It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I love Pedro Pascal. I have an entire podcast dedicated to him and his work. But with each new profile I read about him, the more I’m obsessed—just like the rest of the internet. This morning, Esquire dropped a piece that features Pascal talking about The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, his upcoming work in the movie A Strange Way of Life, and his rise to fame.
It also came with a series of pictures that has promptly broken the internet. And I cannot blame them. I woke up this morning, saw the picture of Pedro Pascal getting out of a car and screamed “ARMS” to my roommate. So we started this day off with a heavy dose of “Oh no, Pedro Pascal is very hot” and what’s better than that? Not coffee, that’s for sure.
The conversation in Esquire is very much an honest one, with Pascal talking about navigating being in his forties without a set home due to his busy schedule. “I had a moment of thinking, You’re in your forties and you don’t own a home? Grow up. But I’m relinquishing expectations around what it is to be middle-aged and what it means to be fully grown up,” he says. “Why am I trying to force a square shape into a triangle?”
The piece also includes quotes from Pascal’s friends, like Oscar Isaac talking about Pascal’s episode of Saturday Night Live and how good it was. “Anybody who watched that episode,” says Isaac. “I mean, how could you not just fall in love with him? I think that’s why there’s so much goodwill, because you can feel that big heart bursting inside that chest of his.”
But what I loved about it the most was how personal Pascal gets about his family.
Let me guide you to the Purple Rain
If you’re a fan of Pascal, you know he loves Prince. It’s just par for the course. It’s funny because at the very same restaurant where Esquire‘s interview with Pascal took place, I struggled picking between a Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, or Prince song. Because I myself saw Purple Rain at much too young of an age and was ushered into a love of Prince and his music.
Pascal talks about his parents taking him to see the movie when he was younger (it was released in 1984, making Pascal only nine years old, and honestly older than I was when I first saw it) and what it meant to them. “My mother had too restless a mind for that, an artist’s mind,” he says, “but in that theater, she fell in love with Prince.” Which, of course, ushered in Pascal’s own love of Prince.
He also talks about The Big Chill, another movie I saw at much too young an age, but one that I related to because my father was obsessed with it—to the point that we played “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones at his funeral because of it. “I saw The Big Chill,” Pascal explains, “and there was this joke about herpes, which I had no idea what that was, but everyone laughed, so I laughed. You want to keep up.”
A great brother
We all know that family means a lot to Pedro Pascal, and in this piece he talks about his sisters and his young brother, their dynamic as a family, and how they were all heading to New York to see Lux Pascal perform and graduate! But when asked how Lux Pascal feels about this horrific time for the trans community, the interviewer refers to “this time” in a general sense, but Pascal knows what is being asked and he has the perfect response.
“I wouldn’t want to speak on her behalf,” he says. “But she is and has always been one of the most powerful people and personalities I’ve ever known. My protective side is lethal, but I need her more than she needs me.”
It shows Pascal’s protectiveness, his willingness to let his siblings speak for themselves, and why he is in many ways a very loud and vocal ally to the trans community. And that’s something many fans find solace in.
Another day, another chance for Pedro Pascal to break the internet
The interview is a very personal one and Pascal is really open about everything he discusses. Then came the pictures. From a fur coat with a white tank top to full arms-out getting out of a truck, the photoshoot effectively drove fans to this beautiful profile of an actor we all know and love. And helped in the breaking of the internet:
The entire profile is a beautiful example of why we love Pedro Pascal. And it’s one we’re going to think about for quite a while. Especially the arm freckles. Sorry, I’m not okay.
(featured image: Albert L. Ortega, Getty Images)
