Pedro Pascal talks being the “face” of Star Wars

Game of Thrones alum Pedro Pascal discusses his connection with his Mandalorian character, why he’s willing to hide his face for the role, and more.

Although he’d been working in TV and film for years beforehand, most people got to know Pedro Pascal thanks to his breakout role on Game of Thrones, where he played the swaggering Oberyn Martell, memorably dispatched by the Mountain in the show’s fourth season. According to showrunner David Benioff, he recorded his audition on an iPhone. “And this wasn’t one of the new-fangled iPhones with the fancy cameras,” Benioff told Variety. “It looked like shit; it was shot vertical; the whole thing was very amateurish. Except for the performance, which was intense and believable and just right.”

Thanks to that audition, Pascal got the part and proceeded to pretty much steal the season out from under more established players like Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister) and Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen). “I was between Charles Dance (Tywin) and Lena Headey (Cersei), with a view of the entire fucking set,” Pascal remembered of a scene in the Red Keep throne room. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t have an uncomfortable costume on. You know, I got to sit — and with this view. It strangely aligned itself with the kind of thinking I was developing as a child that, at that point, I was convinced was not happening.”

Since then, Pascal’s career has exploded, but before he got Game of Thrones, he was just a workaday actor who was starting to get frustrated with the kinds of parts he was being offered, many of which pigeon-holed him based on his Latin American heritage. (“It’s like, how many gang member roles am I going to be sent?”) Game of Thrones turned that around and made him a hot commodity. Turns in stuff like Netflix’s Narcos followed, and then, the big one: Jon Favreau hired him to play the title character in The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars series. “He feels very much like a classic movie star in his charm and his delivery,” Favreau said. “And he’s somebody who takes his craft very seriously.”

Based on that appraisal, Pascal is now basically the face of Star Wars…even though the role requires him to almost always conceal his face under a helmet, something a lot of actors wouldn’t do. And indeed, there were times in season 1, when he couldn’t be on set because he was working on Wonder Woman 1984, that Pascal got a little uncomfortable thinking about them shooting scenes using body doubles. “If there were more than just a couple of pages of a one-on-one scene, I did feel uneasy about not, in some instances, being able to totally author that,” he said. “But it was so easy in such a sort of practical and unexciting way for it to be up to them. When you’re dealing with a franchise as large as this, you are such a passenger to however they’re going to carve it out. It’s just so specific. It’s Star Wars.”

Pascal was on set far more for The Mandalorian season 2, which premieres at the end of this month, although he still sat out many of Mando’s stunts, which isn’t unusual.

Reading this interview, Pascal comes off as very humble — it even feels like he has a mild case of imposter syndrome and can’t believe all the success he’s having is real — which may also explain why he’s willing to cover up his face. When Variety suggested that he’s now the face of one of the biggest pop culture franchises in the world, he deflected. “I mean, come on, there isn’t a face!” he laughed. “If you want to say, ‘You’re the silhouette’ — which is also a team effort — then, yeah. Can we just cut the shit and talk about the Child [Baby Yoda]?”

I mean, yes, we can always talk about Baby Yoda, the breakout star of the show. “Literally, my eyes following left to right, up and down, and, boom, Baby Yoda close to the end of the first episode,” Pascal remembered. “That was when I was like, ‘Oh, yep, that’s a winner!’”

But then we have to come back to Pascal’s slight discomfort with his own fame and success. Interestingly, he said he identifies with Mando because he knows what it’s like to move around a lot (as a child, he moved with his family from Chile to several places in California) and not be willing to get overly attached to anything. “The transience is something that I’m incredibly familiar with, you know? Understanding the opportunity for complexity under all of the armor was not hard for me.”

At the same time, Pascal knows a good opportunity when he sees one, and got on board The Mandalorian as soon as he could. “I hope this doesn’t sound like me fashioning myself like I’m, you know, so smart, but I agreed to do this [show] because the impression I had when I had my first meeting was that this is the next big shit.”

Good call, that.

The Mandalorian season 2 premieres on October 30 and will run into December, when we’ll also get to see Pascal on the big screen as supervillain Max Lord in Wonder Woman 1984, currently scheduled to come out on Christmas Day. (Naturally, Pascal recalls being flabbergasted when director Patty Jenkins offered him the part, rather than making him audition for it.) Whereas Mando is very reserved, Max Lord is a loudmouth manipulator. Seeing these performances close together will give people an idea of Pascal’s huge range and could raise his profile even further, whether he wants it or not.

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