Star of The Last Of Us Pedro Pascal drops F-bomb in Cannes, urging filmmakers to resist Trump
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Star of The Last Of Us Pedro Pascal posing at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17, where his latest movie, Eddington, is in competition.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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CANNES, France - Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal urged Hollywood to “f*** the people that try to make you scared” on May 17, while admitting it was “scary” to speak out against US President Donald Trump.
Asked about Trump’s hardline immigration policies, the The Last Of Us and Narcos star told reporters: “It’s very scary for an actor participating in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this.”
“I’m an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US after asylum in Denmark... I stand by those protections,” the 50-year-old told a news conference in Cannes.
He stars in new film Eddington alongside Joaquin Phoenix, an intense and darkly satirical examination of America’s toxic politics set in New Mexico during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Directed by horror specialist Ari Aster, it premiered at the Cannes film festival on May 16.
Echoing a message from Robert De Niro on the opening night of Cannes, Pascal insisted that the film industry needed to find the courage to resist political pressure.
“So keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,” he said.
“F*** the people that try to make you scared. And fight back.
“This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. And don’t let them win.”
De Niro, who accepted a Cannes lifetime achievement award on May 13, urged the audience of A-list directors and actors to resist “America’s philistine president”.
Aster parodies everyone in his film from gun-loving southern US conservatives to virtue-signalling white anti-racism activists.
Emma Stone (La La Land and Poor Things) plays Phoenix’s wife who gets sucked into a world of paedophile-obsessed right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Eddington star Emma Stone (centre) trying to avoid a bee next to (from left) director Ari Aster, actor Austin Butler and actor Pedro Pascal at the movie’s Cannes premiere.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Aster admitted to worrying about America’s direction and set out to dramatise it in his film, whose early satire gradually gives way to much darker material.
Asked on May 16 if America’s polarised politics and the breakdown in trust in the media could be setting the country on a path to mass violence, he said, “That is certainly something I’m afraid of.
“It feels like nothing is being done to temper the furies right now,” he added. AFP
