AS leading man Joel in TV sci-fi phenomenon The Last Of Us, Pedro Pascal has become a global star, with millions of adoring young fans naming him their “ultimate daddy”.
The Sky Atlantic show’s much-anticipated finale tonight sees his career reach a new high at the age of 47, after years of rather less exalted acting roles.
Which is why Pedro never begrudges the attention of selfie-hunting fans who until recently used to ignore him when he was out and about with more famous acting pals.
He said: “I would hold the camera so often for people. I would be taking the picture for you guys. I got a more intimate impression of that type of attention.
“But it’s been nothing but positive. It’s opened doors for me that had been closed for many years.”
Not that his career had exactly stalled before The Last Of Us— with roles in hit shows such as 2015 drugs drama Narcos and the lead role in Star Wars telly spin-off The Mandalorian since 2019.
But since fronting The Last Of Us, which is already getting a second series, Pedro’s fame among teenagers and twentysomethings has reached a whole new level, stemming from the fact that the show is adapted from a hit video game.
His online moniker as “The Daddy” refers to the young devotees who want him as their adoptive parent, just like his heroic character Joel is to young girl Ellie, played by British actor Bella Ramsey.
The Last Of Us, which was released in January, sees Joel and Ellie in a post-apocalyptic world where a fungus has infected billions of humans, turning them into killer zombies.
In the process, Pedro has also been turned into an international heart-throb, with his Instagram followers hitting 5.7million.
He laughs it off, preferring to point out that his rugged features were once described as “looking like Orlando Bloom if he’d been hit in the face by a shovel”.
His humility may be due to the fact that he only got his big break aged 39, playing bisexual action man Oberyn Martell in Game Of Thrones in 2014, and it’s fair to say he had not enjoyed the same smooth start to life that many of his privileged acting peers had enjoyed.
He was born Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal in Chile, under the regime of military dictator Augusto Pinochet, and his family had to flee the country because they were socialists who were related to Pinochet’s opponents.
In an interview Pedro recalled his father, fertility expert Dr Jose Balmaceda, telling him of the violent political struggle in Chile that saw them running for their lives.
He said: “There was a priest who had been shot in the leg who was brought to my mum and dad’s house.
“My father took him in, hid him for a few days and patched up his leg. I was a baby, my sister was just three and she says she has a vague memory of being really angry that our parents had put strangers’ s**t in her bedroom, including guns.
“The priest was taken into custody and tortured. He gave names and they went looking for my father at the hospital he worked at.
“By chance it got to him that they were downstairs, asking where to find Dr Balmaceda. My father sneaks out the back and gets my mum, his sister gets my sister and me.
“Their only option is to go into hiding, which they do for about six months, and they end up sneaking into the Venezuelan embassy and sought asylum.”
From there the family were given refuge in Denmark, then the US, where Pedro has mostly lived since. As a “foreigner” at school he suffered years of bullying. But it partly spurred him on to become an actor.
He said: “I didn’t fit in and it was pretty lonely. The way that I was occupying my time, I started reading plays and renting the classics.”
Pedro’s mother Veronica, a child psychologist, fully supported his ambition to be an actor, but when he was 24, and yet to hit the big time, she took her own life.
Violent struggle
He said: “She was always incredibly supportive, never a stage mom. I always felt like she knew something that I didn’t. None of my success would be real if it weren’t for her.”
As a mark of respect he chose his mother’s maiden name, Pascal, as his stage name. He added: “She was the love of my life.”
After her death it took another 15 years to get his big break, and during that time he took on all kinds of jobs — so now his CV ranges from waitering, which he admits he was terrible at, to go-go dancing in platform trainers and silver hair in nightclubs in Madrid, Spain.
Even when his acting career got started he mainly had smaller TV roles, from Buffy The Vampire Slayer to The Good Wife and Law & Order.
Pedro admits he started to make alternative plans when he didn’t get enough roles, or found himself pigeon-holed because he was Latino. But he had no Plan B.
He said: “There were moments where I actually, truly, did formulate what I would do. You would start to put a fantasy together.
“You would call it ‘the fantasy’ but really what it felt like at the time were practical plans. I never knew what I could fall back on because we (actors) are stupid — we don’t have any skills.”
Fortunately the role in Game Of Thrones came along, which led to him being cast in Narcos, as well as the movies The Great Wall in 2016, Kingsman: The Golden Circle in 2017 and 2020’s Wonder Woman 1984.
The latter was filmed in London, which has become a virtual second home for Pedro. Not only did he befriend a string of British actors on Game Of Thrones — including Kit Harington and Sophie Turner— he has now made another pal with his Last Of Us co-star Bella Ramsey.
He has also been spotted enjoying curries in the capital’s East End with Jon Favreau, the big-shot exec producer, director and actor who signed Pedro for The Mandalorian, which helped Disney+ attract 26.5million subscribers in its first six weeks in 2019 and is about to start filming its fourth series.
Pedro was also in London when he found he had got the part in The Last Of Us — but nearly didn’t realise.
He recalled: “It was really late. I’ve got to get up in the morning, so I take a sleeping tablet. But I get a call, and I get told that I got the job after I took the tablet.
“So I was excited, I guess, but I didn’t remember.
“The first thing that occurred to me was like, ‘Oh man, I really want that job. I’m in London, they’re in LA. I’m going to wait by the phone all day long’.
“When I looked at my phone I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I got the job!’ ”
Pedro has become a social media sensation thanks to posting self-deprecating videos of himself messing around, singing and dancing, as well as taking part in sketches for US TV’s Saturday Night Live, lampooning his heart-throb status.
But despite his modesty he is hugely respected within the industry, which is why he is about to make a Pedro Almodovar movie and is rumoured to be joining the Marvel film franchise as well.
Pedro uses his profile for good too, supporting LGBTQ+ issues, particularly after his sister, Lux, came out as trans two years ago.
He said: “My entire heart is set on the marginalised underdog. It’s not a choice. Like, how dare anyone not support the people that are deserving of support, and are deserving of protection and need more of it than you do.”
The only issue for Pedro’s career now is the fact that he often plays characters who get killed off early.
He said: “I always die, in everything. Even to this day, all these years later, I still die.”
Fans of The Last Of Us will be hoping his luck has finally changed.
- The finale of The Last Of Us is on Sky Atlantic tonight at 9pm
David’s deadly fungus
THE video game The Last Of Us is based on was inspired by a documentary by Sir David Attenborough in which a fungus, cordyceps, invades the brains of ants.
The edition of Planet Earth in 2006 showed it taking control of their bodies, forcing them to climb to a vantage point from where the fungus spores can burst out of the insect and spread over the forest floor.
The creators of the 2013 game watched the programme in horrified fascination – and The Last Of Us was born, in game form, and later as the mega-hit drama.
The story is set in 2023, two decades after a global pandemic that started in the east has crippled the world.
The show lifts the video story lock, stock and barrel into the drama. Joel is a smuggler who lost his daughter in the outbreak and is now trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic US.
He has to protect Ellie because, despite being infected by the fungus, her body has not been over-whelmed, which means she is the key to fighting it.
Even the way in which they suggest the “zombie” fungus is spread is based on scientific fact. In the drama and game it infects the world’s grain supplies. One type, ergot, can infect the cereal rye and may cause anyone eating it to have psychotic episodes.
Our bodies’ defences prevent any harm from the fungi spores which we con-tinually breathe in – but not if our immune systems fail.
In fact, annually, more people die of being infected by fungi than die of malaria.