BY CLARICE ARNOLD/ Kalamalama Staff
Actor Pedro Pascal, 47, has been acting since he was 20 years old, according to time.com. Although he has had his fair share of fame, only recently has he started blowing up on TikTok, and not for the reasons you may think.
Jose Pedro Balmaceda Pascal was born April 2nd 1975 in Santiago, Chile. His parents were political refugees and just 9 months after his birth they sought refuge at the venezuelan embassy before being granted asylum in Denmark. They eventually moved to the United States.
He graduated from the Orange County School of the Arts in 1993 then studied at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1997. During this, his parents moved back to Chile due to his father being indicted before a grand jury in relation to a fertility clinic he ran with two other men. Pedro has been adamant his father did nothing wrong. In 1999, his mother committed suicide and in honor of her, he started using her surname, Pascal.
In his early career, Pedro got small roles on shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Good Wife, The Mentalist and Law and Order: Criminal Intent. It wasn’t until he was cast to play Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of Game of Thrones, that he started to gain more traction in hollywood. Since then he has starred in many beloved shows and movies such as Narcos, Kingsmen: The Golden Circle, The Equalizer 2, and probably his most well known role, The Mandalorian. However, known of these are what gave him the title of “The Internet’s daddy”.
That would go to a TikTok made by an account called Dvcree. The Tiktok shows clips from his movie, Kingsmen: The Golden Circle, mixed with the catchy tune of Hey Sexy Lady, by Shaggy. This tiktok, also known as a fan cam, currently has 27.6 million views and 3.3 million likes. It has been shared nearly 200,000 times and has been saved by over 1 million people.
This has inspired many other accounts to make similar fancams, using clips of movies and shows he has been in and mixing them with popular songs. Snl even poked fun at this during a segment on an episode that Pedro was hosting. The skit was called “FanCam Assembly” where Pedro, acting as a teacher asks students what fancams are and what they mean.
While he was poking fun of this on SNL, he has told reporters that he actually kind of enjoys the sudden attention and will watch them on his own time. On Vanity Fair’s lie detector interview, the interviewer asked Pedro “Do you ever look at Instagram accounts devoted to you being a heartthrob when you’re feeling down?” To which Pedro reluctantly replied “Yes, I do”. Just a week ago, Pedro Pascal appeared on the Graham Norton Show, where they addressed Pedro being the new “internet daddy.”.
Other entertainment outlets have been asking Pedro how he feels about this new internet stardom. One memorable interview back in January, while promoting The Last of Us, Entertainment Tonight Interviewer Ash Crossan, started with her calling Pedro “daddy” and his response was “Hey Mama”. Just recently they did another interview for the Mandalorian and Ash comments “I fear I may have daddied us a little too close to the sun”.
However, many fans have noticed that in recent interviews, Pedro seems a bit annoyed by the “daddy of the internet” questions. His comment usually after they ask about this is “and I have no kids”. Fans are starting to believe he may be tired of this and not want to keep talking about it, but he has said he does enjoy watching them, according to this MTV UK interview.
“I mean I’m not against it, I love them but I get a little embarrassed….I don’t want anyone to stop,” Pascal said.
All of this social media attention fell at a perfect time, as his new show The Last of Us, based on the popular video game, aired on HBO Max on January 15th and the third season of The Mandalorian came out on March 1st. The Dvcree edit that has generated so much attention came out on January 20th, just a few days after The Last of Us aired. All this has given the actor some well deserved attention and hopefully his career continues to grow.
You can watch The Last of Us on HBO Max, new episode airing every Sunday and you can watch the newest season of The Mandalorian, on Disney+.
