He may currently be the internet’s favorite Daddy, but once upon a time Pedro Pascal started out being a gay twink. Well, on TV anyway.
Prior to playing bisexual royalty on Game of Thrones, tracking down drug lords on Narcos, protecting baby Yoda on The Mandalorian, and trying to save humanity on The Last of Us, Pascal earned SAG credits for his portrayal of a gay twentysomething on the MTV anthology series Undressed.
Related: Pedro Pascal has our “corazón” with his love for his trans sister
For those who may not recall, Undressed ran for six reasons during MTV’s TRL era heyday from 1999 to 2002 and featured vignettes centered on the physical relationships of teens and young adults.
The low-budget scripted series did not shy away from frank and explicit topics and also highlighted queer relationships in the same manner as straight ones. Imagine Sex and the City except not every one is white, affluent and established.
Many of show’s young cast members would go on to bigger and brighter futures including Christina Hendricks, Max Greenfield, Adam Brody, Jay Hernandez , Peter Paige, Nicholas Gonzalez, Jason Ritter, and, of course, daddy icon Pascal.
During the show’s inaugural season, Pascal played Greg, an out and proud man starting his adult life in Los Angeles.
A 24-year-old Pascal appeared in three episodes and was credited at the time as Pedro Balmaceda. His real name is José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal.
Fans on the internet have recently unearthed Pascal’s queer TV past and created a reel of some of his “best” Undressed scenes. Spliced together, the out of context lines don’t make much sense, but that makes it even better.
Throughout the clip, Pascal emphatically blurts out zingers like, “not everyone can be Mr. Gay Pride,” and “gay, with a weird fetish,” but it’s his utterance of “please, either you’re gay or you’re not” and adding “period” at the end that may even give Cardi B pause. Periodt!
Watch all the early Pascal amazingness below:
Perdo Pascals best work to date!!!! 🏳️🌈 pic.twitter.com/lwMOkxP6HH
— Joe Organa (@JoeOrgana) February 23, 2023
Through a 2023 lens Undressed may seem campy and cheesy, but it’s role in destigmatizing everything from masturbation and queer sex to STDs and threesomes were invaluable to many a pre-social media youth in the ’90s.
While Pascal went on to make a major breakthrough in the acting world, his “The Last of Us” co-star Gabriel Luna’s queer dalliance on True Detective was also recently revisited. Gay for pay is hard to avoid in Hollywood!
To get a true glimpse of Pascal’s work in Undressed, check out his scenes with fellow Latinx heartthrob and future The Good Doctor star Nicholas Gonzalez below (the magic starts at 3:25):
LumpyPillows
I didn’t know. Woof!
Bromancer7
Sorry to be that guy, but it’s so obvious that Pedro is gay. He needs to just come out already. I understand why he doesn’t, but he still should.
perfectgaydar
The boy is never going to wake up. Chick here. Whne I was super young I tore up dance scene at every club in NYC in the 90s. Danced at clubs with a lot of gay guys since they could dance. Weirdest experience was dancing with super yummy looking guy who was clearly gay but suddenly started hitting on me and stalked me around the club when I didn’t want to talk or kiss him. He was so damn charming and cool though that I got into a conversation trying to understand if this was one off and he wanted to party with a female for fun. He got upset at me and suddenly developed a thick accent.
So strange years later to see Pedro get famous. Man is lovely in person but sucks he still hasn’t come out by now. Perhaps because of his family?
johncp56
I,m crushing on him hard, The last of us got me got me hard
gorpalm
I Loved him in GoT – Was devastated when his character was killed.
Oh, and in Mandalorian there’s a few helmeted scenes of him walking where I could swear it’s a female body double…OR he can’t help but sashay a little, every now and again.