Pedro Pascal in Paradise
Pedro Pascal has noticed my sniffling. “Do you have allergies?” he asks. “You have a cold? Or do you have a cocaine problem?” It’s spring, the season when our bodies rebel against us. I tell him about the allergies I’ve had since I was a kid. He tells me to get a neti pot.
“I love drugs,” he says, pausing to make sure I know he’s talking about the over-the-counter kind, but for him, nothing’s worked better than that weird-ass contraption. “It’s kind of gross, but it really, really helps.” He offers to text me a photo so I know what to get at the drugstore.
This summer, don't be afraid to wear shorts with literally anything in your closet—even a decadent silk pajama shirt.
When it comes to the inseam, we say live without limits and show as much thigh as you want.
“I've been to such extreme locations,” the star says from Oahu, where he's filming a scene he describes as “survivalist.” This latest role, in a movie he can’t share the title of, is kicking his ass, and at 43, he’s feeling it. “My body is like, Dude, you were down for this ten years ago! When are you gonna play a psychiatrist?” Hawaii is good to him, though. “At the end of the day, it's a caress being here. There aren't any snakes, there's no deadly spiders. It rains a lot, but it's never cold. The locals are just too cool. It's the kinda place where you get your ass kicked if you're an asshole.”
Patagonia's simple, rugged nylon trunks have been a favorite of adventurers and beach bums alike for 30 years. And now they're as popular on the streets of N.Y.C. as in the campsites of Yosemite. Shorts, $55, by Patagonia / Overcoat, $3,945, by The Elder Statesman / Tank top, $72 (for pack of two), by Dolce & Gabbana
Still, he’s been away from New York City for too long. He was close last fall, in Boston filming the movie you’ll see him in next, The Equalizer 2. But it’s been a while, and it’ll be a long while yet till he gets back—he’ll be leaving Oahu soon for London and Wonder Woman 1984. But maybe after that, he’ll finally get to stick around for a while. Maybe do a play. He misses being onstage in New York, where he hustled in theater and on cop shows for 20 years. It's where he first got his ass kicked by allergies.
“I wanted a shotgun to my head,” he says. “It just fuckin' murdered me.” Then he got a neti pot, and it made New York a bit more bearable. He tells me about his nomadic upbringing—he was born in Chile but left as an infant because his parents were political refugees. He has no memory of Denmark, where they first landed, so San Antonio—where he lived until age 11—is the first home he remembers. Then middle and high school in Orange County, California, before finally taking off for NYU.
In our current fashion moment, wide and loose pants are fair game. Same goes for shorts. (And if they're wide, they can be a little longer, too.)
Just because you go in the water with them doesn't mean your swim trunks can't be elegant, well cut, and made in Italy.
"There were never any roots," he says. "In my second year [of college], my family moved back to Chile. I wonder whether if I would have stuck it out, had I still had a cushy house to go back to in Southern California. Because I wasn't going to go back to Chile. I have tons of family there that I knew from visiting while I was growing up, but I already knew I wanted to be an actor and had the very, very naive goal of succeeding as an actor."
He laughs as he says this, because at every turn Pedro Pascal never fails to feel like the most pragmatic person in the world who just happens to have an absurd dream of being an actor, a dream he was happy to try out for 20 years before his breakout Game of Thrones role. He speaks plainly, as if his career were a set of cabinetry he had carved and installed himself, using readily available methods and materials. And despite his recent successes and popularity, he still seems to feel a bit apprehensive about it all.
Of all the military-inspired clothing filtered down to civilian life, pleated shorts—famously part of the Nepalese Gurkha troop uniform—are easily the most underrated.
There is no fabric more summery than seersucker, so it was only a matter of time before it migrated from Sunday-best jackets to your sunscreened thighs.
Your favorite gym shorts from college now come in fancy high-fashion versions but are still best worn with a hoodie and beat-up sneakers.
"I think that's a thing you can't really shake, either from our Latin blood or from the consistent inconsistency of our careers," Pascal says. "It all seems like an accident when things work out, and maybe it is. Part of it is sort of an accident. I just remember being so terrified when I graduated college, because I knew this was a thing that had to happen, and I couldn't conceive of it happening and I couldn't conceive of not doing it. I think that kind of never goes away."
I tell him that feels true to me, in my bones. Not just as a writer but as a Latin-American.
"Yeah, it's an immigrant, Latin thing," he says. "I should unpack that more for myself. My parents are political refugees. I saw their struggle and their success, and my father—although he became a successful doctor—he never let go of the fear of it all being taken away."
Sometimes the best shorts for beach season are actually the jeans you wore all year. Just grab a pair of scissors and chop ’em right above the knee.
This story originally appeared in the July 2018 issue with the title "A Short Trip to Paradise."
