Wonder Woman 1984: Pedro Pascal in his surprising approach to Max Lord

When Pedro Pascal received the role of Max Lord in “Wonder Woman 1984”, he worked almost non-stop since his performance as Oberyn Martell in “Game of Thrones”. In just a few years, the Chilean actor had jumped from filming Netflix’s “Narcos” series to action franchises “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” and “The Equalizer 2” and a memorable (and uncredited) cameo in the acclaimed drama “If Beale Street could speak.” When he landed in Hawaii for the pre-production of the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier”, Pascal was, in his words, “a little tired of work”. But the opportunity to be directed by Patty Jenkins as the main villain in a giant superhero movie was just too attractive to pass up.

With criticisms highlighting Pascal’s performance – “This year didn’t offer many reasons to just smile, but every second of Pedro Pascal’s performance made me do it”, praised Mike Ryan of Uproxx – “Wonder Woman 1984” could catapult the star of a of the other outstanding hits of the year, “The Mandalorian”, to even higher career levels.

In this excerpt from Pascal’s interviews for VarietyOctober cover story about the actor, the 45-year-old revealed in Zoom the surprising methodology he used to attack the role of Max Lord, a self-styled “television personality and businessman” whose desperate search for constant success puts him in probability with Diana Prince by Gal Gadot. Pascal also talked about his childhood consuming American pop culture, his appreciation for Jenkins’ soaked aesthetics in the 1980s for “WW84” and his first experience in a “Wonder Woman” project: David E. Kelley’s ill-fated 2011 TV pilot.

Maxwell Lord in the comics has a story full of stories, one of those villainous characters who come in and out of a lot of different stories. Were you familiar with all of this when you got the part?

No I did not know. I think as soon as I started researching, it started to ring a small bell. But my first introduction to the character was Patty and Geoff’s script, and there was a very specific vision for the type of character he’s telling about “Wonder Woman”. And then I started to understand the different generational versions of Max Lord, and which ones to lean on. Obviously, in this case, the ’80s version of this, like, you know, brilliant …

[Pascal looks down at his table, and his eyes go wide. He picks up a bound copy of his "Wonder Woman 1984" screenplay that he's refashioned into a scrapbook, filled with photocopies of Max Lord from the comic books that Pascal manipulated through his lens on the character.]

Oh my God, you’re sitting next to me. Listen, I promise I didn’t plan this. But I just took it out of storage, strangely. I remember feeling a little tired from work when going into “Wonder Woman”, but I also knew that to work with Patty, you can’t get tired, or you use that fatigue and push it to its maximum, so that there is always that kind of an overflowing vulnerability to work with. It is the best type of requirement. I loved. But one of the practical ways I chose to focus, essentially, was to make a kind of ridiculous book with my script. I had literally limited it.

[Pascal flashes some of the pages in the scrapbook, including a page with Max surrounded by text bubbles into which Pascal has written, over and over in tiny lettering, “You are a fucking piece of shit.”]

Oh, wow. Did you write it all down?

Yes. It’s just a way of sitting and kind of meditating on it. Do you know what I mean?

Was that a character exercise for you, or another artistic exercise?

It was more like a process exercise, realizing that there is nothing I ever do. What confused me the best was to see a real creative challenge, which is not necessarily what you would expect if you were to make a superhero movie. And so I knew that, in the end, you’re going to have to make big choices and act crazy in some cases. So I feel like I had to wake up again in style. And that was just a practical way of, instead of going home tired and putting Netflix or something, it was like dealing with this physical thing, doodling and thinking about it and doing it.

So from everything you’re saying and what Patty Jenkins also said about this part, it seems safe to assume, if we’re talking about a performance point of view, what you’re doing in “The Mandalorian” is for a side, and what you’re doing as Max Lord is very much on the other side.

Yes. And yet, in a way, a mask – more than I’m used to.

This film is set in the 80s, and there is a certain type of great acting that was done in big box office hits at the time, from Christopher Reeve’s films “Superman” to something like “Robocop”, where the villains in particular were huge .

Good example, I love “Robocop”.

So, how much did you remember your childhood, seeing all these films with your family when you were working on that performance?

I don’t know if we’re almost the same age …

I have 41

OK. Well, as you progress further into your 40s, I’m holding on, a little too much, missing you. As far as Patty’s vision is concerned, what she sought was to capture the experience of our childhood imagination that seemed so limitless – and also shaped by all the things that were around us, with regard to television and cinema and style. I was not a child who was not allowed to watch television. I was not a child who was not allowed to do all the things that decorate the experience of this film. I was a sponge for all this. I was literally being created and shaped by him to some extent. What I wouldn’t necessarily be able to relate to the character’s interpretation of. I think they are two totally separate things. But I understood your mind, and it was exciting. It was a real wave of surfing. So all I had to do was make a fucking coloring book and follow his instructions.

What was it like growing up in San Antonio, absorbing all that pop culture?

I really loved it. San Antonio, for example, is very, very multicultural. All of Texas really is. Being South American – although it may be so different from each other – there is still a connecting fabric for the Latin community. So my direct influence, even before I started visiting Chile more regularly, was that of Mexico and Mexican-American culture. I was in public schools there and I didn’t do very well. I was in too much trouble. I just remember school being a kind of nightmare until high school, where the subjects got a little more interesting, I think.

Were you just, like, restless and not paying attention?

I think. But summer would come and there were no limits – it seemed at the time, like, just absolute magic. Much to be a nanny on TV if there was no nanny. VHS rental. Consult the TV Guide and try to find the horror movies at a point where my parents were already asleep, and I would watch them just to scare me, at the lowest possible volume. Go down to the multiplex to play a video game and watch several “Poltergeist” executions. My mom didn’t know. She’s like, “This looks scary, I don’t know about that.” And I said, “It’s PG!”

When did you decide you wanted to become an actor?

I knew that early. So much so that, I mean, I remember lying to the kids and telling them that I was on “The Lost Boys”. Seeing the silhouette of Christian Bale on an “Empire of the Sun” poster and the kids on “Poltergeist” when I was in San Antonio and Henry Thomas on “ET”, all the same age – it’s like, I want to live these stories too. So, it started like this. In fact, it is something you can do in a practical way, which satisfies my parents. He took the place of swimming as an extracurricular activity and kept me out of the fucking house, wanting to watch TV all day.

One of the most charming things I noticed in my research was that you participated in the 2011 TV pilot “Wonder Woman”, produced by David E. Kelley, starring Adrianne Palicki.

You’re right. Ed Indelicato, LAPD detective.

Is he like Diana Prince’s friend?

He was your contact with the LAPD.

So, how was that experience of doing that show?

It was like a dream come true. David E. Kelley’s influence on television when I had just left college was very big, and I watched every episode of “Friday Night Lights”. I also thought it was good or not, it would definitely be chosen. It would change my financial situation significantly, even if it was half a season before it was canceled. But it was not even detected. I went back to procedurals, you know, “CSI” and such. I had a very bad year after that interest in terms of sporadic work.

So, when “Wonder Woman 1984” appeared, you wondered if they knew you had done this pilot?

It didn’t really occur to me, which is kind of crazy. They must not have known or cared. Yes. I’m not sure, but it’s like an anecdotal thing that has gone through them completely.

How did Max Lord come to you?

[Whispers] It was a fucking offer. This will never happen again. I did a brilliant pilot with Patty that Charles Randolph wrote called “Exposed”, with this unbelievable cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ben Barnes, Brían F. O’Byrne, Fran Kranz. It was so well written and not approved, but I started working with Patty for about three days or so and then I thought I would never see her again.

Was that in …?

That was in 2014. I shot it before “Game of Thrones” started airing. I was a real fan of Patty Jenkins. And I didn’t even know she remembered that about me. So I worked with [producer] Chuck Roven in “Triple Frontier”. He was the first person to call me. I wasn’t really understanding that Patty wanted to talk to me about a role that I was going to play, not that role that I needed to understand. I couldn’t calculate that. I was not able to fully accept this. And then, I talked to him. And then I talked to her. And then they were flying with me to London from Hawaii to meet her and be with Lindy Hemming, the costume designer, and Jan Sewell, the makeup artist, and start building the portrait of that character. It was unbelievable. I hadn’t even read the script. Patty was, like, frustrated that it didn’t affect me before we sat down to talk. I did not care. I didn’t care at all.

You just mentioned that you think an offer for a role like this is going to happen again. Why do you think that?

I think [pause] Because [pause] it looked so special. It ended up being one of the best experiences I’ve ever had, with a cast, with a director, with a team, with a role.

This interview was condensed and edited based on two conversations.