The first song Pedro Pascal fell in love with
There is currently no other person in Hollywood who can go stride for stride with Pedro Pascal when it comes to charisma. Thanks to star turns in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and The Last of Us in recent times, the Chilean and American actor has become one of the most beloved faces to emerge in recent years.
Pascal is the type of performer that brings a lot of himself into his roles, and he does so in the best possible way. He bolsters his characters’ depth with the rich experiences of his own life—and that life has certainly been rich, indeed. He was a refugee whose family fled Chile while under the brutal rule of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in 1976. Since then, he has lived a transient existence in the States, delving into the comfort of art in all of its guises.
Music was one such passion. Pascal explains that it helped him to find his place in the world, ironically, via escapism. He understood that he was somewhat of a dreamer, and the early music that he loved is indicative of this. With punk getting just about poppy enough for a young kid to get into, Pascal found solace in the reality-eviscerating ways of his early heroes.
So, as a child of the ’80s, it is perhaps no surprise that the first song he loved came from Billy Idol. Speaking to NME about ‘White Wedding’, Pascal described the song as the first track he ever fell in love with. “I remember really cranking it in the house,” he said. “I would try to curl my lip like him. I pretended that he was my older brother, the bad boy brother who would come and break me out of the house.”
Such is the weird way that celebrity works, a few decades on from this hairbrush singing routine, Pascal had his reality rocked by a fateful moment. In 2018, Idol himself tweeted: “I’ve been bingeing Narco’s so it was nice to Pedro Pascal who plays Pena last night.”
An excitable Pascal then replied: “People. Billy Idol asked for a pic together last night. I can retire. I’m not kidding. He’s a legend. The first person I wanted to be. The lip curl, fist pump. My introduction to BAD ASSERY. Oberyn secretly based on him.”
Since then, Pascal has been doling out his fair share of imitable ‘bad assery’ himself, all thanks to Idol and his rocking ‘White Wedding’ ways.
