Pedro Pascal has shared a defiant message about the importance of making ‘brave movies’ after his new film Eddington premiered at Cannes.
The latest film from Hereditary and Midsommar director Ari Aster, Eddington sees Pascal’s mayor pitted against Joaquin Phoenix’s sheriff in a small-town New Mexico as the pandemic raged in May 2020.
As a biting satire, the movie dives into hot-button issues that flared at the time, like mask-wearing mandates vs personal freedoms and the Black Lives Matter movement.
With fear constantly in the background, and emotions and misinformation running rife, Eddington’s population is pushed to breaking point and a dramatic face-off between its residents.
At the Cannes press conference, attended by Metro, many questions skewed political given the film’s topics, with The Last of Us star Pascal and filmmaker Aster most willing to wade into the discourse.
US journalist Chaz Ebert shared her personal worry over possible issues at the American border for creatives in the film industry, asking if any of the panel – which also comprised of Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes and British rising star Micheal Ward – ‘fear having anything put in your dossier because of the brave movies that you make’.
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She referenced speaking with international guests for a film festival she holds ‘who were afraid to come to America’.
‘I think fear is the way that they win, one. And so, keep telling the stories and keep expressing yourself,’ Pascal responded to claps of approval from the audience.
‘And f**k the people that try to make you scared, you know, and fight back. Don’t let them win,’ he added above cheers from the assembled press.
Pascal delighted fans previously at the Thunderbolts* London premiere in April with this ‘protect the dolls’ T-shirt in support of the trans community and his actress sister, Lux.
Aster, 38, picked up on his actor’s answer in Cannes – and also the reality of the risky, envelope-pushing Eddington, admitted: ‘The truth is, I’m scared of everything all the time. So I mean, the tongue is sort of in the cheek in that answer. But it’s also true.’
Eddington’s initial response from critics at Cannes has been divided and somewhat muted.
Fantastic Four: First Steps star Pascal was also asked to comment on Latin migrants in America and if he feared it would become ‘an absolutely closed country to the world’.
‘It’s obviously very scary for an actor who participated in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this. It’s far too intimidating of a question for me to really address. I’m not informed enough,’ he began, before stating that he wanted ‘people to be safe and to be protected, and I want very much to live on the right side of history’.
He touched on his personal experience as an immigrant and refugee from Chile with his parents.
‘We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US and, after asylum, in Denmark. And if it weren’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened to us, and so I stand by those protections always.’
He then self-effacingly added: ‘I’m too afraid of your question, I hardly remember what it was.’
At the top of the conference, he had joked that, having been ‘awed’ by some of Aster’s previous movies, he was surprised the director wasn’t somehow ‘more pretentious’ and ‘meaner’ – but instead the opposite.
Joker actor Phoenix, 50, also commented to laughs that his experience working with Aster this time around was ‘better’ after their previous film, 2023 tragicomedy Beau is Afraid, debuted to mixed reviews and took a reported $35million (£26.3m) loss.
Pascal revealed that he was ‘afraid to go back’ and examine his own experience during the pandemic for his role in Eddington as he was ‘isolated and in relationship to my algorithm’.
‘I felt like [Aster] wrote something that were all of my worst fears realised as far as what that lockdown experience was and what it promised to kind of deliver, in all of its fracturing of an already fractured society.’
Oscar-winner Stone, 36, then added: ‘Looking into some of the things that are in this film that hadn’t been in my algorithm unfortunately added them to my algorithm! Because once you start googling it, you start seeing more and more things that – so it just gets, it’s a real rabbit hole very quickly. So unfortunately, I’m still getting fed some crazy s**t!’
Eddington premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released in the US on July 18. It is yet to receive a UK release date.
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