Pedro Pascal is daddy—to you, to us, to the internet at large. And his The Last of Us co-star, Bella Ramsey, feels some type of way about it.
Aside from his acting chops, he’s known for his charisma, and the only thing we love more than his undeniable charm is his sweet friendship with Bella, who plays Ellie opposite his character, Joel, on the dystopian HBO Max hit. As Pedro graced the cover of Vanity Fair’s July/August issue, Bella got candid about their connection and dropped an unexpected bombshell.
The actor, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, revealed that they immediately disliked fans’ affinity for calling Pedro “daddy.”
“I felt worried for him. I want to protect him from that whole joke of becoming the internet’s daddy,” Bella told the publication. “I was like, ‘I don’t want everyone to refer to you as that and see you as that. You’re so much more.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Pedro opened up about the “daddy” label and how he wasn’t always aligned with the public’s perception of him. When Chelsea Handler joked that 2023 was “the year everyone became horny for Pedro Pascal” at the Critics Choice Awards, Pedro revealed he felt like a fraud as he attended the show after dislocating his shoulder.
“I was in a sling, I was overweight, and when the camera cut to me, I didn’t think anything could be further from the truth,” he shared.
Pedro has also welcomed the nickname over the years. When he sat down for Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector series in 2022, he playfully said, “Daddy is a state of mind. I’m your daddy.”
And, as proven by his Materialists press tour with Chris Evans and Dakota Johnson, he’s totally in on the joke and has embraced the title. When asked if he prefers to be the big spoon or little spoon during an interview with Dakota, his expression as he uttered “big” has lived in our minds rent-free ever since.
