The summer of 2025 will forever be remembered by cinephiles as Pedro Pascal Summer, due to us getting three major films that starred him in an important role, all within the span of two months. With Materialists, Eddington, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pascal’s face has been inescapable in your local movie theaters, with his magnetic mug plastered across countless posters. When you see his face that many times, it’s hard not to notice how much he loves a good mustache, and each role he takes is an adventure to find a whole new style of mustache to rock. It’s usually not worth pointing out an actor’s proclivity for a particular physical trait, but Pascal has recently made it clear that not only does he love having facial hair, but he insists on always having some kind of facial hair for all his work, and we have Wonder Woman 1984 to “blame” for his bold ultimatum.
Pedro Pascal Hates Being Clean-Shaven
In a recent interview with Fantastic Four co-star Vanessa Kirby on the LADbible YouTube channel, Kirby and Pascal argue over whether mustaches are sexier than beards. On paper, this is one of the many innocuous and silly Internet-brained conversations that now make up a massive bulk of a film’s press tour nowadays, but it unexpectedly led to a profound answer from Pedro. He declared that “I grow such sh*t facial hair, but if I were to shave it all off… I really look very [awful]. Strongly disagree with a clean-shaven me,” and said that he realized this after going clean-shaven for the role of the villainous Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020. He said that he “was so appalled by the way I look. I loved the movie, but I was so appalled by the way that I looked that I have never gone back unless it wewase completely necessary.” From then on, he vowed that he would never shave off his facial hair again unless a director strongly advocated that it was truly necessary for him to get rid of his beautiful scruff. As is evident by his visage in the three aforementioned films, most directors now seem more than happy to accommodate his follicle fixation. Besides, of all the reasons to besmirch WW1984, Pascal’s lack of facial hair is far down the list.
Related
Pedro Pascal Was Actually in a Wonder Woman Project Before ‘1984’
Pascal thought ‘Wonder Woman’ would change his career. He’s lucky the TV pilot didn’t kill it.
The grave for Wonder Woman 1984, being one of the most disappointing superhero films in recent memory, has long been dug, and even if we kept it to just Pascal’s character, there’s so much to nitpick at. For as much as he dislikes his bare face, Pascal should be more upset at that terrible Zack Morris wig strapped around his head, a red flag for WW1984‘s uncomfortable embrace of cheap, tacky artificiality covering up a story that’s sincere in its stupidity to the point of embarrassment. The film has a haphazard grasp on what it wants to take seriously and what it wants to have fun with, made all the more jarring by how much its general style seems to owe less to the actual 1980s and more to Hot Tub Time Machine.
The treatment of Maxwell Lord is indicative of the film’s many deeply confusing flaws, as it can’t decide how much of a villain he’s actually supposed to be and doesn’t know how to parse out its feelings for him. He’s clearly inspired by Donald Trump and therefore probably not meant to be sympathetic in any way, and yet he’s given this unconvincing redemption arc and change of heart because of an adopted son he has that we barely see him have a true relationship with. WW1984 tries to have a big heart, but it’s ultimately too gooey and too half-hearted to be convincing, and Pascal having his facial hair across Lord’s dumb face wouldn’t help much at all.
Pedro Pascal Should Be Allowed to Always Have a Mustache
On a more serious note, Pascal’s self-consciousness around how he wants people to see him does speak to a troubling trend with current-day nerds, be they for comic books or movies. There’s a sense of entitlement, if not downright indignation, at the idea of actors being perceived as having a consistent image and not constantly trying to branch out and diversify their acting range. It leads such nerds to accuse these actors of only being themselves or having not much actual acting ability, that they are simply “brands” who cling to a pre-packaged idea of themselves out of cowardice. I’ve seen notable actors like Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson, and Jack Black be accused of cynically going from role to role with barely any preparation or creative spark, and frankly, it usually feels like mean-spirited and boring criticism. It makes me wonder if these types of cinephiles would have any true appreciation for the stars of old who could also be accused of just being one image, like Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart, or if they’d willfully ignore that image-crafting has long been vital to any major star achieving any kind of cultural staying power.
Specifically regarding Pedro Pascal, he seems to be all too deeply aware of how the online nerd crowd feels about him, for better or worse. He knows how people have anointed him everyone’s “Daddy,” he knows that some people are peeved that he seems to be a part of every major nerd franchise now, and he especially knows that people didn’t rock with him being cast as Reed Richards. He’s admitted that he knows one of the big critiques people lobbed at him before even seeing the movie was that Reed shouldn’t have a mustache, which is ridiculous, since Mr. Fantastic has definitely had a full beard in the comics before. It’s one thing to criticize an actor for having a niche, but to cross over into body-shaming for the sake of a made-up standard of “accuracy” is patently cruel, and I think it should be made clear that if Pedro Pascal wants to always have a mustache, then that’s his right as a person.
Wonder Woman 1984
- Release Date
-
December 25, 2020
- Runtime
-
151 minutes
- Director
-
Patty Jenkins
- Writers
-
Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, Dave Callaham
- Producers
-
Charles Roven, Stephen Jones, Zack Synder, Deborah Snyder, Gal Gadot