Sarah Paulson recounts supporting Pedro Pascal financially when he was a struggling actor

Pedro Pascal opened up about the difficult early days of his acting career.

Before he became the internet's daddy, Pascal was a struggling actor navigating the throes of auditions and paying the bills. For Pascal's new cover interview with Esquire, longtime pal Sarah Paulson shared that there were times when she helped support Pascal financially during those early days.

"He's talked about this publicly, but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself," Paulson said.

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Sarah Paulson and Pedro Pascal

The two met in 1993 when Pascal moved to New York to attend NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. After college, Pascal headed to Los Angeles and landed roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Touched by an Angel, and Undressed, but not so much to move the needle. He returned to New York around 2000 and continued the grind of auditions.

"I died so many deaths," Pascal said of that period. "My vision of it was that if I didn't have some major exposure by the time I was 29 years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid. There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go."

Lucasfilm Ltd. Pedro Pascal and Grogu on 'The Mandalorian'

Though he had memorable turns in Game of Thrones and Narcos, Pascal's roles in hit shows The Mandalorian and The Last of Us catapulted his star status to new heights — and now "everybody wants a piece of him," Paulson said. "You just want him to succeed. And that to me, I feel like, is the sign of a major movie star. I'm ready for him to take the reins from the guys from romantic comedies past, like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all these guys."

As for Pascal's daddy status, "Knowing Pedro as intimately as I do, I would not want him to be my daddy, personally," Paulson added. "I want him to be my pal that I can hang out with until all hours of the night, but Daddy?"

The American Horror Story star recently made a surprise appearance during Pascal's Saturday Night Live hosting debut in February that poked fun at his daddy status. Pascal played a popular high school teacher flabbergasted by TikTok fancams. Paulson played another teacher, dubbed the mommy to Pascal's daddy. "Fine. He's daddy. I'm mommy," she said in the sketch. "No crumbs left."

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