Mom, can you come pick me up? People are being really weird about Pedro Pascal online and it’s giving smear campaign.
If you have the profound displeasure of still being on X, you may have noticed a number of posts that essentially try to say that Pedro touches his female costars inappropriately as a way to soothe his “anxiety” — with a lot of focus on his Fantastic Four promotional tour with costar Vanessa Kirby. One of the videos of the pair was even flagged for containing an AI distortion.
The posts twist what Pedro said about anxiety in a recent Men’s Health interview: “I was always one to reach out when I’m facing something that is challenging or making me anxious…I definitely kind of stopped doing that, and instead I’m doomscrolling, or looking for something to watch; looking for different ways to disassociate from the feeling I’m having. And then, when it started to feel so critical, I had to go back to what was always the comfort for me in life, which was engagement in my relationships, my friendships, and conversation and shared experience.” Touching, of women or otherwise, was not mentioned.
The backlash further devolved into vitriolic, offensive posts about Bella Ramsey, with one post with 255k likes reading, “How come Pedro Pascal never gets anxiety around Bella Ramsey?”
Similarly, others suggested that Pedro is not physically close with his male costars, which is demonstrably false (if anything, you could argue he is more physical with his male costar).
It’s actually not the first time similar jabs have been made at Pedro. As Vanity Fair noted, defenders of J.K. Rowling used a clip of Vanessa and Pedro at Comic-Con to suggest something untoward was happening after Pedro criticized the author for her anti-trans views. But Vanessa herself then said of them holding hands at the event, “What happened is we were both incredibly nervous going out in front of thousands of people who love this comic. He wanted me to know that we were in this together, and I found it a lovely gesture and was very glad to squeeze his hand back.”
The conversation has seeped onto Instagram, where a quick look at Pedro’s comment section reveals a lot of spam-like behavior:
Of course, what the “groping” posts fail to acknowledge is that touching in and of itself isn’t an issue; it’s consent (or lack of it). There’s nothing to suggest that Pedro’s costars feel anything but comfortable around him.
It got to the point where Pedro’s fellow Marvel actor, Simu Liu, posted seemingly in defense of him:
It’s worth noting that the effectiveness of the attacks on Pedro’s reputation were quickly questioned by many:
Some even speculatated that bots might be driving the negative posts:
Given that many accounts posting negative things about Pedro contained other sexist or anti-trans content, you might be asking…why? That’s not clear right now, but it’s worth noting that Pedro has been outspoken about trans rights and Palestine, and he is firmly against Donald Trump.
Now, if only people came to women’s defense like this…