It is one of the great paradoxes in my life that I truly, deeply do not care about the private lives of celebrities and yet find myself constantly talking about them* because this is, regrettably, the nexus through which so many pop conversations about sex and queerness are understood. For better and for worse (usually worse), celebrities are the larger than life avatars through which many of us understand ourselves and our lives, and thus talking about the ways that celebrities publicly navigate their sex and dating lives, the ways celebrities are and are not perceived as queer, is unfortunately effective. That’s why I find myself talking, again and again, about Alan Cumming or Li’l Nas X or Natasha Lyonne or Emily Ratajkowski or Tessa Thompson or whomever.
Today we are going to talk about Pedro Pascal.
Up until very recently, I didn’t think too much about Pedro Pascal the person. Of course I loved him as Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones, and I appreciated him as the Mandalorian when I periodically remembered that it was him behind the mask. And he’s good in The Last of Us, too! But that’s basically all he was to me: an actor whose performances I enjoyed.
And then — I couldn’t tell you how it started, except to say that first it was a trickle and then a flood — I started to learn more and more about José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal (yes that is his full name). I think the first tidbit was the fact that he has a trans sister (the delightfully named Lux Pascal) whom he unabashedly supports. Then I think I got a Google alert about how in 1999 he played a gay character in MTV’s Undressed — which, yes, is still technically about his career and not him personally, but seemed to be the link I clicked that unlocked the true floodgate for me, which is to say after I read that story (and possibly, idly, read Pascal’s Wikipedia just to see if a dude playing gay in 1999 was gay for real), I started getting a ton of Pedro Pascal-related clips suggested to me on Instagram.
Do you know what kind of clips people post about Pedro Pascal on Instagram? I sure do now! A bunch of them are just run of the mill memes and “omg he’s so hot” stuff that you see with any beloved celebrity. But there’s also a whole genre that I think of as red carpet supercuts: just compilations of comments Pascal has made while promoting his work (sometimes literally on the red carpet and sometimes not, but close enough) that are, shall we say, provocative. There’s the clip where he says he’s “your cool, slutty daddy;” one where he declares himself “the Instagram whore of the cast” (I don’t know what show this was about) — and, of course, endless wrestling with his apparent position as “the internet’s daddy.” Some of this is just Pascal playfully responding to memes and tweets about his sex appeal but some is… well. There’s a clip where Pascal is asked to name a mommy and daddy and announces that Sarah Paulson (his best friend, we’ll come back to that in a second) is “mother” while Oscar Isaac is “daddy.” And just a few minutes ago Instagram served me up a clip where Pascal is asked which celebrities he would lose his shit if he met and he names Tina Turner and Prince.
Anyway. This is all just a long-winded way of me saying that I don’t actually think that Pedro Pascal is straight. There’s something about his vibe — the comfort with objectification, the willingness to playfully discuss other men’s sex appeal, the fact that his best friend dated both Cherry Jones and Holland Taylor — that just does not scream “hetero male” to me. Do I think he’s gay? I mean who can say; to me he reads as falling somewhere between Tom “I’m an actor, of course I’ve messed around with boys” Hardy** and full-on pansexual. But yes it’s possible he’s gay! It’s also possible that he’s straight, but to me that seems… less plausible.
But apparently this conviction puts me in the minority, because when Pascal posted a series of Pride flags on Instagram with the caption “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind. #LGBTQIA,” there were a lot of comments along the lines of “What a great cishet ally!” Which… what?
Let’s just review the evidence again: the best friend of Sarah Paulson — a self-described woman of fluid sexuality and the girlfriend of Holland Taylor! — who is also an actor of both stage and screen and has willingly played with this idea that he’s a “slutty daddy” and openly discussed other men being attractive posted a bunch of Pride flags on Instagram seemingly completely unprompted*** and your assumption is that… he’s a straight ally.
Yes I know he has a trans sister. I don’t know that that explains all this.
And — with the caveat that I know this is going to sound disingenuous after all the digital ink I just spilled explaining to you why I get a queer vibe from Pedro Pascal — the thing is I don’t actually care if Pedro Pascal is queer. I truly never need him to “come out,” I don’t think he owes me a press release explaining the details of his sexual orientation. If he ever graced the cover of a magazine because of some big public announcement of his sexuality, I think I would be a little sad. People — even famous people — deserve privacy, and it bums me out when someone’s personal life just morphs into their #brand.
But what I do chafe at is this conviction that all celebrities are straight unless they’ve issued a press release to the contrary. I chafe at the notion that saying that, hey, this celebrity who seems to love hanging out with queer people and talks a lot about how he finds other men attractive maybe… wants to have sex with men… is somehow offensive or tantamount to a forced outing. IDK peeps, I thought, “Everyone could be queer possibly” was supposed to be the end goal of our whole revolution? But apparently we’re still stuck in this mindset of queerness as some toxic, untouchable thing that must not be thrust on a person unless they vocally claim it?
Very cool!
And I feel like this should be obvious, but just to make the implicit explicit: I care about this as a bi woman, specifically, because as a bi woman, specifically, I find it incredibly irritating that I, personally, am so frequently assumed to be straight. I don’t think that I — that anyone! — should have to constantly be waving a Pride flag in order to be extended the courtesy of being presumed “possibly queer,” and I don’t think it should be seen as an imposition or akin to forcing someone out of the closet to suggest that they might, possibly, perhaps, be queer. (To the contrary, it seems like assuming people are straight is the thing that forces them out of the closet.) It shouldn’t be a big deal to say that Pascal has a queer vibe. Some straight men have queer vibes! Recognizing the vibe is simply the recognition of a possibility.
Anyway. José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal! He’s a very talented actor. I liked him in Game of Thrones, I wish they’d let him take his helmet off more in The Mandalorian, and I think he is doing a great job in The Last of Us. I would like to go back to not thinking about his personal life again. So please, for my sake, let us all stop assuming he is straight.
* I hosted a whole ass podcast season about Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee!
** Apologies to Tom Hardy for bringing that up, I know he wants that quote stricken from the record
*** Maybe he was prompted by the CPAC stuff? That’s possible!
This put so many of my feelings into words so perfectly. Cishet needs to stop being seen as the baseline/standard. Pedro Pascal could publicly make out with a man and people would still be like “omg we stan an ally! 😍”
Love this - I just assume everyone is gay till they tell me otherwise!