Pedro Pascal seems pretty relaxed with how the world views him, as one of Hollywood’s hottest leading men stepping into his superhero era.
Hitting the big screen as Reed Richards, aka Mister Fantastic, in Marvel’s retro-futuristic The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which has been met largely with positive reviews, continues a busy year for Pascal.
He’s also already broken hearts in The Last of Us, been to Cannes to promote new Ari Aster cowboy Covid film Eddington and teamed up with Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans for modern rom-com Materialists.
And that’s before mentioning his scene-stealing statement T-shirt at the Thunderbolts* London premiere in April.
As someone who found A-list fame a little later in life thanks to turns in Game of Thrones and Narcos, the 51-year-old actor has always seemed relaxed about sharing his views.
When we caught up with him at the UK launch event for The Fantastic Four: First Steps in London, Pascal had no records to set straight or corrections to issue with how fans see him.
‘What is the biggest misconception about me? I don’t know. I think I’m not aware of any misconceptions,’ he mused to Metro.
The turning on his usual cheeky charm, he added: ‘Unless… if it’s all positive, then they’re all right!’
A very on-brand answer for the internet’s favourite actor/’daddy’.
He similarly brushed off being crowned Harper Bazaar’s fourth (do we see a link?) hottest man of all time, sharing mock outrage until he learned James Dean was number one.
‘Okay fine. If we’re going that far back, then fine by me!’
Grabbing a few minutes too with Pascal’s co-star Joseph Quinn, who plays Ben Grimm/The Thing, the Stranger Thing actor revealed he’d not reached out to nor heard from Michael Chiklis or Jamie Bell, who portrayed the part in the previous Fantastic Four movies, in 2005, 2007 and 2015.
And in terms of his performance, he said it was all his own – and helped along by the cast, which also includes Vanessa Kirby and The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
‘I wasn’t drawing from any kind of specific performance for this, I don’t think,’ he shared. ‘Going into it, I knew that the role would be very dependent on the dynamic that was created from the other the actors, so I didn’t go into it with any kind of specific manifesto or aiming or any kind of target.
‘It presented itself as we started filming.’
Director Matt Shakman also explained how his previous work on Wandavision had helped him prepare to take on a feature-length MCU movie.
‘In some ways Wandavision was six hours done in roughly the same amount of time so it felt a little bit like I’d been swinging two or three bats, and now I could swing only one and focus on two hours instead of six!’ he laughed.
‘But all the things that I’ve done before I feel like have given me little tools that I put in my toolkit, whether its working on Game of Thrones or Monarch for Apple, you get familiar with different ways to accomplish VFX or stunts or building character, building words. I like to gather things as I go and it helps me with the next project.’
Shakman also teased a scene that he’s especially excited for fans to see in the film.
‘There’s something that happens in the middle of the movie that I’m particularly proud of that I feel draws on my own experience a little bit as a parent.’
With Disney keeping the full film firmly under wraps until its week of release, we’ll have to wait to see it to find out exactly what that is.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in UK cinemas now.
This article was first published on July 11.
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