The poster for Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke’s queer western just dropped

The official poster for Strange Way of Life dropped yesterday. The 30-minute western by celebrated Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar stars Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke. It’s only Almodóvar’s second English-language film.

Alongside the poster, a couple of publicity stills have also emerged, along with information on the short’s world premiere.

New stills of Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke in Pedro Almodóvar’s queer Western short 'Strange Way of Life' pic.twitter.com/Pf6ZacvzXr

— Pedro Pascal Daily (@pascalarchive) April 11, 2023

A Strange Way Of Life has been selected for the official program of the upcoming Cannes Film Festival in May. Almodóvar, Pascal and Hawke will all attend the festival for the screening.

According to Variety, “the western drama revolves around the bond between two men who met when they were young while working together as hired gunmen and reconnect 25 years later in Bitter Creek.”

Various sources say the characters enjoyed a gay relationship earlier in their lives, with Esquire hinting their friendship was “possibly of the romantic variety” when younger.

Pascal recently told Insider how he jumped at the chance to work with Almodóvar.

“It could have been anything that [Almodóvar] asked me to do, and I would have done it without question,” Pascal said. “He absolutely opened up an entire world of storytelling, color, culture, rebellion, and sexuality that was just absolutely intoxicating, dangerous, hilarious, heartbreaking, and encompassing the whole spectrum, but with such a signature style.”

Sarah Paulson gave Pedro Pascal a beautiful gift early in his career

This month’s Esquire carries a new, major profile of Pascal. One of those to contribute to the article is queer actress Sarah Paulson.

It turns out that Pascal and Paulson used to hang out together a great deal in the 1990s. Pascal went to New York in 1993 to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He became friends with graduates of NYC’s LaGuardia High (the basis of the movie, Fame), including Paulson.

“We would go to see movies all the time in those years,” Paulson recalls, “and we would get so lost in them. You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”

Pascal relocated to LA in the late 90s and picked up some acting work on shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer. However, it wasn’t enough to keep him in the city and he moved back to New York in 2000. Times were tough. So much so, Paulson says she gave him money to help him buy food.

“He’s talked about this publicly,” Paulson says, “but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself.”

Per diem are basic living expenses an employee gives staff to cover things such as food.

Now, of course, Pascal is enjoying major success thanks to leading roles in The Mandalorian and The Last Of Us. Paulson, naturally, is overjoyed for her friend. Just don’t ask her to join the daddy worship of him.

“Knowing Pedro as intimately as I do, I would not want him to be my daddy, personally,” she told Esquire. “I want him to be my pal that I can hang out with until all hours of the night, but Daddy?”

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