In his 2023 Saturday Night Live monologue, Pedro Pascal stated “I was born in Chile, and nine months later, my parents fled Pinochet and brought me and my sister to the U.S. They were so brave, and without them, I wouldn’t be here in this wonderful country, and I certainly wouldn’t be standing here with you all tonight.” In an earlier interview, Pascal reflected on his experience growing up as an immigrant between two worlds, saying “Everywhere is home and nowhere is home. But that also still feels like a good thing to me. It’s often framed as a disadvantage in our culture, but it’s an advantage in character, and in perspective, and in outlook.”
Pascal would use that outlook as he pursued acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His career started out with a number of small parts in television — but it wasn’t easy. Of that time, Pascal recalled “I was consistently working, and it was a total struggle in such a typical way, but there was always somebody that would be able to bail me out — to help me pay my rent or help me get groceries.” His big break wouldn’t come until he landed the part of Oberyn Martell in HBO’s Game of Thrones. He would then go on to play a string of high-profile roles, including the titular character in Disney+’s Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian and Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us. Although he frequently plays heroic characters, in a recent interview he reminded us that “there’s so many ways to misunderstand people and to forget that, at the end of the day, your neighbor is very likely to give you the shirt off their own back.… I just remember that everybody I come in contact with is sort of, in their own way, heroically kind.”
Instagram: @pascalispunk
