Now I love Pedro Pascal very dearly and Zodiac is one of my all-time favorite movies. But this latest development is taking things a little too far, even for me.
During the SAG-AFTRA Foundation virtual round table alongside Billy Crudup (The Morning Show), Matthew MacFadyen and Kieran Culkin from Succession, and moderated by Scott Mantz, Pascal shared his line-learning technique, revealing to the world the absolutely baffling way that he learns his lines.
“I bet I could find and show you the psychotic example, this physical example that I now have to do to learn my lines,” he said, looking around for paper evidence to out himself as the Zodiac Killer. Pascal revealed a line up of letters on a page that seem to make no sense to the naked eye but apparently help him learn his lines when necessary.
That looks decidedly like the letters that the Zodiac Killer used to send to California Bay Area newspapers about his killings. And Pascal did make a joke referencing as much, saying, “Basically, I’m the Unabomber.”
From there, Pascal went on to explain exactly how to solve his cipher. “You just use the first letter of each word and in kind of these sort of towers, these, columns, I guess,” he said. “It’s this very, very tedious way of making yourself learn the lines.” The reason for this apparently stems from Pascal forgetting a line while he was in Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theatre in 2014. Still … do we know where he was on December 20, 1968?
We have probably now found the Zodiac Killer
For decades, people have tried to figure out who the Zodiac Killer was. Sure, people think they know but no one knows for certain. Here is my theory: It is a title passed on generation by generation. There can only be one, it’s like the Highlander or a slayer like Buffy Summers.
Pascal, born in 1975, could have just been the next one chosen and he decided to use his cipher-making abilities to … memorize lines.
In theory, using a mnemonic method to memorize your lines isn’t the most outrageous thing to do. Especially when you’re trying to study William Shakespeare’s plays. But for film or TV, it seems like a very long process to memorize a line you have to say in a scene maybe 20 while filming. So I am leaning more towards Pedro Pascal just being the Zodiac Killer.
Even Kieran Culkin seemed to realize mid-chat what was happening.
It seemed that everyone online realized quickly that he was revealing his dark past.
After all, I would know. My favorite movie is Zodiac.
In all seriousness, actors do a lot of different things to learn lines. I just don’t think any of us have seen mnemonic memorization in action. That or Pascal really did commit those murders from 1968-1969, at least 6 years before he was born.
(featured image: screencap, YouTube)
