Sarah Paulson Says She Financially Supported Pedro Pascal Early in His Career

Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal are longtime friends.

Their relationship dates back to 1993 when Pascal attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Paulson even financially supported Pascal when he was struggling in his career.

“He’s talked about this publicly, but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself,” Paulson told Esquire in a new interview.

In the last few years, Pascal’s star has skyrocketed with The Mandalorian and The Last of Us. “Everybody wants a piece of him,” she said of her friend’s fame.

“You just want him to succeed,” she continued. “And that to me, I feel like, is the sign of a major movie star. I’m ready for him to take the reins from the guys from romantic comedies past, like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all these guys. He can be all that. Let’s remake Die Hard with Pedro. Remake all the Lethal Weapon movies with Pedro.”

It took years for Pascal to get his big break. Playing Javier Peña in Netflix’s Narcos became one of his first major roles, as did his short-lived character, Oberyn in Game of Thrones. 

“I died so many deaths,” Pascal told Esquire recently. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was twenty-nine years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid. There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”