pascal has been working consistently since the mid-90s, largely on stage and in minor TV roles you may have a passing memory of (Buffy?!) As Robert Downey Jr. puts it, “Pascal’s slow trajectory to becoming a household name who is on a wildly hot streak kind of reaffirms my faith in our industry.”

For Pascal, it was a long and fraught road to the top. In this piece, he talks of his "give up" years when he couldn't pay the bills and had to borrow money from family and friends, including Sarah Paulson. “Past 29 without a career meant that it was over, definitely.” The acting world is generally kinder to men than women when they get over 30 but there's still this sense that one has to break out as early as possible. Those grizzled character actors had to put in a few decades of work before they reached that point. Pascal was cute but a little gangly, and not easily shoehorned into the young actor types of the moment. Could he have taken on Leo for those floppy-haired darling roles? Would he have been allowed to audition?

The Vanity Fair piece portrays Pascal as a classic people pleaser who wants to make those around him feel comfortable. He and the writer bond over the shared tragedy of their mothers both having died by suicide. “Whether we like it or not, we’re bonded,” he says, holding her hand. It reads as totally sincere. Certainly, the writer never doubts his earnestness or makes it seem unusual. Pascal is open about being bullied as a kid and finding solace in both his family and films. He laughs at himself while describing his struggles with insomnia, calling it "f*cking pretentious" when he notes how he was "at this crossroads of coming into an understanding of what an unjust world we live in." He cries thinking about his late dog, Gretta, then laughs it off. Frankly, Pedro seems like a good hang.

Pascal rejects the notion that he is private, saying, "I'm very unprivate in my private life", but admits that he keeps some things out of the limelight because "I just know that personal relationships are such a complex thing to navigate even without having this enormous lens on them.” You see his unprivate drive at play in his politics, which he talks about a lot on his Instagram page. "Listen, I want to protect the people I love. But it goes beyond that. Bullies make me fucking sick.” Amen, Pedro.

He’s open about pretty much everything aside from his love life (which, you know.) One area of particular candour is over his age. He worries that his body is failing him right at he’s become a major star and the demands of an action performer are placed on his dislocated shoulder. He’d injured his back on the set of Gladiator II then got that shoulder injury after falling down the stairs. When he started filming Materialists, "It was the oldest I’d ever felt in life,” he admits. “I can’t believe how ageist my interview is going to be, but it’s what I’m living!”

I feel like we don’t hear a lot of men in Hollywood talking about ageing in this manner. Tom Cruise is still pretending he’s 34 and we keep pairing off these middle-aged men with women in their early 20s. Dwayne Johnson’s muscles have only gotten bigger in his 50s, which he maintains is evidence of his ceaseless work effort (uh huh, okay.) Cinematic masculinity is largely defined by this seemingly contradictory combination of uber-macho hustle culture and debonair effortlessness: you have to show off how hard it is to stay on top but never acknowledge how the passage of time impacts you. Stay fit, don’t get old. So, I dig Pascal being so vulnerable in admitting he’s worried about living up to the stresses of the leading man when he’s now half a century old. Again, this is why we love him. Imagine if he was constantly posting inspirational gym-bro crap.

I recently wrote a piece for The Daily Beast on why I think Pascal has become so beloved. To me, it felt like Pascal embodied a positive kind of modern manhood that we sorely craved in the era of Trump, Tate, and the manosphere. I feel like this profile only confirms my theory. Spike Jonze says of Pascal, “I think that he’s what we want in masculinity.” Vanessa Kirby talks of his "immense vulnerability." A New Yorker cartoon featured a therapist reassuring his client, “It’s not strange at all—lately, a lot of people are reporting that their faith in humanity is riding entirely on whether or not Pedro Pascal is as nice as he seems.” To which Bella Ramsey says, "I'm relieved for humanity."

It's not just that he’s a nice guy. It’s that he’s a middle-aged Chilean-American actor who wears thigh-high boots, dances with drag queens, and calls J.K. Rowling’s transphobia “heinous loser behaviour.” It’s that he so publicly loves and supports his trans sister and enjoys the company of his female friends. It’s that he’s funny, enjoying his fame, and not being shy about how difficult some of it is. It’s that he took the daddy nickname and ran with it.

This piece came out before the blatantly fake “backlash” towards Pascal was drummed up by the usual suspects, but does mention the out-of-context moment with Kirby that these losers tried to make a thing. All of the aforementioned qualities are why he was so obviously targeted by right-wing weirdos who were hoping to do to him what they’d done to so many women. Their tactic involved smearing him as a sexual harasser who uses his anxieties as an excuse to touch women who do not consent. This was refuted almost immediately by screeds of evidence, offering a satisfying moment where a smear campaign didn’t work. Nobody bought it because the “smoking guns” were nonsense, but also because everyone knew why Pascal had been targeted. Oh, the most famous leading man of the moment isn’t a hateful bigot and women actually enjoy being around him? Exterminate!

I don’t usually cover profiles this recent on the Gossip Reading Club but Pascal is such a cultural touchstone of this very odd year that I felt the need to delve deeper here. It’s rare that we get a celebrity this famous with a seemingly universal fanbase, and one who wears their heart on their sleeve so thoroughly. He’s not hiding his politics or being quashed by some harried publicist demanding he stick to Disney’s demands. Losers tried to get people to turn against him and everyone said, “Dude, piss off.” Then he went back to mocking them in the comments of his Instagram account.

It's always dangerous to put so much pressure on the shoulders of a celebrity, especially a male one (let’s be honest.) I imagine Pascal himself feels the burden of being that New Yorker cartoon writ large. Still, it’s all too easy to fall for him because he feels like the right man for the right time. So much about Pedro Pascal’s life and career feels like a win for the good guy. Why wouldn’t we want to root for someone who seems so grateful for what he’s received? If daddy is a state of mind, then so is stardom, and Pedro is the star we’ve craved for so long.

But admit it, you like the daddy stuff too.

(Image via Tumblr.)

Thanks for reading. You can find my other work scattered across the internet. Over on Pajiba, I reviewed the new Naked Gun movie and for the AV Club, I delved into the evolution of COVID cinema in the lead-up to Eddington.

If you like to listen to the dulcet tones of my very shrill voice, you can hear me on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast, where I talked to Sarah Wendell about the ways that Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series has taken over modern crime fiction. Subscribe to her Patreon, and you can hear an extra episode wherein we talked more about pop culture, gossip, and the kind of stuff I write about here. British subscribers can hear me on the BBC Radio 4 show Screenshot, where I talked to Ellen E. Jones about Scotland in film.

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