What Pedro Pascal Had to Say About Kieran Culkin at Emmys
“Daddy is a state of mind, you know what I’m saying? I’m your Daddy.”
Thanks to that infamous skit he did for Vanity Fair, we all know Pedro Pascal is well aware of the impact he’s had on viewers ever since he made his memorable and magnetic debut on Game of Thrones all the way back in 2014.
If the ever-populated TV landscape is Los Angeles at the height of summer, the actor—who is celebrating his 49th birthday on April 2—is a tall, charismatic drink of water. And thirsty audiences have been well-hydrated as of late, thanks to HBO’s dystopian drama The Last of Us, which earned Pedro his first ever Emmy nomination, and the season three premiere of Disney+’s The Mandalorian last year. Double the Pedro, double the handsome, double the fun.
And that’s not even counting his always entertaining appearances on stage as he makes the award show circuit. Kieran Culkin knows what he did.
Because we’ve been gifted with an abundance of Pedro on our small screens, we decided to look back on the Wonder Woman 1984 star’s biggest TV roles to rank which one is his hottest.
So, gird your loins and prepare for a visual feast as we painstakingly rate Pedro’s TV appearances. It’s a hard job, but someone had to do it. (Note: We only included his recurring and regular roles in this very scientific and serious thought experiment. But don’t let that make you think we’ve ever forgotten about his small but adorable moment on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1999!)
CBS
Nathan Landry, The Good Wife
Ugh, what a handsome weasel this arrogant assistant district attorney was! Alas, we do prefer our Pedro Pascal with some facial hair, so we must object to his clean-shaven recurring role on the CBS legal drama.
Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images
Agent Marcus Pike, The Mentalist
“There I was like kind of the sad love interest,” Pedro recalled in a interview with GQ. “That was the first time I got to be like, ‘Let’s bring somebody in so that people start freaking out that these two might not end up together.'”
While his seven-episode arc on the CBS procedural ended after his character moved to Washington D.C., we hated to see Pedro go but we loved to watch him leave.
Disney+
Mando, The Mandalorian
It takes a charismatic AF man to make us swoon for a perennially helmeted bounty hunter. So, of course, the Stars Wars team sought Pedro, an actor with more charm than a box of magically delicious Lucky Charms, to become Grogu’s reluctant father figure.
However, we must knock Mando down in the ranking, simply because no one is really sure how often it is actually Pedro in the armor. Sorry, but this is the way!
Daniel Daza/Netflix
Javier Peña, Narcos
His first series regular role—playing the real-life Drug Enforcement Administration agent who investigated Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel—was, naturally, all about his ‘stache.
While the actor told GQ he felt he “looked like a dork” decked out in the fashions from the ’80s, the photo of him rocking the aviator sunglasses that lives rent-free in the favorites album on our phone begs to differ!
Disney+
Din Djarin, The Mandalorian
Why yes, yes we did decide to cheat and separate Mando and Din, just so we could have another excuse to look at his face. Come on, who can blame Grogu for becoming so attached?!
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Joel Miller at 36, The Last of Us
While we didn’t spend long with the single father in 2003 before a brain fungus turned most of the world’s population into zombies, we are grateful for the time we did share with the birthday boy.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
Joel Miller at 56, The Last of Us
Who knew just a few grey streaks would take Pedro from daddy to zaddy in HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama? We are so sorry and that is the last you will hear from us.
Helen Sloan/HBO
Oberyn Martell, Game of Thrones
Did you really think we weren’t going to pick the Red Viper as Pedro’s hottest role? You know nothing!
From the moment the Dornish Prince stepped into King’s Landing in the HBO hit’s season four premiere, he brought a frenetic, fearless and fresh energy, with Pedro describing Oberyn as “definitely punk rock” in an interview with TVLine at the time. “He’s like, ‘Live life to the fullest, suck the marrow, play hard, love hard, hate hard.”
Fans immediately became attached to the vengeance-seeking smooth-talker and the seven-episode stint “changed my life,” Pedro told GQ. Yeah, ours, too.
