Pedro Pascal
How great to be him
The fabulous actor known as Pedro Pascal lives a busy life as a beloved and bankable Hollywood star. His fans obsess over his every movement and coffee order and cry inconsolably when his characters meet a tragic end. He is the face that Chanel turn to when they want someone handsome and cultured to model their finest eyewear. What is particularly remarkable is that his big break only came in his late thirties. Prior to that he had been a struggling actor with a few minor TV parts, years working in regional theatres and a side hustle as a New York City waiter. His rise has been phenomenal but also steady, built on a number of roles both in television and film that have completely won over audiences. It’s also been aided by an easy-going and outspoken realness that comes from a life spent living mostly as a regular person. People love Pedro, and he gladly, calmly, accepts their adulation. He has arrived. And he is only just getting started.
From Fantastic Man n° 42 – 2026
Story by SEB EMINA
Photography by ETHAN JAMES GREEN
Styling by CARLOS NAZARIO
1. DEAR
Pedro – Hi Mingo, gorgeous honey. Sweetheart, huh? Oh, Mingo, you look great.
Seb – Who are you talking to?
P – My friend’s dog.
Pedro Pascal is in a sunny garden in Los Angeles. He has a slightly elongated chevron moustache and is wearing a white T-shirt with some sort of paper stuffed into the collar. Behind him, a hosepipe is hooped around a tap. In that Hollywood way, he resembles both himself and the sum of his roles. It’s the hair, the smile, the charisma, the intensity: he’s a bisexual warrior, a superhero dad, a DEA agent, a post-apocalyptic smuggler. He reaches up and removes the bits of paper in a series of quick, precise movements. “I was getting a haircut,” he says. “A dear friend of mine who lives here in LA has a very tiny window, because she’s very busy, so I had to come and steal her time.” He often uses that phrase: “dear friend.” You sense that he is an excellent friend. He’s in the top percentile of famous men and as far as I can gather is subject to a gruelling nonstop schedule, yet he seems so relaxed, and so happy to chat, that you could imagine he is, in fact, on holiday.
2. DEER
There is much talk, on the day we speak, about Pedro’s appearance in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show. Amid the wow-inducing, historic spectacle, our subject was glimpsed inside the convivial pink house – known as “La Casita” – that often appears at the rapper’s concerts. It was filled, as it tends to be, with people dancing energetically.
P – I wanted to participate in any way – literally a volunteer position, like serving coffee if needed – and I put the feelers out through people I work with. When it comes to representation synchronised with celebration there’s no one better than Benito at the moment, and that fills me with inspiration outside of just being super into his music. Then I went straight into shooting this project with Tony Gilroy named ‘Behemoth!’. I was on set every day, and if I wasn’t shooting, then I was in a cello lesson. Afterwards I was lamenting about not hearing back and I sent someone an email with a selfie of me sticking my tongue out, being, like, “It’s really me.” Within 25 minutes, they called me back and they were, like, “We want you to come to the show.”
S – Did you know what would happen when you got there?
P – I was under the impression that I would be in a suite. There was a dress code – “wear beige” – but I thought it was in case there’d be a photographer. So we’re up in the stands watching the game and somebody pulls me from my seat and takes me backstage and then there’s Cardi B and there’s Young Miko and Karol G and Jessica Alba. They do a wardrobe check and then they tell me, “Okay, so the vibe is: you’re dancing.” I started to realise right before they started, and I was, like, “It’s the Casita. I’m such a fucking idiot. Oh my god, I’m going to be in the Casita,” as I was being marched out into the field. So I think that’s why I seemed like a deer in headlights.
3. GEN X, TAIL END OF
As of last year, the following men, and everyone else born in 1975, have existed in the 21st century for longer than they did in the 20th: David Beckham, Tiger Woods, Jamie Oliver, Declan Donnelly, 50 Cent, Tobey Maguire, will.i.am, Pedro Pascal. By quite some margin, Pedro is the only man from that list whose years of being famous (12) are fewer than his years of not being famous (39).
During his non-famous period, Pedro worked as a waiter and/or bartender at various New York addresses such as Ruby Foo’s on Broadway, a legendary 300-seat pan-Asian restaurant; Flamingo East on Second Avenue, a restaurant and club that hosted LGBTQ parties including Chip Duckett’s ‘POP ROCKS!’ (Pedro bartended at the much-loved ‘Salon Wednesdays’); Time Cafe and Fez in the West Village, a hip restaurant with live music and a Moroccan-themed lounge (Pedro was fired from bartending in the latter); and a Cuban-Mexican place called Cafe Habana, on Elizabeth Street in Nolita, which is unfortunately the only member of this list that remains open. “That’s just to name a few,” he adds. “There are even more, if you can believe it.”
4. ALREADY BAKED
S – You rose to fame relatively late in your career arc. Has that ever resulted in you suffering from some kind of imposter syndrome?
P – I think there are two ways of looking at it. There’s a universal feeling of imposter syndrome that we all can experience when we’re being unkind to ourselves, especially if it’s somehow uncomfortable to get what you want. Then the kinder side of it is that, as old as I feel, and as silly as some of it can be – because of “What is a 50-year-old man doing dancing in La Casita?” – I’m incredibly grateful for having been a fully developed character before experiencing any kind of large-scale exposure. I’m kind of out of the oven, already baked. I was 38 years old when I got the part of Oberyn Martell. I’d already been part of a theatre community for years and years. It saved my creative soul. Ten years of working at different restaurants, and just cutting my teeth. Twenty years working regionally in theatre, doing episodic television. Whether I liked it or not, these things were in place for me. And that doesn’t mean, “Hey, this is great because I know who I am and I love who I am.” It’s not that simple. It’s more like, “Whether I like it or not, I am who I am.”
S – Was it really as sudden as the picture that others have painted? Or did you have levels of success that you hit? I mean, was there a time when you could finally support yourself just from acting? Was that a kind of success as well?
P – It was paycheque to paycheque, but the theatre work became somewhat consistent for a few years. And then you always felt like it was this enormous score if you got an episode of ‘Law & Order’ or something. I was scraping by. I got bailed out a lot over the years by my sister and friends. But the big change really was with ‘Game of Thrones’, and then I’ve been just ridiculously fortunate to follow it up with something like ‘Narcos’ and the early period of original content coming out of Netflix, and then ‘The Mandalorian’, which was a whole other level, and then ‘The Last of Us’, which was a planet-sized gift.
5. THE GLORY THAT WAS
In the period 2006–2011, Pedro played four different characters in the extended Law & Order universe…
‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’
Season 6, Episode 10: ‘Weeping Willow’
Aired: 28 November 2006
Pedro is Reggie Luckman, an actor involved in a fake kidnapping plot who has voluminous hair parted at the side.
‘Law & Order’
Season 18, Episode 10: ‘Tango’
Aired: 27 February 2008
Pedro is Tito Cabassa, a thug and criminal. He’s wearing a black leather jacket and has short hair in a sort of basin haircut with sideburns.
‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’
Season 8, Episode 8: ‘The Glory That Was’
Aired: 14 June 2009
Pedro is Kevin “Kip” Green, a publicist entangled in a sex-tape blackmail case. He’s wearing a black blazer over a blue V-neck jumper, with swept-back, well-coiffed hair.
‘Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’
Season 12, Episode 24: ‘Smoked’
Aired: 18 May 2011
Pedro is Greer, a corrupt officer at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He’s wearing a light-blue shirt, a stripy tie, smart camel trousers and a service weapon.
6. STYLING AND GROOMING
Pedro’s red carpet looks can be offbeat, subversive or hallucinatory. He wore oversized trousers with a black Dior suit at the Cannes premier of ‘Eddington’, in which he plays a Covid-era mayor, and a polka-dot jacquard blouse at the Berlin premiere of ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’, where he’s the clever but stretchy Mr. Fantastic. After taking a fall at his father’s house in Chile, Pedro appeared at a spree of award ceremonies with an arm in a sling that perfectly matched the rest of his outfit. “Mr. Pascal has incorporated the sling into his overall look, turning medical equipment into a distinctive accessory,” observed a ‘New York Times’ report in January of 2024.
Lately, Pedro has been inducted into the rarefied world of male Chanel ambassadors. But what’s his relationship with clothes in general? “I think in my day-to-day I cycle between five T-shirts and I’m still pretending like it’s lockdown,” he says. “But I’m learning, and you know what? It’s never too late to learn. I love to look at a rack and I love to collaborate. I have a big eye for how I want to express myself when it comes to anything that is going to have exposure.”
Pedro’s career turning point coincided exactly with the arrival of his trademark moustache. It makes you wonder: might a person drift through life never quite realising their ultimate facial-hair setup? Not to doubt Pedro’s acting talent as the key of all factors, but when you look at his earlier work in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or ‘The Good Wife’ or ‘NYPD Blue’, it’s a very much less defined brand of masculinity on display. “I’d never had the courage to sport facial hair of any kind because I felt like I grew such weak facial hair. To this day, I can’t grow a proper beard,” he says. “The role where I was assisted with specific facial-hair grooming was that of Oberyn Martell. Then came ‘Narcos’, in which I felt like a moustache was completely fitting for the period. So now I sort of cling a little to the vanity of having some definition in the face with my very weak, patchy facial hair. But if the role calls for it, it can all disappear.”
Pedro is interesting in the shower as well. “I can’t finish one without making it freezing for two minutes,” he says.
7. THE WAY I WAS RAISED
Pedro was born in Santiago, Chile in the early days of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. With his parents having been listed as enemies of the state, the family fled when he was nine months old, settling in San Antonio, Texas and then later in Orange County, California. Pedro’s mother died when he was 24; he has a tattoo of her signature on his wrist. Two of his three siblings also work in show business: Javiera Balmaceda is a producer, and Lux Pascal is an actor (Lux came out as transgender in 2021). Pedro is open about his progressive politics and has no qualms about using his platform to talk about issues including ICE, Palestine, trans rights or indeed the political situation in Chile. “I think staying quiet is the harder path. I would have too hard of a time living with myself,” he says. “It’s the way I was raised. Decency and compassion. The idea of the vulnerable being scapegoated and terrorised in this way is unspeakably painful.”
8. ADDITIONAL INFO
Immediately before this interview, Pedro was listening to ‘The Piano: Music from the Motion Picture’ by Michael Nyman. The last book he read was ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ by Barbara Kingsolver. The last meal he enjoyed intensely was a Shake Shack double cheeseburger and cheese fries. He has a conflicted passion for rollercoasters: “I hate the idea of getting hurt and yet I love daredevil-y experiences. I just don’t want it to come with bruises of any kind.”
9. COMING ATTRACTIONS
Not long before we speak, an announcement is made: Pedro will star alongside Danny Ramirez in ‘De Noche’, a gay romance directed by Todd Haynes that follows “two men in love who leave Los Angeles for Mexico in the 1930s.” The shooting of that film is looming, as is promoting ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’, the movie spin-off of the popular Star Wars TV franchise.
About the aforementioned ‘Behemoth!’ not much is known besides what Pedro tells me here.
S – Why were you taking cello lessons?
P – Because in ‘Behemoth!’ I play a cellist. It’s an incredible love letter to music and – in my own personal interpretation – to how, if you’re listening, your own life experience is its own piece of music. It’s the highs, the lows, the flourishes – the moments of paralysis and development, of forwards and backwards and the “Where is this going?” and “How is this going to end?” experience of music that is life.
S – With ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’, is there a memory or a moment that encapsulates the experience of shooting that film?
P – I got to be in water more than I ever have been on a set. Some people would think that would be hell, but I quite loved it. I’m more comfortable in water than I am on the land.
S – What can you tell me about your character in ‘De Noche’?
P – He’s a homicide detective in 1938, Los Angeles, one would assume a World War I veteran. And the one thing I’ll share, because I hate the idea of spoiling anything or shaping any particular expectation, is that one of my favourite movies is ‘Chinatown’, and the idea of stepping into a genre I identify as neo-noir, under a lens like Todd’s, is just total fantasy fulfilment. I think the underbelly portrayed in this genre, its otherness, its dangerous atmosphere – how it’s almost like the oxygen that everyone is breathing is heightened with danger – is fascinating.
10. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
Something has been seriously gnawing at me for the duration of the interview and is yet to be addressed. I am talking to the man who plays Mr. Fantastic, in a film called ‘The Fantastic Four’, for the pages of the magazine Fantastic Man.
S – When you think about the word “fantastic,” what springs to mind?
P – I think fantastic is a great word. It’s rarely used in a way that has a double meaning. I find the pure enthusiasm behind it innocent and beautiful.
Photographic assistance by Jeremy Gould, Kaitlin Tucker and Geoffrey Leung. Styling assistance by Marti Serra, Christopher Contaldi and Cassie Jekanoski. Grooming by Coco Ullrich at A-Frame Agency. Manicurist: Elina Ogawa at Bridge Artists. Tailoring by Thao Huynh. Set design by Gerard Santos at Lalaland Artists. Production by Day International.