A story about Pedro Pascal recently resurfaced, describing how he was able to get his big break on Game of Thrones. The short version is that he stole it. The longer story is that Pascal had taken to mentoring young actors after seeing his career stall a little. One of them told him that he was auditioning for the role of Oberyn Martell in the fantasy epic and wanted help to secure the role.
But, as Pascal told the US talk show host Seth Meyers in 2016, the young actor didn’t seem right for the part: “He’s, like, a 25-year-old kid, really, really talented, good-looking … He’d never seen the show.” Knowing he could do better, Pascal waited for his mentee to leave, taped his own audition and told his friend Sarah Paulson what he had done. Paulson is a friend of Amanda Peet, who is married to one of the Game of Thrones showrunners, and she made sure the audition got into the right hands; the rest is TV history.
