Pedro Pascal on Dancing in Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

Pedro Pascal wasn’t about to sit around and wait for invitation to be a part of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime show. Instead, the “Last of Us” star reached out to the Grammy-winning superstar’s team.

“I wanted to participate in any way – literally a volunteer position, like serving coffee if needed – and I put the feelers out through people I work with,” Pascal says in the new issue of Fantastic Man magazine. “When it comes to representation synchronized with celebration there’s no one better than Benito at the moment, and that fills me with inspiration outside of just being super into his music.”

However, Pascal didn’t hear back right away. After wrapping Tony Gilroy’s upcoming “Behemoth,” Pascal said, ” I was lamenting about not hearing back and I sent someone an email with a selfie of me sticking my tongue out, being, like, ‘It’s really me.’ Within 25 minutes, they called me back and they were like, ‘We want you to come to the show.’”

His only instruction was to wear beige on the big day. “We’re up in the stands watching the game and somebody pulls me from my seat and takes me backstage and then there’s Cardi B and there’s Young Miko and Karol G and Jessica Alba,” Pascal recalled. “They do a wardrobe check and then they tell me, ‘OK, so the vibe is: you’re dancing.’ I started to realize right before they started, and I was like, ‘It’s the Casita. I’m such a fucking idiot. Oh my god, I’m going to be in the Casita,’ as I was being marched out into the field. So I think that’s why I seemed like a deer in headlights.”

In the same interview, Pascal also talked about experiencing fame at an older age than most of his peers. “I think there are two ways of looking at it,” said Pascal, who turned 51 on April 2. “There’s a universal feeling of imposter syndrome that we all can experience when we’re being unkind to ourselves, especially if it’s somehow uncomfortable to get what you want. Then the kinder side of it is that, as old as I feel, and as silly as some of it can be – because of ‘What is a 50-year-old man doing dancing in La Casita?’ – I’m incredibly grateful for having been a fully developed character before experiencing any kind of large-scale exposure. I’m kind of out of the oven, already baked. I was 38 years old when I got the part of Oberyn Martell [in ‘Game of Thrones’].”

He talked about the many waitering and bartending jobs he held in New York City. “It was paycheck to paycheck, but the theatre work became somewhat consistent for a few years,” Pascal said. “And then you always felt like it was this enormous score if you got an episode of ‘Law & Order’ or something. I was scraping by. I got bailed out a lot over the years by my sister and friends.”

Pascal was asked about his signature mustache. “I’d never had the courage to sport facial hair of any kind because I felt like I grew such weak facial hair. To this day, I can’t grow a proper beard,” he said. “The role where I was assisted with specific facial-hair grooming was that of Oberyn Martell. Then came ‘Narcos’, in which I felt like a moustache was completely fitting for the period. So now I sort of cling a little to the vanity of having some definition in the face with my very weak, patchy facial hair. But if the role calls for it, it can all disappear.”

On a more serious note, Pascal explained why he’s so outspoken about progressive politics. “I think staying quiet is the harder path,” the actor said. “I would have too hard of a time living with myself. It’s the way I was raised. Decency and compassion. The idea of the vulnerable being scapegoated and terrorized in this way is unspeakably painful.”

Read the full interview with Pascal at fantasticman.com.