Wait for it: I am here to spend some more time talking about Pedro Pascal. But I promise this will be different from the rest of the content that proves his current dominion over the internet.
We have just wrapped up the summer of Pedro Pascal, with the consecutive releases of Materialists, Eddington, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Materialists was a strong, subversive entry for the rom-com genre, unsurprising when the brilliant mind behind Past Lives, Celine Song, wrote and directed it. Eddington was a divisive and flawed western thriller, and Fantastic Four seems to have been received as a serviceable introduction of Marvel’s First Family to the MCU, with some notable high points.
This all happened after a few years of it becoming clear that Pedro Pascal is the man everyone wants to have in their film or TV show. Star Wars claimed him long before the MCU. Last year saw him taking on the role of a (new) noble Roman general in the lacking but fun legacy sequel Gladiator II, while the beginning of 2025 brought with it the return of his critically acclaimed video game-based series The Last of Us. The smash hit horror Weapons was also supposed to star Pascal, before Hollywood strikes delayed the production, shifted everyone’s schedules, and the role went to Josh Brolin.
Pascal’s ‘breakout’ is generally considered to be his short tenure with the landmark fantasy series Game of Thrones, appearing in several episodes of 2014’s season four. But Pascal is also one of the remarkable stars whose breakout feels like it was really earned. He was appearing in movies and TV shows for years before he entered the mainstream’s purview, amounting to a pre-Game of Thrones career of almost 20 years. And like most stars, he has some truly wild stories from decades on film and TV sets.
To provide just one example, Pascal shared the story of how “There was a really, really unusually fun character that [he] played on NYPD Blue, this goth guy named Dio,” while appearing on First We Feast. “And he had all these fake piercings and was just a teenager hitting on the female cop,” continued Pascal, describing the character. The NYPD Blue episode in question is season eight, episode nine, “Oh Golly Goth.”
Apparently, after coming up with this character and scripting a specific scene for him, the NYPD Blue team left it to Pascal to actually make it a reality. The actor revealed, “At one point, he [Dio] has a pentagram on the inside of his palm that they made with a black sharpie, and I lick it and I make up some Satanic language. I thought it was supposed to be like Latin or something.”
Adding, “And I remember thinking, ‘Do you have Latin words I’m supposed to learn?’ and they’re like, ‘No dude, just make it up.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ It was a kind of thing where I licked the hand, and then I turned slowly toward the camera, going some crazy shit like that on an episode of your ABC Network television hit, NYPD Blue. I made up the language.”
