Pedro Pascal’s rise to “Internet Daddy” explained

If you’ve spent any time online in the last two months, chances are you’ve come across Pedro Pascal fancams or thirst edits – from tweets to calls The last of us Star “Daddy” on TikToks with an audio clip from Shaggy’s “Hey Sexy Lady” to punctuate thirsty fan edits. Or maybe you’ve seen the 47-year-old Chilean-American actor in an ad for the game of oddball merge mansion and wondered how he got there.

Whatever the case, here’s an account of why Pascal has been all over the internet lately — and how the fixation on his “internet daddy” identity has spiraled out of control.

Why did Pedro Pascal suddenly become popular?

Though Pedro Pascal has been an actor playing lead roles for years — with credits spanning game of Thrones, The Mandolarian, And Narcos — his role as Joel in the HBO Max adaptation The last of us has heralded its meteoric rise, both in the public eye and in the eyes of thirsty fans.

The thirst for Pascal had already arisen in early 2023. In January, an Entertainment Tonight reporter asked him on the red carpet, “You know you’re the father of the internet, right?” before showing him a tweet a fan had written about him being a “cool, kinky Dad” to which he replied, “I’m your cool slutty daddy.”

But The last of us was a focal point of his notoriety and status as “Internet Daddy”. On the show, Pascal plays a (hot) character who many also believe is a legitimately good father. A GQ article pointed this out found that Pascal’s positive relationship with co-star Bella Ramsey, who is 19, was a stark contrast to leading men like Leonardo DiCaprio, who have a reputation for dating women so young. Ironically, part of Pascal’s rise as a sex symbol may be because he looks like a really good guy — and a really good “daddy.”

Sure, Pascal’s role as Din Djarin in the current season of The Mandolarian is also prominent – but on this show he’s helmeted. Disney is also known for its family-friendly, squeaky-clean image, which doesn’t exactly match the thirst that fans have been urging on Pascal.

It was TikTok that would catapult the thirst for Pascal to even greater heights.

Why Did Pedro Pascal Blow Up on TikTok?

A fancam edit by Pedro Pascal went viral on January 20th, earning its creator dvcree more than 3.6 million likes and more than 30 million streams at the time of writing. The clip weaves close-ups and scenes from Kingsman: The Golden Circle, in which Pascal plays Agent Whiskey. In the clip, Whiskey briskly approaches Ginger Ale, played by Halle Berry, and says, “How would you like to ride a real cowboy home? I’ve got a six pack of cold ones on ice and my roommates are out all night, so you can scream my name as loud as you have to, honey.” The video then transitions into a series of smash cuts of Pascal in a cowboy hat.

TikTok has since been credited as the primary Pascal fancam edit – with one commenter bluntly saying, “I love how the entire fandom just collectively agreed that this is the official Pedro Pascal edit.” The song ” Hey Sexy Lady” by Shaggy combined with these special lines of dialogue Kingsman: The Golden Circle, became the audio file used for many other Pascal Durst edits. More than 24,000 TikToks use this special audio.

TikToker also reappeared older video from Vanity Fair, in which Pedro Pascal undergoes a lie detector test. “Ever look at Instagram accounts aimed at saying you’re a heartthrob,” the interviewer asks him. He admits he does, with a big laugh, before admitting that the Pedro Pascal fan account is his favorite. He ends the interview by saying, “Daddy’s a state of mind, you know what I mean? I’m your dad.”

But at some point, fans’ passions began to shift from “cute” to “scary.” They smoldered on Pedro Pascal’s stint as Saturday night live host in February, which even included a sketch mocking his reputation as an internet daddy and hinting at his exhaustion from the whole Gambit.

Other media also repeatedly played into the story. Only two weeks ago Pascal had to react again to being called “Daddy”. At The Graham Norton Show.

And in early March, a meme from the 2022 movie The unbearable weight of massive talentin which Nicolas Cage looks back on a smiling Pedro Pascal shared via TikTok – and reignites fans’ obsession with the actor.

When Pedro Pascal gets thirsty

Parasocial relationships between fans and celebrities are nothing new, and it can be difficult to draw the line between fun and admiration and fetishization. (Fanfiction sites like AO3, in particular, often anticipate this question, as authors sometimes write stories not about fictional characters portrayed by actors, but about the actors themselves.) The thirst for Pascal became even more uncomfortable as the media continued to get involved with the parasocial dynamics, thereby legitimizing the way the star was sexualized.

In the red carpet interview on the current season of The Mandalorian, Earlier this month, Access Hollywood asked Pascal to read Durst tweets about himself — not unlike the popular BuzzFeed YouTube series, which has celebrities reading Durst tweets into the camera. Pascal paused to consider the question, but then politely declined, saying “no.”

It’s worth noting that asking someone to do this on the red carpet is very different than doing this type of reading in a more scripted environment than a Number of Redditors pointed out. There’s a difference between signing up to read sexualized content about yourself and someone out of the blue asking you to engage with it during a formal event. Sure, fancams and edits are fun, but they get fetishistic at a point where they take on someone’s public persona — and invade their space at public events.

Thankfully, in a recent Hot Ones interview, Pascal did Space to answer other questions about his career and his perspective on the characters he’s played over the years. There’s more to Pascal, or any seasoned actor, than just lusting after him – and hopefully he’ll have more chances to actually delve into his craft.