Pedro Pascal’s 10-year journey toward his most “appalling” role: “I had no association”
Pedro Pascal is having a moment. In fact, he’s having several moments.
You can’t move for the moustachioed Chilean at this time, between his appearances in Eddington, Materialists, The Last of Us, and Marvel’s ‘Fantastic Four’ reboot. Though he is in serious danger of overexposure, he fought long and hard to get to this stage of his career. Let the man enjoy his time at the top while it lasts.
Though he’s only really taken off in the last few years, Pascal has been toiling away as an actor for almost 30 years. His first audition was for the 1996 crime drama Primal Fear, the film that ultimately launched the career of Edward Norton. He made very unremarkable appearances in TV shows like Touched by an Angel, Law & Order, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and there was a period between 1995 and 2007 where he didn’t make a single feature film at all.
Acting is a merciless profession. Talent is no guarantee of success, and just because you’re good and you work hard over a long period of time, that doesn’t mean you’re ever going to get anywhere. What’s especially cruel about showbiz is that it can slide a golden opportunity under your nose and then snatch it away at the last second. This happened to Pascal a few times, particularly with a planned TV adaptation featuring the classic DC superhero Wonder Woman.
The show got as far as shooting a pilot, written by Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelly, and would have been quite a unique spin on the character. The titular character would have still been Diana Prince, but her alter ego would have been the head of a company that makes money off the ‘Wonder Woman’ license, which would then be used to fund her crime-fighting activities. Adrianne Palicki of Friday Night Lights fame was due to head the project, with Elizabeth Hurley serving as the villain of the piece and Cary Elwes playing one of Diana’s associates. Pascal would have played Ed Indelicato, Diana’s contact in the local police force.
Despite the knockout premise, the show was apparently not great. Perhaps that’s why NBC refused to order a full series, leaving the pilot to drown in the endless puddle of lost media. A few years on, and Pascal would get another bite at the superhero cherry, as he picked up the role of Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984.
The emerging star was so stunned that he’d been cast in a major superhero film, he actually forgot he’d almost been in the TV show.
“Getting Wonder Woman 1984 blew my mind so much that anything that had ever happened to me prior, I don’t recall; I had no association,” Pascal told Entertainment Weekly. “And that’s not to say that getting the Wonder Woman pilot from 2011 wasn’t a party for me, and I was devastated it didn’t get picked up.”
Unfortunately for all involved, Woman Wonder 1984 was also a disaster. Critics hated it, fans hated it, Pascal hated it, telling Variety he was “appalled’ by his clean-shaven look. It killed the franchise stone dead, although talks still persist of a reboot. At least people actually got to see this one, although maybe it would have been better if it was lost too.
