Coming off of the success of “Game of Thrones,” Pedro Pascal didn’t feel like he even had to say “yes” to his next big TV project; he just knew that “Narcos” on Netflix was the right fit.
“To be totally honest with you, it started with Netflix,” he tells during a group interview of why he picked “Narcos.” “I didn’t have to know what the project was because everybody wants to be a part of this. It was that pinch-me moment first where I was like, ‘Holy s***, I’m going to go be on a Netflix show now.'”
“Honestly, it wasn’t even really a decision. It was like, ‘Oh great, this is what I’m doing next.'”
The series tells the story of two DEA agents who traveled to Colombia to head the United States’ investigation into Pablo Escobar in the ’70s. Pascal plays Javier Pena, a Mexican-American agent who is paired with Boyd Holbrook’s Steve Murphy to investigate the drug lord.
Pascal and Holbrook traveled to Virginia to meet the real-life Javier and Steve and hear their stories first-hand. Together they trained at Quantico for a week, drank beers and dined together, and were able to learn what they needed to embody their living counterparts.
But Pascal will be the first to admit that he wasn’t the most avid history buff when it comes to Escobar. “I wasn’t terribly familiar with Escobar. I knew maybe more than many about Escobar; I wasn’t particularly compelled to tell that story,” he explains. “It didn’t fascinate me particularly, although the way it’s being told [in ‘Narcos’] and by whom is what did.”
Also new to Pascal was his knowledge of the drug trade and the spread of cocaine. During a presentation from the cast and creators at the 2015 summer TV press tour, the word “cocaine” was mentioned 40 times in as many minutes. With it being so central to the story “Narcos” is telling, Pascal laughs over his relative ignorance of the subject.
“It’s kind of a funny thing, isn’t it, where you get free reign in how much you get to say ‘cocaine’ because of the show that you’re doing? Unexpected perk: We get to talk about cocaine all the time,” he says. “It’s not even our fault; you should see some of the advertising for the show. It’s like cocaine raining from the sky. I learned a lot. I actually didn’t [laughs] I didn’t know too much about cocaine before this show.”
Born in Chile, Pascal’s parents soon needed to flee the country as political refugees. He spent time in Denmark, San Antonio, Texas and Orange County, Calif. before moving to New York City at age 18 to pursue theater. Television, he explains, was a way to land work beyond the stage.
After breaking out on as the Red Viper on “Thrones,” “Narcos” presented Pascal a new challenge: Acting while speaking Spanish. Though he was raised with the language, he’d never before performed it, and that made him nervous.
“I grew up speaking it with my family and with my friends, but it’s a different ball game when it comes to acting on camera or on stage,” he says. “There’s a self-consciousness that enters into a language that was my first but that I wasn’t educated in. What was most valuable about it to me was that it makes the show so much better because the most important thing about telling the story is that it be as authentic as possible.
“I think it’s such a baller move from Netflix to insist that if we are in a Latin-speaking country with Latin characters, and they are amongst themselves, why the f*** would they be speaking English?”
Directed by Jose Padilha and created by Chris Brancato, Eric Newman and Carlo Bernard, “Narcos'” 10-episode Season 1 premieres in its entirety on Friday, Aug. 28 on Netflix.