Sarah Paulson has been a true friend to Pedro Pascal, who helped him in his struggling days as an actor when he couldn’t even feed afford food.
In a recent interview with Esquire, the American Horror Story star revealed that she used to help Pedro with her acting wages to help him afford food before he became famous.
“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,” she said.
“He’s a part of some spectacularly successful things. But sometimes in those situations, the show is the superstar. It’s really exciting to see that he is the thing that is becoming the superstar out of this.”
Paulson and Pascal’s friendship is nearly three decades strong. The duo first met in New York when Pedro moved to study at the Tisch School of the Arts, where he became friends with a bunch of LaGuardia High graduates, a group of youngsters that included Sarah.
“We would go to see movies all the time in those years, and we would get so lost in them,” She told Esquire. “You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”
After finishing college, Pedro moved to Los Angeles to make a career in acting and landed a few television projects like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Touched by an Angel, and Undressed.
However, his roles in these projects were not big and the money he made from them wasn’t enough to pay his bills. So, he moved back to New York.
The Last of Us star tried his luck for the second time in 2000.
He is now a well-recognized and esteemed actor in Hollywood, famous for his roles in Game of Thrones, Narcos, The Mandalorian, and The Last of Us.
“I died so many deaths,” the 48-year-old said about his struggling days. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was 29 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.”
Speaking to Esquire, Paulson said that she is so proud of her pal for not giving up and becoming a successful star, one of the most wanted actors in the industry now.
“You just want him to succeed,” she said. “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.”