Best Of: Jude Law / Pedro Pascal

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From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Today, actor Jude Law.

He talks about the range of characters he's brought to life throughout his career and how he hopes people see more to him than his good looks.

But just the other day I was at the Toronto Film Festival and in at least two or three of the interviews that's all they wanted to talk about.

My looks and I kind of looked at them and thought, you know, I'm a 52 year old guy.

I've got a 30 year career and that's all you're talking about.

Also, we hear from Pedro Pascal.

He's been a Marvel superhero, a grieving smuggler in The Last of Us, and a bounty hunter in The Mandalorian.

This summer he starred in the fantastic four first steps, Eddington and the Materialists.

And rock critic Ken Tucker shares some of his favorite music releases this fall.

That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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This is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and my first guest today is award-winning actor Jude Law.

In his new Netflix series, Black Rabbit, he plays the owner of one of New York's most exclusive restaurants, a man who is magnetic and successful, but also deeply compromised.

His judgment clouded, his loyalties divided.

His name is Jake Friedkin, and when his estranged brother, played by Jason Bateman, returns with dangerous debts, the world he's built begins to fall apart.

Here's how we first meet Jake, describing his restaurant with a tense foreshadowing of what's to come.

I want to say something quick.

For those of you who don't know who I am,

get the f out.

No,

I'm Jake.

And

yeah, yeah, I own the place.

All right, all right.

Wow.

This is the kind of party Black Black Rabbit was built for.

Yeah.

When we set out to create this place, we never wanted it to be just

a restaurant.

We wanted to build a home for our family, our friends, our people.

A place you could come for a drink, a smoke, for the best burger in New York.

Rocks!

Keep it out!

Yeah!

Keep it wild!

Some place

where the night

could go anywhere.

Law isn't only the lead, he's also an executive producer, shaping the series' vision of New York City's nightlife, a world that's as glamorous as it is treacherous.

Over the last three decades, Law has moved fluidly between independent films, Hollywood blockbusters, and stage work in London and New York.

He's been nominated for two Academy Awards and is known for roles that walk the line between charm and danger.

From Dickie Greenleaf and the talented Mr.

Ripley to Closer, Cold Mountain, and the Sherlock Holmes films, as well as the Fantastic Beast series.

Jude Law, welcome to Fresh Air.

So let's talk a little bit about

your character, Jake, and his brother played by Jason Bateman.

This is not a Cain and Abel type story.

This is not good versus evil.

Both of you all are pretty messed up.

How would you describe your character, Jake?

Well, the brothers and their relationship sit in the foreground of a piece that's also about

a particular slice of New York life and I hope sort of any city's life.

It's about

pulling together a team and providing a kind of hot spot for, you know the movers and the shakers and all the dynamics that go on behind the scenes of that kind of establishment the complexities the relationships the pressures and the brothers who had built this this this this place this this venue

are kind of reflections of all the complexities and

One of them, my character Jake, is the sort of front man, the veneer, you know, with a smile and a shine.

And for all accounts, seems to be very successful, very smooth, a great person at juggling issue, problem, people management.

And Vince, played by Jason, is more of the sort of creative, anarchic idea guy, but not great at following through.

And he's disappeared.

He comes back.

and sort of shakes it all up.

But what you realize is that actually there's a whole lot of issues going on

behind the curtain, if you like,

of Jake.

And Vince's arrival really just sort of pulls that curtain apart.

You use the word veneer to describe your character, that he has like this perfect veneer.

But that's just the surface because underneath, as you said, there's a lot of complexity.

He's got a lot of challenges.

I want to play a clip where he's talking to his brother Vince, as we said, played by Jason Bateman, and he's talking about the truth with his finances.

And in this clip, it all kind of comes together where we start to learn.

It's not on the up and up inside of this restaurant.

Let's listen.

You bet Mom's money on the Knicks.

A lot of people bet the Knicks, Jake, they're a professional basketball team.

And the money you got from the restaurant

is the one you interviewed kicked me out of?

You bailed you out.

Bailed you out.

Saved your ass.

You gambled that too.

Right?

Then you go down to Junior, take a loan on the house, you bet it again, lost it all, and then you skip town.

Sound right?

Sounds like the least favorable way you could possibly phrase it, but yeah, you're all caught up.

And us,

I gotta ask, because

the suspense is killing me.

What happened to your shoes, Vince?

I got a sweet number on the bus.

You sold your shoes i took 500 bucks and i'm chipping away at it i'm doing my part giggles yeah okay i did it on my way home from getting my finger chopped off well by those damn zeros who say jen is next you're helping me they said that

they said jen is next that's exactly what they said how much do you owe them vince 140

big number 140 grand it's a big number there was juice jesus

that's my guest jute law in scene with Jason Bateman in the new Netflix series, Black Rabbit.

I know that you're the executive producer on this and you initially thought about Jason

as a director.

Yes.

How did it come to be then he's your brother and he's that particular brother?

I believe the order was

we

were developing this piece.

And when it became apparent that, you know, it was time to sort of go out, find the director who's going to bring and breathe life into it, we kept referencing Ozark and the tonality of Ozark, that sort of dark,

human,

but humorous

pitch that

Jason also has as a performer.

And he fortunately saw what we saw in the scripts and came on board as a director,

wanted to throw himself behind it.

And we hadn't found a a brother for me and it just became apparent to me well he should surely you know he's such a great actor and what a great asset why don't do you want to be one of the brothers and he has this incredible quality i think to be

likable

and

it seemed like if we could have a vince that did all this bad had all this you know track record and we still kind of like him but you still kind of forget him.

Yeah.

And he can still kind of be the funniest guy in the room and the most entertaining and charismatic.

And, you know,

yeah, fortunately, he saw that.

And so that's how we became the brothers.

This fascinating world, New York nightlife.

behind the kitchen, you know, getting to see all the dramas and things like that.

And your character in particular, he's a New Yorker.

You're this New York archetype.

You've even got a New York accent that kind of comes out.

Did you study any particular person or accent or anything to kind of embody that?

Yeah, Jake's a kind of amalgamation of a few people I know

who had similar jobs.

And

the voice came from working

with a coach.

And the trick I find that helps is to be very specific about an accent.

Like you

can't just say it's a sort of general New York it's like okay what are the

where did he grow up and what did the parents sound like and obviously I had Jason as a brother so I also had to go towards what Jason sounds like

and you have to give the accent a kind of history otherwise you're generalizing and so you did that for this character in particular where you you made a person out of this well you I have that's how I just like to do it you go back and you kind of where was he born and what was his childhood like?

And what was mom like?

What was dad like?

What was his friends like?

What was he listening to on the street?

You know, what was his shows?

Was he watching?

And

you kind of track their emotional and their life up to where you are at and how they've dealt with the different bridges, the different dilemmas, the different dramas.

And so you fill in this history so that, you know,

if people talk in a scene about your mom, you have an immediate reaction because you know what happened to mum and how you feel about her.

And it's the same with an accent, right?

It's amazing that the little things that influence...

If I was to talk about my own accent, so I have my mother was from the north of England, so I have a very, a little bit of the northern England in my R's.

My dad's from the south of England.

So and I grew up in quite a,

what would I call it?

I don't know.

There was a quite a strong southeast London accent, which I kind of try to hide because I wanted to sound more

posh.

Yeah.

But it comes out like if I'm in, if I go home or if I'm with certain friends.

So all of that's in my voice.

Yes.

And so if you're playing a character, you want all of those details to be there.

I'm so fascinated by this work because you've had to play quite a few characters with different accents.

I can imagine it's not an easy thing to hold on to all of that while also realizing that you have to embody this accent.

When you practice it, it's kind of muscles, honestly, in the end.

I mean, personally, I think I'm always doing an accent, even when I'm playing someone who's English, because you still, they have a different background, right?

Right.

It depends on what you're doing.

It just depends on what part of England and what you...

There's the thinking it through, and then there's the technique of doing it.

And the technique is actually quite like taking your mouth and throat to the gym.

You're basically teaching it to do different things.

So you have drills to do funny like sentences so that

you're teaching your tongue to go in a certain way and then and you listen a lot.

Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, my guest is actor Jude Law.

He stars in the new Netflix series Black Rabbit, where he plays a nightclub owner entangled in crime, betrayal, and family ties.

We'll continue our conversation after a short break.

I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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I am really fascinated by some of the things you've done to really embody a role.

So I watched the other night Firebrand.

Yes.

Yeah, your 2023 film where you played King Henry VIII.

I read that you hired a perfumer.

I work with her quite often, actually.

Really?

Yes.

Yeah, she's first of all, she's an absolute genius, Azzie, and she runs an amazing perfumery called the Perfumer Story.

She makes incredible sense.

And, you know, sense is a really quick way to accumulate sort of feelings and emotions.

You know, if you walk into your grandma's house, it smells a certain way and you feel a certain way.

If you go out and someone's been cutting the grass,

right, it evokes all sorts of memories and or the smell of gasoline, you know, I mean things like that are very pungent and very quick to make you feel and think and feel, you know.

And my job's an odd job.

You know, whether you want to or not, you turn up, you put on someone else's clothes, and you have to embody someone pretty damn quick.

And sometimes it's like, hey, it's seven, the sun's coming up, we've got to go.

We got to get this done.

Get in it.

But let's talk about what she did for you.

She built this, she made a perfume for me, and I'd read this piece about Henry.

He basically had these ulcers on his leg that were rotting.

And it was a miracle he lived the 10 years he did with them.

But you could smell him apparently three rooms away.

He stank like a fetid.

Yes.

And it was a really what I realized.

I'm playing him at the very end of his life when eventually he died of these things from a fever.

And

I just thought it would be very helpful to everyone else and to me if I stank.

So she made me this incredible, noxious odor that I kind of sprayed on myself.

It was made a concoction of of pig sweat, fecal matter.

You're going, does this say this?

To mimic the smell of decaying fish.

So it was really bad.

It was really, really,

really, really rancid.

Yeah.

But it really

helped.

To me, it's very interesting playing someone who is

incredibly powerful, all-dominant, expects everyone to bow to then every need and thought and want

and yet is sitting in this

in a in a body that is immobile because of the weight he's put on and because of the wounds he has kind of in his own rotting flesh and having to kind of face himself and he can't escape what he's done to himself and who he's become you know he's a mass murderer yes and uh

deluded to the i to the extreme of believing that he's second only to God.

Well, he's about to face God.

And it's like, okay, what's going on?

What's going on in that man?

You're pretty unrecognizable in that role.

And I'm just wondering, there had to be some pretty interesting conversations around the rank smell on that set.

It helped you.

It also helped your colleagues, your co-stars.

Well, I mean, I did, it wasn't like I, you know, wanted to shock them or warn them,

you know,

but but we discussed it and Alicia Vicando who is plays my wife in it the queen Queen Catherine Parr

was very game for it because she sort of loved this idea that she had to have this intimacy and this devotion amidst this sort of wall of stink

you know

And the guys who play my

privy council were old friends of mine from the theatre.

And again, it was this sort of this

conflict between

observing

their devotion and putting up with this appalling

physical

decay.

Your parents were educators.

What did they teach?

Father started out teaching English, but then became, at quite a young age, a headmaster of a junior school.

And my mum taught English, she taught junior school too, and then she specialized in teaching English to foreign children who are coming in

without the

knowledge of the English language.

And then she

set up a theatre company.

She was always very keen on theatre, so she stopped teaching, went and did a

course in theatre directing and set up a theater company.

And is that how you were introduced to I was already they were also very much involved in local theatre so local amateur theatre and that's really how I got involved.

It was a place of great yeah community and fun

and

I remember you know, sitting in the back of the stalls of this little theater while mum and dad were putting on shows, doing my homework with my sister or sitting watching, you know, endless rehearsals and it just became a place for me of um it was very familiar, it was safe, it was fun, you know, seeing adults playing and laughing, figuring stuff out, telling stories.

How do we do this in this way so that the people understand?

And that was what an education.

I mean, that's, I grew up watching that night after night.

From the very start, you caught Hollywood's attention.

Gattaca is one that I absolutely love and is a cult classic.

At the time, it had done fairly well.

But the talented Mr.

Ripley, I think, is really when you became a name where folks could identify you.

Did it take you then by surprise just what they were paying attention to?

Because it sounds like you wanted to have this serious career.

I still do.

Which you have done.

But when you first arrived, it was really all about your looks.

Yeah.

Did that catch you by surprise

not really i

i actually turned down the role of in the talents of mr rickboard because my concern was he was the good-looking guy

and

i was worried that that would limit my career i suppose i wanted to be seen as something more than that

And I'm very lucky I didn't turn that role down because it changed my career and I got to work with all these wonderful people, opened a lot of doors and it it was a great experience.

But it did, one of the doors it opened was this

attention, yes, to what I look like.

And

I still find that

shallow and frustrating, if I'm honest.

And it's interesting, isn't it, that we're in a time now where,

you know, for women, for many years, that was something that was always discussed.

And I kind of, I,

but, but fortunately, we're turning a corner now where if, you know, if the same conversation were to be applied to a woman, they'd quite rightly be able to say, you know,

that's not cool.

Let's not go there.

And

it's always been, yeah, a bit frustrating.

But it's a very odd subject to talk about because in talking about it, it also sort of feels like I'm affirming that, you know.

That you're saying, yeah, I'm a good looking.

Yeah.

But but yeah, it was a kind of.

It felt always like a bit of a limitation,

weirdly.

Did you try to do things to combat that and the choices that you made?

For a certain amount of time, yeah.

There were certain roles, definitely, at key moments, which I chose because I just thought, oh, well, this will take it away from being that

stereotype.

I like to think now

that I've been doing it long enough and I hope provided enough evidence and variety that it's not or no longer

all people see.

But just the other day I was at the Toronto Film Festival and in at least two or three of the interviews, that's all they wanted to talk about.

My looks and I kind of looked at them and thought, you know, I'm a 52-year-old guy.

I've got a 30-year career and that's all you're talking about.

Yes.

You know, it was very odd.

Yes.

And again, limiting.

It just feels...

But hey, it's also, it's not like they're insulting me.

My God.

Right, right.

There are worse things to have to keep talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

But it is something that fades.

So it can't be something you hang your entire life on.

It changes, you know.

Jute Law, thank you so much.

My pleasure.

Jute Law stars in the new Netflix series, Black Rabbit.

There's a lot of new music being released this fall, and rock critic Ken Tucker has chosen to showcase new songs by three very different acts.

Big Thief has a new album, and their sound is characterized by the intimate lead vocals of Adrian Linker, as does Zach Topp, a young country singer with roots in old country.

There's also the Icelandic Chinese singer Lei Vei, who brings a classical music and jazz influence to her pop songs.

Here's Ken's review of this eclectic gathering.

In the arms of the one I love,

she'll see in pictures of

another

Few bands have been as widely acclaimed in recent years as Big Thief, whose signature sound is the haunting voice of Adrian Lenker.

Big Thief's new sixth album, I just played a bit from the title track, Double Infinity, finds the former quartet now a trio.

But its sound has expanded with the addition of backup singers for the first time.

Whether Lenker's vocals needed backing is up for debate, but it certainly added a chummy, collegial air to this album.

On the song called Los Angeles, this band from Brooklyn, New York soaks up the LA sun and heat and turns out a warm hymn to cross-continental friendship.

Los Angeles, 333, nothing on the stereo.

Dirty tear like Mona Lisa, smiling in the half-life.

Mysteriously, but seriously, I'd follow you forever.

Even without looking, you call we come together.

Even without speaking, you saved

me.

You saved me.

Where Adrian Lenker's voice swoops and soars, Zach Topp's voice has a pinched nasal tone that connects this 27-year-old all the way back to classic country crooners like Lefty Frizell and Webb Pierce.

Topp is enough of a craftsman that he can fill a funny song like Good Times and Tan Lines with so many amusing little details and vocal curly cues that it becomes something more substantial than a novelty.

Little bit of dust, a little bit of smoke, baller in a Chevy down a gravel road.

Headed to a spot everybody knows a cannonball swinging from an old frayed road.

Talking about good times and tan lines, cold beer and summer nights.

That was all there was to lie.

Good times and tan lines, good, good times and tan lives.

Zach Topp's big hit singles and new album Ain't In It for My Health signal a shift in country music, which has spent recent years emulating hip-hop rhythms.

Top is making popular a new variation on the neo-traditionalist country music of the 1990s.

Top addresses the gap between hipster country and his own retro style in a disarmingly direct manner on Country Boy Blues.

I shined up my picker and slipped on my go-to-town blues.

I hit Music City like a good time and honky-tonking fool

I've been walking for hours starting to think it wasn't worth the trip

Cause I kind of feel like a dinosaur down on the Vegas strip

Yeah, every spot in town's got a drink and a band.

So why can't I hear a damn country tune?

Hobbing up and down and all around Lower Broadway with these old

country boy balloons.

Now, let's take a big swerve from country to classical, specifically the classically trained cellist, pianist, guitar-strumming singer-songwriter called Leve.

Can't help but notice

all of the way

in which I filled myself.

I fill the world all the same.

I don't think I'm pretty,

it's not up for debate.

A woman's best currency is her body, not her brain.

They try to tell me,

tell me I'm wrong.

But mirrors tell lies to be my mind, just plays along.

With her smooth jazz phrasing and arrangements, the 26-year-old Levé has charmed millions who first became aware of her via her TikTok videos.

Leve, on her new third album, A Matter of Time, cleverly melds her old-school influences and writes lyrics that have an invigorating sting to them.

Listen, for example, to her witty put-down of an egotistical guy called Mr.

Eclectic.

But who think you're so poetic,

quoting epics

and ancient proverbs?

Truth be told, you're quite pathetic,

Mr.

Eclectic

Alan Poe.

As different as these three acts are, what Big Thief, Zach Top, and Leve have in common is the way they succinctly summarize both the allure and the flaws of the people they've they've fallen in or out of love with.

You end up either wishing you were the object of their admiration or glad you're not on the receiving end of their criticism.

Ken Tucker reviewed new music by Big Thief, Zach Top, and Levé.

Coming up, we hear from Pedro Pascal.

This year alone, he's appeared in Celine's songs, Romantic Drama Materialists, Ariasters, Eddington, and the fantastic four first steps.

I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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If you've watched TV, gone to the movies, or even glanced at a bus stop ad in the past year, you've probably seen Pedro Pascal staring back at you.

This summer alone, his face has been splashed across posters and billboards for the fantastic four first steps, Eddington, and Celine Song's Materialists.

He's also gearing up for Avengers Doomsday, and that's on top of an Emmy nomination for his role as Joel in HBO's The Last of Us.

In the past decade, Pascal has become one of Hollywood's most magnetic leading men.

often playing reluctant protectors like in The Mandalorian and The Last of Us, who find family in the unlikeliest of places.

That connection between found family on screen and his own life came into sharp focus during his Saturday Night Live monologue in 2023, when he credited his parents for making sacrifices to bring him to the United States from South America, a journey that began with political exile and helped shape a career defined in part by portraying outsiders finding their way in.

That combination of personal history and on-screen vulnerability has made him something rare in Hollywood, a star that people feel like they know.

A recent New Yorker cartoon captured it perfectly.

A therapist tells a client, it's not strange at all.

Lately, a lot of people are reporting that their faith in humanity is riding entirely on whether or not Pedro Pascal is as nice as he seems.

Pedro Pascal, welcome to Fresh Air.

What was it about acting?

Because you started talking about wanting to be an actor at like four years old.

Well, I was born in 75.

And just think about seeing E.T.

in the movie theater.

You know, think about seeing Poltergeist and the Goonies and, you know, gremlins.

And, you know, so I was

a very, very easy source of building a fantasy of,

you know, wishing you were either living these adventures, experiencing these adventures, or

part of the adventure of telling those stories.

Yeah.

You know?

I keep coming across these little details like you being obsessed with the color purple.

Yeah.

James Baldwin for color girls, to kill a mockingbird.

So you were really into literature as well.

And I'm trying to piece together who is this kid?

How would you describe yourself back then?

You were a deeply feeling child, but what did these worlds provide for you?

Because, you know, they're entertaining for everyone else, but it sounds like there was another step for you where you felt immersed in them.

Well, I think being moved,

you feel very alive.

You feel very

inspired, you know, and in school, in a way, by

incredible storytelling, incredible performances, incredible literature, you know.

So the process around the color purple is very interesting because we had cable TV and Whoopi Goldberg had a televised show that had been transferred to Broadway and then shot for television for HBO.

It was just called Whoopi.

Yes.

And

she was playing a bunch of different characters and

I was just floored.

It was

magic.

And with that show Whoopi, I mean, I saw that so many times.

I could do some of her monologues.

The hair and the towel.

Oh my gosh.

And he said, okay, I said, okay.

We said, okay, okay.

and i mean i literally haven't i haven't seen that since i think the 80s yeah you know and it's imprinted right

and then

i'm walking out of a movie and i see a poster of this like silhouette of whoopi goldberg in a rocking chair with purple and steven spielberg's name on it and her name, Whoopi Goldberg, in the color purple.

And I'm just like,

here I am completely moved by the marketing of it.

And I think the movie is a masterpiece.

And I think it's one of the greatest screen performances in the history of cinema that she did in her

purely freshman experience, her first time on camera, on film, her first movie role.

And I just was frankly overwhelmed by it in the best way.

And I couldn't let it go.

So I had to get the book.

And I read the book.

You'd walk around with the book.

I would hold it, yeah.

I would hold it like a like a like a treasure.

Your mom saw this in you, she she saw this and wanted to connect with you because of it.

You guys would have these family movie nights, yeah, yeah.

My dad, my dad was, my dad was the, was the, was the moviegoer.

My mom was selective.

Um, she would fall for

um

she would notice much more if i if i was like really into a book

um

or if prince was in it

so you were a big prince but that also she was no she was the prince fan okay she was the huge prince fan which by proxy made me a big prince fan and that's around purple rain time oh yeah

What were these movie nights like, these family movie nights?

Well, Purple Rain is a perfect example of where we all went together.

Like my dad would try to, you know, take us on a school night whenever he got a chance to whatever he wanted to see.

But Purple Rain was like, we're all going, you know.

And I guess they're sort of, you know, my most special memories.

We're a very sort of like movie-going family.

My older sister has a love of dance

and did ballet.

So we would go to the, as a child, she studied ballet, and so we would go to the ballet a lot.

I hated it at first until I saw, I think,

a really hilarious

production of a Midsummer Night's Dream and then started to kind of

really appreciate the kind of storytelling that happened through dance.

Did you ever dance?

I didn't.

I didn't dance.

I mean, I danced, you know, like at any chance I got.

Yeah, to prints and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I danced around the house.

I danced around my parents' parties, Christmas, New Year's,

all that stuff.

I never took class, but then in a performing arts program that my mother found that I went to from my freshman year in high school to graduation, you had to study dance, you know, did West Side Story and I love dance and actually got...

sort of really seriously into, I guess what you would call sort of post-modern style of improvisational dance in college.

And that was the only work I could get when I graduated, actually, were through movement professors and doing

a lot of downtown stuff.

When you say downtown, what do you mean?

South of 14th Street, St.

Mark's Church,

Lower East Side, East Village, site-specific performances, this piece called

Demeter's Daughter that was conceived by a choreographer named Tamar Rogoff,

who is a lifelong family friend and mentor to Claire Danes.

What kinds of stuff would you do for them?

Yeah.

Like postmodern postmodern dance, like, you know, sort of create movement and dance.

And then it wasn't the kind of thing like,

this is the choreography, learn it.

It was like, let's move and let's write this together.

Kind of like improvisation, but for the body.

For body movement.

I'm so fascinated about that physicality because there is a holding of the body in all the characters that you play.

I'm thinking about in The Last of Us, Like, how would you describe what Joel is holding in his body?

Yeah,

holding

a lot of trauma, one.

And then,

in a more simple way,

this is a man who works with his hands.

He's a contractor and he builds things.

He, I think, expresses himself

through his physical relationship to work

and to maintenance and that kind of thing.

So it's sort of like understanding a person who

works very roughly with his hands and is in sort of a very consistent relationship to physical labor,

you know,

in a way that that he probably loves because it's way easier than having a conversation.

Right, right.

But it's so fascinating about you and your history with dancing because, I mean, so much of, well, so much of your acting is so physical.

Like, I'm just thinking about a lot of films that you're in.

There's so much silent power in what you're doing, but it's through your body that you're telling the story.

Well,

Game of Thrones being a perfect example of like experiencing, you know, that level of exposure for a part.

And one would argue that what the role is most known for is the fight.

Yes.

And that is more dance than you can possibly believe.

If you don't want to get killed anyway, you know,

that is physicality in its purest form.

And that is choreography in its purest form.

So it's just ironic.

because I was already pushing 40 when that job happened.

And so the doors that opened were,

frankly,

leaning in the world of action and a lot of highly, highly, highly physical choreography in the experiences, more so than I could have ever imagined.

Having had a lot of like fight choreography on stage, you know,

in Shakespeare and all that.

But this was like another level.

Your family history is fascinating because your parents fled Chile when you were a baby.

Growing up, what was the story that you heard?

You know, I didn't hear any stories about it, actually.

And I hear stories now because I ask.

And I also am met with the sort of desire to share and desire to tell what it meant for, you know,

my father's sisters to say goodbye to their brother

in that way.

For my mother's family to live in the terror of the experience of her going into hiding.

Because what's the story?

Because the story that you came to learn, your parents were very young.

You were a baby and they fled from South America to the United States, to Texas.

Yes, we had asylum in Denmark first

and were likely to, you know, stay there were it not for somebody that helped hire my father into his lab in San Antonio, Texas.

Why were your parents exiled?

Oh, well, they were involved in the opposition movement against the military regime under Pinochet.

They were Allende supporters and frankly, just very young and liberal.

And

my mother's side of the family, there's a cousin of my mother's, Andres Pascal, who was a leader of the opposition movement.

And so that, I think, just by association, sort of could put the name and family in peril.

But there was

someone who brought an injured man to my mother's and father's home, knowing that my father was doing his residency at a hospital and asked for help.

And

he'd been shot in the leg.

And

it was a priest who brought him over to

our house.

And,

And, you know, at this point, I'm an infant, so obviously I have no memory.

But

the priest was taken into custody, and he was tortured, and he gave names.

And then they went looking for my parents.

And so they had to

go into hiding and

find a way to survive.

There are a lot of details that kind of go into it that create like such a fascinating story,

the odd circumstance of my father finding out that someone was in the lobby asking for his name and

a patient that kind of like interrupted the moment where the officer wanted to,

was about to ask my father who he was or his name, if he was in fact Dr.

Balmaseda.

And a patient that was like, you know, I'm in pain and no one is attending to me.

And

I almost wonder, I mean, you know, you got to be careful because, you know, how much story do you build around it and what's really real.

But this was this chance circumstance that gave my father the opportunity to sneak out the back to go and get my mother and

go into hiding.

And they were right because they came to the house,

they tore everything apart.

And it was about six months before they found a plan to sneak into the Venezuelan embassy and claim asylum and be reunited with my sister and I.

What a story to learn in adulthood.

It's not a lore.

It's not a story you grew up knowing and having pride in.

Right.

I had a sense of it.

I remember one very, very vivid experience of seeing the movie missing.

See, this is the funny thing is that like, here we are, this nuclear family in the suburbs of San Antonio, Texas, with this

not distant legacy of

escape.

I mean, the dictatorship was continuing on, and I'm seeing a movie about it

in my house, and Sissy Space is the size of my mother.

Right, because the age of my mother

and the movie Missing, right, by Costa Gravas.

Yes.

And her,

you know, being out in the streets past curfew by accident and her life being in peril and me somehow putting all of that together and understanding that

sort of placing my mother in that circumstance as a child and just like absolutely falling apart.

How old were you?

When the movie came out in, I must have been like, I don't know, maybe seven.

Wow.

Yeah.

It was a different time.

Parents were letting us,

parents were letting us watch whatever was on TV.

But I'm saying wow about you piecing that together and somehow understanding Sissy SubeSec is my mom.

Yeah, feeling that way.

Feeling that way.

Feeling that way in that moment.

And it had to stop.

I fell apart.

You literally started crying.

Oh,

I started.

I mean, it was like, you know, I think

something

bordering on howling.

I was so

traumatized by the idea.

I don't know.

I never got a chance to talk to my mom about it the way I'm talking to you about it.

You know?

Unfortunately, I wonder if she understood.

But

yeah, I guess just to answer it simply, no, not really.

When you say you wonder if she understood, what do you mean?

If she understood that I was kind of

a son who was scared for her, you know, and kind of

absorbing the context but not really knowing how to process the context.

Movies have been so important to you and

everything.

Yeah.

They allow you to understand the world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And now you're doing that for other people.

Do you ever think about it like that?

I feel profound gratitude to be doing something that I love to do and the people that I get to do it with

and being sort of always a part of an experience, you know.

whether it's well-received or not,

but always like everyone involved is putting their entire selves and bodies into, you know, and

cares so much about making it.

And it's very bonding.

It's very fun.

And I don't know anything else.

Oh, Pedro, this has been great.

Well, thank you, Tanya.

Thank you so much for having me.

I can't tell you.

This is part of my little pinch-me moment.

I told you before we started, I've been listening to NPR through my parents since I was a teenager and my entire adult life.

I've been listening to Fresh Air forever.

And getting to sit here with you is

very special.

Pedro Pascal stars in The Last of Us.

His latest films are The Fantastic Four First Steps, Eddington, and Celine Songs Materialists.

Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our managing producer is Sam Briger.

With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

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