Pedro Pascal rewatches Materialists, The Last of Us, The Fantastic Four & more | Vanity Fair

Every time you say Fantastic Four, you have to go Fantastic Four! Hello, I'm Pedro Pascal. I am here to watch some scenes from my career. I have to look at myself, and you have to watch it with me. Wow, sorry. No, I wasn't looking. Did you, uh, lose your way? Oh, no, no, I'm just going to Fisher Hall, which I know is on the Earth planet. Recently voted most pathetic gal. Well, I'm lost, and I have a map. This is one of the biggest jobs I ever got in my life. Everybody was dying to be on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So when I got season four premiere episode, I couldn't believe it. I just knew how badly everybody wanted to get on this show. So freshly out of school to get on it, I was like, well, I'm shooting to the top. And then I died after one scene. And we shot it on the UCLA campus. It was a night shoot. I was actually doing a play in Long Beach, and I had to miss the opening night. An understudy had to learn the part in just a couple of days and go on for me, because there was no way I could say no to doing this. Well, I'll look for you in psych. Yeah, maybe we can help each other figure out what the hell they're talking about. Okay. Maybe even make it through the year. Good night. Sarah was amazing. She took very good care of me. She taught me tricks of the trade in a way, because I was one of the first on-camera jobs that I'd ever gotten. Tricks on how to kind of find your mark that I have kept with me to this day. She invited me, and she had her friends with her, and they had ice cream. And she was like, do you want some ice cream? And I got to have ice cream with her and her girlfriends. And it made me feel really special. Eddie, hey! Wait up. God, I was worried that something had happened to you, and of course it has, because you're a vampire. I love seeing that scene, because she's so good. There's just one I'm sorry that she has, and she has so much remorse that she had left me behind, and I got turned, and she couldn't save me. No wonder people were so obsessed with the show. She's so good. I'm sorry. I'm not. One of my early deaths. More to come. Don't leave me alone in this world. Never. Yeah, that's all me. Oh, gosh. We were in Dubrovnik. It was blazing, blazing hot. I had a double named Liang, and he was like a Wushu martial artist trained from the age of seven. I learned and practiced this fight more than I have any fight in my life, but the Jedi helicopter spins in the air? That's not me. But whenever you see my face, it is me. We shot this over a few days, actually. We shot this entire sequence in this kind of amphitheater that was part of an abandoned hotel in Dubrovnik. There were rock formations that just hit right up against the Adriatic Sea. I remember going for a swim, just jumping into the water at wrap as a gift to finishing the day. Hap Thor, gentle giant, so kind. Poor guy had to stay in that outfit. He was incredible. He was an actor and a stuntman and a strongman. After this came out, he became number one strongman in the world. He, like Sarah Michelle Gellar, gave me tricks of the trade in terms of how to keep my energy up, because if I got too fatigued, he had the person that was looking after him look after me, like, here, have a bite of this. Eat this banana now. People always looking after me. Take care of me. It's horrible. Those are my teeth flying. This is perverse. Yeah! That's disgusting. As violent as it looks, he was very gently pressing up against my eyes. You'd think that his entire weight would be on me with the costume. I didn't feel him at all. He held his weight. So we're really just acting there. The blood was really cool. They had tubing through his costume all the way to his thumbs, so they pumped fake blood. We shot in September, but it was still pretty hot, and the sun was just, like, blazing onto us all day. So this, like, cold blood was such a comfort. And then he smooshes my face. Did I smash your head in like this? Ew, that's not me. They had to kind of put, like, all of these different prosthetics and place them all over my face, and they were so cool to the touch, and then pumped blood that started to pool for this, like, wide shot from above. It was a game-changer. It's the reason that I'm here now, I think. I don't think I know. I still can't believe it happened that David Benioff, Dan Weiss, would take this chance. They could have had, I don't know, whoever they wanted, and that they actually paid attention to somebody who had a lot of, you know, regional theater, off-Broadway work, and episodic television on their resume to step into this kind of a part in the height of their popularity. And to this day, I kind of am indebted to them for my career. One of my best friends, Sarah Paulson, her best friend, Amanda Peet, had a lot to do with it because they put my audition tape in front of them. And the experience that I had in doing it, because I was such a fan of the show, it didn't even need to change anything for me, for it not to be as special as it was, because I was obsessed with the show, and then getting to go and be with this ensemble and on those locations, in a comfortable costume, and in a really good role. I could barely ******* believe what was happening to me, to be honest with you. I was sitting in the throne room during Tyrion's trial, and I had a view of everyone, and I was with all of these main players, and it was just nuts. This is sort of like the introduction episode of my character, and that's the incomparable beauty, Adriana, who's as talented as she is beautiful. What's interesting is that I think that this is sort of a moment that kind of defines the entire character of Peña to me. And it was funny because the director didn't want me to pick her up and take her out of there. He found it a little too heroic. He may have been right, but I remember finding Peña, the character, in that scene, and in that moment, and with Adriana, to be honest with you. We just had one episode together, and she plays a prostitute, and we're having sex, and I'm using her as an informant. She's brave enough to risk her life to get me information so that I can help get her out of there. All of that remorse, all of that complex morality, I don't know, just ask for forgiveness, to be honest with you, in an instant, just simply in just seconds. And that, to me, was sort of like the seed of the character throughout because nothing like that happens for me for the next three seasons. On the page, the character is like, you know, he's a DEA agent, and they're not really offering up a lot of nuance in terms of who the character is. So it was stuff like this, and moments like this with other actors where I was kind of like finding him and understanding the tone of which I would approach playing him. She going to be okay? Physically, yeah. Thankfully, I haven't got a ******* clue. Left behind on purpose. Look, man, if we're going to be partners, I don't get left behind. I didn't come all the way down here, Penny, to sit on the ******* sidelines. We were in Medellin, and that was also a night that I understood it was like the visual experience of this show was going to be unlike anything anyone's seen. And this was my lucky follow-up to Game of Thrones. This was the first job I got after Game of Thrones. I'm in all the way. Is that understood? Understood. I hope you know what that means. Boyd and I were in this together. Boyd was a leader for me in that once we signed on, he got in touch with me. He wanted to meet up early. It was his idea to go to Quantico together and meet the real guys that we were playing and go through a training experience. I didn't want to do any of that ----. I was afraid of all of it. I was very intimidated. And I was just like, I don't want to be around those guys. I didn't say that, but that's how I felt secretly. It wasn't thrilling to me at all, but it was incredibly thrilling to actually do it and to go and to be there and to be challenged in that way. And I turned out to be really, really good. I think that there's so much that goes into making this scene work. I think one is Ludwig Dornsen's score, which is so perfect. The puppet work is unbelievable on Grogu. And the other interesting thing is that Jon Favreau is so collaborative that I remember having a conversation and there was an episode, it was before this one, and maybe he'd already had this planned already, but I remember talking to Jon and saying, if there was a moment where I took off the helmet, I think we should really hold off and it should be because the child needs to see my face. Breaking the Creed completely just because I want to introduce my soul to Grogu. My idea was in a different spot, and then Jon ended up making it a much, much, much better part of the series. But I really felt heard and it was really special for it to become the moment that it became because it was somewhat of a collaborative thing. I knew it was Luke Skywalker. Who do you think you're talking to? Oh, I don't want to see it. No. Yeah, I could talk about it. This was one of the hardest and easiest, if that's possible to understand, one of the hardest and easiest days of work I've ever had. We did this scene all day long and I know that the context of things coming to an end as far as getting to play Joel alongside Ellie and then, of course, what the actual story is and the confession and all the walls coming down completely in front of Ellie and finally saying the words that have been impossible for Joel to say, telling the truth, basically. Recognizing the truth and recognizing that that truth will mean that Joel loses her, loses Ellie for good, but that he loves Ellie so much, he can't lie to her again. Making a cure would have killed you. Then I was supposed to die. That was my purpose. My life would have ******* mattered, but you took that from me. This was towards the end of all my shooting for The Last of Us and Bella and I, it was just really ******* intense. It was an easy day of shooting. We were beautifully taken care of by Neil Druckmann, who was directing the episode. Bella and I are like linked souls and this was the ultimate manifestation of that as scene partners on this porch. And so we took such good care of each other and just kind of lived in the pain of it the entire day. I remember just being absolutely emptied out by the end of that day. I would do it all over again. Because you're selfish. Because I love you. In a way you don't understand. The context of it was all in that I knew that it was ending, that my run on the show was coming to an end. And then you think about what the story is. It was just sort of like living the story out and having all of the nuance of what my relationship to my scene partner was in the experience of doing the show. And the idea of just hurting them, the idea of losing them, those things just broke my heart. It was a very surreal feeling of having the safety of this relationship and that safety kind of like opening all of the channels in your heart. That's how it felt. I don't know what the cut is, which is why I don't want to see it. I'm Harry. Lucy. You're the matchmaker. You're the brother. What are you doing at the singles table? My mother wants me to marry. There's a very, very big, what is that, lily on my corsage? It's a very big, it looks like a banana. Dakota is so beautiful. I have a hard time with this movie because I'm just like, who are you to talk to a woman as beautiful as that? I look at her. All I'd ever shot in New York City were Law & Order episodes, which was really, really cool because you'd be like in the middle of Central Park on a night, it's a nightmare if you describe it, but it's the middle of winter, freezing cold, and you're shooting in Central Park and you're a corpse or something. And in this, it was different. It was sort of like all of the movies that I had built so many dreams on were so New York City related. It drew me to go to school in New York, live the next 20 years of my life after I was 18 in New York City. And so this and the magic of being in a movie that, because we were in a hotel in Central Park South, it was the spring. I remember they were kind of like going for walks, getting grazed papaya and a soft serve and sitting in the park with Dakota, with my friend Coco, who did my beautiful hair. It was a very, very, very magical, magical time. I'm good friends with Dakota. She's an excellent scene partner. It's probably why the camera, why the shot will never get, would turn away from her. What's it like? What's what like? Being a matchmaker. It's like working at the morgue or an insurance company. Starting Materialist, I had gotten really injured and I was coming out of a very bad shoulder injury and being in a sling and shooting The Last of Us, because there was a strike that sort of really, really scrambled the schedule for a lot of people. And then a big injury for me that disrupted my life in a way that I hadn't expected. I'm a pretty fragile person. So I think that living with this kind of like pain, I got pretty sad. I was like, I don't feel ready to do this. I don't feel ready to play the catch of New York City. In that feeling, I realized that that was my throughway into the soul of the character who had this big secret, the perfect access to what his vulnerability actually is. I don't know if it works, but that was the only way I knew how to get through it. Do you want a drink? Sure. What do you want? Coke and beer. I didn't have a choice because I couldn't sort of lie my way out of where I was at. I had a harder time doing that than I had doing the porch scene, for example, in The Last of Us because, you know, to cross the floor of like a wedding reception and to be the guy who everyone's looking at, you know, it was so impossible for me to believe that it could be convincing. And I knew that I couldn't sort of bury the insecurity or the vulnerability. I wish I could compartmentalize better in life, but I don't know how. And so it was great to realize that that was the only way to understand the character was to not sort of like fake it. You're late. What do you mean? What do you mean, what do I mean? You're late for dinner. Yes, we are. You're late? I just said that. Are you pregnant? What? You're gonna be the best mom in the world. And you are gonna be the best dad. Just kidding. You are out of your depth. It's been a dream to join the MCU, and I think that to be invited into a family and to also just kind of step into what is an ensemble, the movie is called The Fantastic Four. And I pride myself on kind of being, I don't know, the funny guy on set, and I have to tell you, if there is a competition of who's funniest, who is smartest, and who is the most talented, I'm number four, and I'm not even being modest here. I have never been around such, how dare they? I've never been around such talented fuckers in my life. Joe is astonishing to me. Eben is one of the funniest. Eben to me is a writer in the way that his mind works and the zingers that just come out in conversation. And Vanessa Kirby is a force of nature, and she was a leader for me in terms of getting into material like this and making it and elevating it as much as we could and making our relationship as real as it could possibly be. I have no idea what they'll end up using, but what she and I put into it was really a marriage story for us in the most human way, keeping a family together, starting to expand on that family, the fear of that. Are you the protectors of this world? Yes, we are. Your planet is now marked for death. I'll confess, I didn't come at it with any sort of attempt at distinguishing it from previous authorships. I need all of the context and all of the information to kind of like, it's silly to use a word spiritually, but to spiritually kind of like enter into an experience because I can't compartmentalize. I need all of it to be, it's all happened. It's all been seen and done before by many, and so I want it to all kind of like be living in my, like, imagination. It's my fault. I stretched the bounds of space, and they heard. Are we safe? I don't know. Again, Coco Ulrich did my hair, slicked it, nailed it. Not a wig. My hair, my hair. Come on, Galactus. It has to be us. I did all my stretching for real. I credit the visionaries, costume designers, the production design, our DP, and then be held ultimately by the vision that Matt Shackman, our director, has for the telling of the story and the way that Kevin Feige has always hoped for the Fantastic Four to be seen. That is so much of the work because clearly the world is so unique and distinguished in its aesthetic. The theater of that is something to step into. I don't know if I'd do it well, but they had to keep on pulling me back from a very mid-Atlantic, early 60s kind of like talk. They had a dialect coach that was sort of going to help us into that kind of dialect, and I took to it so well. They were like, we actually, you're, you know, because I was like, well, welcome to the family, July 25th, summer 20, you know. And they were like, ah, talk more like yourself. And I had a hard time doing that because I was so into the era, which for me was something to step into rather than so that it's different than what we've seen before. I mean, I think that what they've created is something that we haven't seen. We will protect you. My feet. So maybe I just talked to your video. Ask where all your deputies went. Okay, well, why don't I just ask your governor about her little catch and release policy, okay? Because if it wasn't for that, maybe I could hold on to my deputies and the people we arrest. I know, I know. One of them was fired for excessive force and another one was forced to quit by a YouTube First Amendment auditor. Okay, yes, that is the same auditor that drove away your workplace department from handling fentanyl. This is one of the most exciting things I've ever done in my life. One, Ari, as a filmmaker for me, when I saw his first movie, it was a game changer for me and I think that it provided an experience of which I feel like I'm always sort of chasing because I had such magical experiences like as a kid and throughout my life seeing movies where you just start to kind of like dream of being a part of something like that or at least having that experience in the movie theater again. So one, getting to work with Ari was a dream. Getting to work with Joaquin was a dream. I'm going to make a better and stronger and more honest leader than you. So let's just let the voters decide. You're making a mistake. Is that why you ran here all panicked? I came to save you from embarrassment. Oh, gee whiz, I'm tearing up. I'm having, my voice is shaking a little bit. I'm having a visceral reaction because so much of what I've experienced is very different than the experience of shooting a scene like this because Ari would shoot it from start to finish and it was kind of a lengthier scene and it felt more like having a dance with another actor and that actor being Joaquin was just a very special experience for me and Ari would let us play it, would let us play it through and I remember there being this kind of like Prospero Tempest kind of storm that rolled in in the middle of shooting just like blowing everything everywhere and it just seemed like an otherworldly thing that was underlying the kind of like tension between the two characters and the joy that I felt by getting to work with Joaquin. I guess I just am like, I can't believe I'm in it. Thank you so much for watching. Did you really have to watch all of that as much as I did? Off.