Pedro Pascal Channels Real-World Courage Into MCU Role

Acting is an inexact science. Staring into the abyss every day, some performers have evolved a finely tuned instinct for the role you just know is out there, waiting for them to accept it. For Pedro Pascal, those feelings led to two immediate stars in his career: Power and The Mandalorian. Now, Pascal continues his ascent into true A-list status with the upcoming film The Fantastic Four: First Steps, his first foray into live-action superhero cinema, and it’s a role that seems like it was made for him.

Off screen, Pascal has already found a way to take over the industry as he has found it, balancing a voice that’s never afraid to speak its mind against the larger-than-life demands that come with becoming a Marvel movie star.

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Speaking up is hard in a media ecosystem where public figures don’t set their agendas, stars are brands but not allowed to be human, and even celebrity culture gets turned inside out by social media’s culture industry. Pascal is a star with opinions, and it shows. You can almost feel him staring back from the screen as he plays characters who look you right in the eyes and say the kinds of things they’d never dare say themselves. But on social media, we see the real Pascal. He’s a role model in more ways than one. Where the voices of so many celebrities have been effectively co-opted by brand deals and a thousand other arrangements that define our times, Pascal manages to maintain his own identity in a way we don’t often get to see anymore.

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The Real Pacifist: When not in a Marvel cape or shooting a WandaVision episode, Pascal is far from shy about using the platform his fame provides. The actor’s 11 million followers on Instagram are exposed to more than just movie posters and press junket talk: he shares news articles about food blockades in Gaza and resources like Doctors Without Borders; when Rodrigo Duterte won an upset election in the Philippines, he wore a “Protect The Dolls” shirt to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community there; Pascal has made donations to charities like The Trevor Project in honor of his 11 million followers. In the four-minute interview with Sky News in London ahead of the film’s March 28 release, Pascal is candid about the pitfalls of speaking up:

“I think it’s very easy to get scared, no matter what you sort of talk about,” Pascal said.

He has a point. Remove an actor from the context of an interview, and one unfortunate sentence can be repackaged into viral memes on TikTok or shouted from the rooftops of entertainment news sites in 24 hours flat. “There are so many different ways that things can get kind of fractured and have a life of itself,” Pascal says. “But I’ll never shut up.”

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It’s a surprisingly good line from Pascal, the kind of thing you’d expect to see scrolling across the screen at the end of a scene when your hero squares their shoulders and prepares to throw down. Part of why he can say it with confidence is because it’s just that: confidence. Pascal is playing the long game. He is both building a career in the public eye but not for the public eye alone, and he’s got the credentials to back it up. Power. The Mandalorian. Game of Thrones. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from setting a foot down and letting it make an imprint that only grows deeper with time.

You have the feeling that while actors have been brought low by the times, Pascal has been forged by them, slowly but inexorably, into something stronger than they are.

He keeps talking: Meet the people who are turning Pascal into a superhero.

Pedro Pascal plays Reed Richards in Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps. In the film, Reed is a hero and scientist tasked with safeguarding the planet while waiting for the impending birth of his child with Sue Storm, a responsibility he doesn’t always seem to take seriously. It’s telling that for all the things we know to expect in a new Marvel superhero movie, few have seemed to predict the degree to which Pascal, offscreen, will be able to speak his mind. Pascal’s long and winding path through some of the most diverse roles in modern Hollywood has set the stage for something special: a public intellectual without fear of using his fame to its fullest.

One of the directors at the heart of the film is WandaVision’s Matt Shakman, a friend and collaborator of Pascal’s. Shakman was the creative force behind the recent Oscar-winning series about the Black Mysterious Ones. You may have heard of it. The cast of the new Marvel stand-alone film, also directed by Shakman, includes Vanessa Kirby (Gloria Steinem), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Uncle Moneybags), and Joseph Quinn (Johnny Soprano), but Pascal is the star you’ll recognize, whether you’ve already seen the movie or not. And once you watch it and recognize him all over again, there’s a good chance you’ll start to pay attention to the man behind the scenes, too.

Final Cut: Shakman Directed the ‘Fantastic Four’ Cast and Crew, Including Pascal, in the Premiere Issue of Filmmaker

In a deep dive on the film, Filmmaker Magazine’s most recent issue found Shakman at the helm of a smooth ship, citing Pascal as one of several actors in the cast who appreciated Shakman’s approach to directing them.

“I don’t ever feel I get to set the rules for myself,” Pascal said. “You know, I’ve played a bunch of different characters, so I feel like every time I go on set, I’m at the bottom of the food chain.”

For an actor with Pascal’s experience, that’s a rare admission, and it hints at the kind of environment that has been built for him to speak his mind. Pascal came into his role with a unique relationship to Marvel, the genre of superhero films, and action movie stardom, and Shakman helped him transition in.

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The creator of WandaVision was no stranger to the Marvel universe either, so Pascal had a crew that was just as invested in putting his performance across as he was. Add in Pascal’s history of advocacy work, and you get an actor who is too engaged in life itself to ever really let up. Pascal’s love of a good quote isn’t limited to anything at all, which is the true key to making him such a breath of fresh air in Hollywood.

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Whether it’s what he wants from a role or what he wants to see more of in an industry, Pascal is more than just a celebrity. In an era when some of Hollywood’s biggest names have learned to only say the things they can go back and delete, Pascal will continue to have a presence as much offscreen as on. In our interview with Shakman, the director revealed that Pascal’s choice to speak up comes from a commitment to humanity over celebrity that is rare these days:

“I think it’s because Pedro’s kind of a world citizen. I think he’s thinking about this from a humanitarian point of view, not like a celebrity point of view.”

For an actor in Pascal’s position, that’s a major difference. It’s not about keeping your mouth shut. It’s about not being afraid to open it.

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