Pedro Pascal Was Sleeping During THAT Game Of Thrones Scene
In George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series of novels, one of his most beloved and fan-favorite characters was Oberyn Martell, the vengeance-seeking hothead who arrives on the scene in King's Landing with mysterious motivations in the third book. Though doomed to a grisly fate, the creative team on "Game of Thrones" needed to cast someone with the charisma, sex appeal, and that intangible edge of danger to help the adaptation of this character live up to the original. Needless to say, Pedro Pascal was more than up to the task.
Years later, now that the "The Last of Us" star is a household name who's gone on to bigger and better roles, Pascal joined the ever-popular "Hot Ones" YouTube series with host Sean Evans to test his mettle under the most challenging of circumstances — answering questions while eating spicy chicken wings, naturally. In the latest episode, Pascal revisited his famous role as the Dornish Prince in "Game of Thrones" and, specifically, the filming of that show-stopping duel to the death between himself and the hulking "Mountain," Gregor Clegane (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson). Though it ends in rather brutally gory fashion, Pascal's experience on set that day apparently took on a slightly different tone altogether.
According to the actor, it was somehow calming enough to lull him right to sleep.
'I got my head crushed in, it was the best part of the day'
How many actors out there would pinpoint their death scene as the highlight of a shooting day? Pascal did exactly that on the latest episode of "Hot Ones," laying out his perspective of the thrilling fight that certainly made an impact – in terms of all its head-crushing nastiness, of course. As he humorously put it:
"I got my head crushed in, it was the best part of the day. It was so hot when we were shooting that scene. You know, [Björnsson's] over me and he puts his thumbs into my eyes and they've got piping — tubing — through his body into his forearms to his thumbs and just pumping this, like, cool blood. And so gentle, like the gentlest guy ever."
As amusing as it is to note the juxtaposition between Björnsson's physicality and his downright gentlemanly behavior when he was, well, gouging out Oberyn's eyes with his thumbs, the real treat of this segment comes when Pascal admits that he was "dead asleep" during the final wide shot of the sequence.
"Because it was so hot and this stuff was so cooling to the touch and you had to be really, really still, and that was the most relaxing ... And knowing also that we had gotten to the end of this sort of four-day fight that we were shooting out there, it was very cathartic, and I went into the deepest sleep I've been in."
The next time you revisit one of the best and brutal fight scenes in the entire series, always keep in mind that none of your anxiety was ever shared by Pascal himself, happily snoring away under loads of fake gore. Oberyn himself would approve.