Pedro Pascal Condemns ‘Butthurt’ Filmgoers Who Complain About Race-Swapping

The Last of Us star Pedro Pascal is weighing in on the controversial subject of race-swapping, gender-swapping, and other methods of improving diversity in casting. On social media, we can pretty much expect to see some complaints anytime a character previously portrayed as white is changed to another ethnicity in a new movie or television series. We saw quite a bit of this recently with the release of The Little Mermaid, which introduces Halle Bailey as a Black incarnation of Ariel. That led to those unhappy with the casting to express their disapproval on social media using the hashtag #NotMyAriel, even months before the movie was even released.

Pascal, who’s also known for his popular role in the Star Wars series The Mandalorian, addressed the topic in a new interview with Variety. He was asked about being seen as an actor rather than as “Pedro Pascal the Latino guy that we have for Latino roles,” and that had him commenting on how important it is to improve representation in all movies and TV shows. The actor believes that the focus should be on “just casting a person into a role” as opposed to “limiting a character to its racial identity,” suggesting all fictional characters should be fair game when it comes to race or gender.

“I think that the change is really important and that the best way to continue representation is just casting a person into a role that isn’t limiting a character to racial identity,” as Pascal explains. “Especially if it’s an IP that we’re familiar with or a book. And people get so butthurt about this kind of stuff, but who cares? Because that is the coolest way of moving the needle, is being open about the casting in every way.”

Related: The Last of Us Showrunner Craig Mazin Says Matthew McConaughey Was in Talks to Play Joel Before Pedro Pascal

Pedro Pascal Says Fictional Characters Shouldn’t Be Limited With Casting

This isn’t to say Pascal wants to see representation forced into projects, feeling that there should also be efforts made into crafting the strongest story possible. In any case, he suggests that we are making progress, even if Hollywood directors and producers are still trying to figure out the best way to go about it.

“Instead of being like ‘these are the instructions, this is how we need to follow it… let’s label what representation is and follow those,” Pascal says. “No, I think that we need to continue discovering it and making sure that we understand that representation is in service of telling the story instead of fulfilling a political frustration, which is totally legit also.”

He further explained, “It’s a very interesting thing to navigate, and I think that it deserves all the attention in the world so that we do navigate it, and that the needle does move, and that things do kind of like change.”

Pascal will return for the second season of The Last of Us. He is also currently filming the sequel to Gladiator with director Ridley Scott. He will next be seen in the comedy road trip movie Drive-Away Dolls from director Ethan Coen and co-stars Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Beanie Feldstein. That movie will release on Sept. 22, and a trailer was just recently released.